After getting into the Chicago Hilton, a familar place from SES conferences, I walked the 3-4 blogs to the Columbia University campus where Bulldog Reporter was holding the Advanced PR Technology event. Greg Jarboe and I switched the time of our session with Katie Paine so she could make a plane to Dubai.
Regrettably I did not join the event in the am when it started and missed a number of fantastic speakers including Debbie Weil, but I did get to meet her for the first time. We are fellow bloggers over at Business Blog Consulting. Shel Israel blogged about Phil Gomes presentation here.
The speaker list at this event was really an amazing who’s who list in the area of PR and new media and I was very happy to have the opportunity to attend, let alone be able to share some of our insight into SEO, blogs and online PR. Speakers included:
- Shel Israel – Social Media for Business and co-author of “Naked Conversations” with Robert Scoble
- Debbie Weil – CEO blogging consultant and author of “The Corporate Blogging Book” (get this book!)
- Larry Thomas – COO Medialink
- Katie Paine – KD Paine & Associates
- Dave Friedman – President Avenue A / Razorfish
- Mark Jen – Producer at Plaxo (very nice fellow)
- Greg Jarboe – President, SEO-PR
- Phil Gomes – Senior Counsel Online Communications, Edelman PR
- Eric Schwartzman – President iPressroom
The people that don’t have links above, don’t have blogs, or haven’t made it easy to find them, or in one case, removed the blog content yet left the pages out there for search engines to continue indexing. Oops. Hey, they’re PR people, not technologists, right? 
Two of the highlights of the event for me were: Shel’s keynote, which made me want to run back to the office and make some big strategic changes to our 1-2 year practice area plans.
Also, Katie Paine’s presentation on measuring the effect of PR was fantastic. PR measurement is certainly an area that has been in need of a champion in the past and I have no doubt Katie has been filling that need rather well for her clients and the PR industry with her work in creating more awareness and education on the subject.
Actually, I would be remiss in not mentioning Greg Jarboe’s presentation, which was typically an excellent mix of insight, hard won wisdom and entertainment. Our session on search engine optimization, RSS and public relations stimulated a good mix of questions from the audience.
After a long day of concurrent sessions, those who were able to hold out for our final session were rewarded with a fine mix of cutting edge strategy and practical takeaways. As Greg would say, “Things you can implement when you get to the office on Monday.”
Next up in the TopRank March Madness tour is Sydney Australia for the Search Engine Room. I’ll leave for the Minneapolis airport shortly and should arrive in Sydney early Monday morning (local time). There I’ll be doing a panel on blog optimization and another solo presentation on SEO and PR with a bit of Reputation Management.
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