Look how old this is! I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 17 years 3 months 25 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
I arrived in San Jose too early to check into my room, so I dropped my stuff at my hotel and walked over to the Marriott. As I walked in, I saw a familiar face walking out.
It was Dixon Jones, a Webmaster World moderator (Receptional), and principal of an SEO firm in the U.K. I nodded and gave my usual “”Hey”, when it dawned on me that the whole reason i came was to talk and network with people like him!.
I wheeled around, and followed him outside, asking, “Aren’t you Daron”? He said, no, I’m Dixon” but stopped and walked back towards me. (For some reason I had him confused with someone from Webmaster Radio, not Webmaster World)
I introduced myself, and mentioned that we had talked briefly at SMX, and he asked me if I wanted to grab a coffe or something, ’cause he was just walking around. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, because I’d seen him at just about every Pubcon I’ve ever been to, as well as at the seattle SMX show in June.
He was a genuinely nice guy, and we talked for over an hour. In his “former life” he wrote murder mystery games, and actually played the dead body” parties. Today, he still markets the home games online.
We talked about the differences in people, marketing and “sales approaches” in the US vs. the UK, employee management, and shared some copywriting ideas. He also gave a couple of tips for my Pubcon presentation on hosting.
Even though hes’ not speaking, he came to this SES show because he’s going to run the post conference training classes at the London SES show, and wanted to see how they were run here.
We also talked about some different theories on 301 redirects for changing domain names, and then he told me about a GREAT idea for a future project he’s beginning. The market he’s chosen has yet to be developed, and I can’t really be specific here, but I will say that his idea is out of this world.
It’s things like this that keep me coming to these conferences…
