Join us at cool SES San Jose – it’ll be hot!

Friday, August 17, 2007

As summer inches towards fall and in many places the temperature is still rising, you’re probably
thinking the best place to be right now is on the beach, by a pool or inside somewhere that’s
air-conditioned. These are all good choices, but next week there’s somewhere else to be that’s
both hot and cool: the
Search Engines Strategies conference in San Jose.
In addition to the many tantalizing conference sessions covering diverse topics related to search,
there will be refreshments, food, and of course, air-conditioning.

Additionally, on Tuesday evening at our Mountain View ‘plex we’re hosting the
“Google Dance”—where conference attendees can eat, drink, play, dance, and talk about
search. During the Google Dance be sure to attend the “Meet the Engineers” event where you’ll be
able to meet and have a conversation with 25 or more engineers including
Webmaster Central’s own
Amanda Camp.
Also, if you get a spare minute from merry-making, head over to the
Webmaster Tools
booth, where you’ll find Maile Ohye offering lots of good advice.

If you’re a night owl, you’ll probably also be interested in the unofficial late-night SES
after-parties that you only know about if you talk to the right person. To stem the potential
barrage of “where’s the party” questions, I’d like to make it clear that I unfortunately am not
the right person. But if you happen to be someone who’s organizing a late night party, please
consider inviting me. 😉

“Enough about the parties—what about the conference?,” you ask. As you would expect, Google
will be well-represented at the conference. Here is a sampling of the Search-related sessions at
which Googlers will be speaking:

• Monday, August 20
  • 11:00am-12:30pm: David Baile –
    Universal and Blended Search
  • 2:00 – 3:30pm: Sep Kamvar –
    Personalization, User Data and Search
  • 4:00 – 5:30pm: Oliver Deighton –
    Searcher Behavior Research Update
• Tuesday, August 21
  • 4:45 – 6:00pm: Matt Cutts –
    Are Paid Links Evil?
• Wednesday, August 22
  • 9:00 – 9:45am: Marissa Mayer –
    Keynote Conversation
  • 10:30am – 12:00pm: Jon Diorio –
    Search APIs
  • 10:30am – 12:00pm: Rick Klau –
    SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
  • 1:30 – 2:45pm: Greg Grothaus –
    Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
  • 3:15 – 4:30pm: Amanda Camp –
    CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 and Search Engines
  • 4:45 – 6:00pm: Shashi Thakur –
    Search Engine Q&A On Links
• Thursday, August 23
  • 10:45am – 12:00pm: Evan Roseman –
    Meet the Crawlers

We will also have a large presence in the conference expo hall where members of the
Webmaster Central Team like Susan Moskwa and I will be present at the
Webmaster Tools
booth to answer questions, listen to your thoughts and generally be there to chat about all things
webmaster related. Bergy and Wysz, two more of us who tackle tough questions in the
Webmaster Help Groups,
will be offering assistance at the Google booth (live and in person, not via discussion thread).

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I should go and grab the last frozen juice bar in the
freezer,” I suggest that you save that frozen juice bar for when you return from the conference
and find that your brain’s overheating from employing all the strategies you’ve learned and
networking with all the people you’ve met.

Joking aside, we are psyched about the conference and hope to see you there. Save a cold beverage
for me!

Written by Jonathan Simon