Search Engine [Party] Strategies San Jose

The past four SES San Jose conferences have been fun events, both because it's the largest SEM conference in the world, and because of all the opportunities to socialize with clients, partners, friends, competitors, knuckleheads, geeks, marketing & sales hey-guys, industry pundits, VC's, Wall St investors, affiliates and journalists.

Some of my favorite things to do at SES:

1) Attend Google's Tuesday evening party at their HQ, known as the Google Dance. There will be 3000-4000 people there this year (and that doesn't include the 1000-3000 Google employeers who will attend as well). Immense amounts of chatzki, beer, games, karaoke, music, scooters, Googlettes, product demos, whirling rumors, vieled pitches, spammers who know too many people from Google, and drunks making fools of themselves.

This being The Last Great Year for Search, the Google Dance will peak this year, followed by a slow and steady decline thereafter - so get jiggy wit it while it's hot!

2) Follow Joe Morin after-hours. He's got a thread on SEW listing SES-related parties. Follow the thread and you'll know what's going on in the evenings.

3) See how desperate some SEM firms are getting. Rule of thumb - if an SEM firm has contortionists, animal mascots as chatzki, free beer or iPod/car/vacation raffles, you can bet they have nothing of value to offer you. And if they have a kick-ass after-hours party, then you can be certain they're hurting - but you should attend all the same.