PubCon 2008 Las Vegas – another week full of networking, partying and some interesting sessions has ended.

This was the fifth time I was here in Vegas, and it only gets better every time.

BUT, this doesn’t refer to the broken WIFI at the pubcon (those ads-dudes sponsored 100, then 200 wifi slots for suppesdly 2000 attendees)… what is an internet marketing conference where folks are cut off from the internet for days, or have to go back quickly to their room to check emails at the almost as broken WIFI of the hotel? Conferences like the SES in August or the A4U in October did a way better job in this matter.

Anyway, after hitting the hotel at 0:30 (did some extra sightseeing via LA thanks to delay when flying into Washintong from Europe) I just wanted to grab a beer from the non-existant fridge, so I found myself at the bar til 3:30 …

This happened because the Breeze bar here at the TI was already packed with many of my SEO friends like Greg Boser , Mediadonis , Ralf Schwoebel , Todd Malicoat , Lauren Vacarello , Matt Reider, Bob Rains , Avi Wilensky , Chris Winfield , Neil Patel , Eric Enge , Todd Friesen and so many more I could already talk to so early, tough after 28 hours flight I was a bit dizzy then …

I even met Shoemoney on day 3 as he flew in last minute to attend the parties… and altough we could only talk for a short while I got a coupon code for this shoemoney tools that gives you $19.95 signup and a recurring rate of $ 79.95 afterwards… want it? just let me know!

This kicked of the networking week in a perfect manner – and I found myself to only attend the keynotes and most sessions of the 3rd day which was focused mostly on link building, link buying and thelike.

It was great to be able to meet and talk to a lot of new guys at the PubCon,
including

• Stephan Spencer
• Dixon Jones
• Sam Allock
• Michael Geneles
• Todd Keup
• Christopher Johnson
• Jordan Kasteller
• Brian S. Ree
• Abe Kurien
• Richard Farr
• Darwin Hall

And I had exceptionally lots of fun with Michael , Matt, Chris, Bastian , Francois and Monte again!

I missed Jim Boykin and Dave Naylor as I thought they would be coming in, at least for the poker sessions, but at least I met Aaron Wall again at a conference (was good seeing you, enjoying your presentation Aaron) and Rand Fishkin whom I could barter some more beta-testing deals for his linkscape API with! Looking forward to that!

Cheers to all of you!

This year has been the year of tools – everybody’s launching new tools and promoting them – so in addition to what I already wanted to look into I now got a pretty long “shortlist” of tools to evaluate and integrate into our private toolkit like

• ShoeMoney’s Tools
• Sistrix toolkit
• SeoMoz’s linkscape (been working with that, but looking forward to our API integration)
• Majestic SEO tool (been offered about giving those a try, will see if they can do API integration as well)
• Search Metrics

So, as always after the conferences, my head is full of ideas and insights for improving our services and the way we work for our clients …

In fact I already planned some important conference calls with major clients next week about insights of this week…

Tonight I’m gonna see KA at the MGM the 3rd time – an awesome show – and finally head home then…

It’s been a great week – and I’m looking forward to the next conferences, which will be the London EuroCap in January, the SMX West and the PubCon in Texas in March – followed by the New York SES in April …