SES Chicago 2011 Wrap-Up – Best #SESCHI Ever

This year was my 5th attending the SES conference in Chicago. While smaller than SES New York or SES San Francisco, the Chicago show serves a significant number of client side marketers, agencies and consultants in the Midwest and according to Incisive Media who run the event, attendance at this year’s SES Chicago was the best ever.

This was the first SES for our new Marketing Manger at TopRank, Ashley Zeckman, who stepped up to the plate and liveblogged the event for us. She did a great job and her posts were well received by Online Marketing Blog readers as well as other online publications that picked up her posts. Below is a summary of her blog posts, an embedded TopRank Online Marketing presentation on Social, SEO & Content Marketing, responses on Twitter and a few of my favorite photos from the event.

• Grab Your Jacket – The Windy City Blows In Big Talent For SES Chicago 2011
• What Chicago’s Best Restaurants Can Teach Us About Search & Social Media Marketing
• Are You A Guilty Marketer? Opening Keynote at #SESCHI by Mikel Chertudi of Adobe
• 7 Principles for User Generated Content: Michael DeHaven SES Chicago 2011
• Search, Social, & Content Work Together at SES Chicago 2011
• Hello Local, Meet Social – Learning the Basics at SES Chicago
• 5 Essential Tips on Content Marketing & Optimization #SESCHI

The room was absolutely packed for the Convergence of Search, Social & Content session with Aaron Kahlow, Arnie Keunn and myself presenting. Here’s an embed of my portion of the panel presentation covering Optimization as a State of Mind and focusing on optimizing for customers as well as content discovery, consumption and engagement.

The presentation was well received by the attending audience and on Twitter:

Also, here are a few of my favorite photos from the show. You can find more on our Flickr set for SES Chicago as well.

Mike Grehan opening up the Conference

Opening keynote by Mikel Chertudi of Adobe

Technorati President Charles Black, Jonathan Allen of Incisive Media and Aaron Goldman of Kenshoo presenting on the Automating Social Media panel.

Bryan Eisenberg, Lee Odden, Aaron Kahlow, Matt McGowan & Bill Hunt

The Expert Roundtables were a bit hit throughout the conference. Here’s Bill Hunt holding court on Enterprise SEO.

TopRank Online Marketing’s Ashley Zeckman liveblogging the conference

Audience ready and waiting for smart insights on Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing

Thank you to the gang at Incisive Media that make the SES conferences possible including (but certainly not limited to) Marilyn Crafts, Laura Roth, Jonathan Allen, Mike Grehan, Matt McGowan the other members of the SES Board of Advisors and especially attendees and sponsors. Our next SES event with be SES Accelerator in San Diego Feb 2012 along with Online Marketing Summit (congrats Aaron!).