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Speaking at SMX Toronto April 8th & April 9th

It is my pleasure to announce that I’m speaking at SMX Toronto 2010 on April 8th and April 9th. I’m quite pleased to participate in the following two sessions:
Bring in the Love: Organizational Readiness and the Collaborative Work Environment
For many organizations there’s a natural tension between the product group, IT and the marketing teams. These groups are often located in different areas, they answer to different managers and performance is based on different objectives. To achieve search marketing success, collaboration across these groups is essential. The moderator for this session is Alan K’necht, a web analytics consultant, he’s been a great communicator about the session. As you know, one of my greatest passions is the effective use of search marketing in business organizations! Yet creating this reality is hard due to challenges with lack of understanding of search marketing’s strategic impact on the organization and the challenges to effective execution. I’d like to thank Chris Sherman for suggesting to Andrea Hadley that I move to this panel from the concurrent link building session across the hall.

Personalized Search – Times they are a Changing…Yeah, but when?Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all appear to be experimenting with “personalized search”, an algorithm for serving up search results that considers an individual’s interests, search history and browsing patterns. In this session, SEM experts will discuss the impact of personalized search today and tomorrow on both paid and organic website visibility results.
I’ll be moderating this session with Shari Thurow and Rob Garner doing the primary presentations. Look forward to creating a conversation around t

Is personalized search really about a better user experience? Why do I see results for Wheeling, West Virginia when I’m searching for Wheeling, Illinois a few short miles away with a term like Wheeling pizza? Or is it just a scheme to obfusgate SEO communication to maximize paid search revenue at Google? Time will tell, but early evidence hasn’t favored the user experience question.

torontohotels.ca, a discount Toronto hotels site was helpful in booking my trip. I’ll be staying at the Best Western Primrose, a downtown Toronto hotel a few blocks down the street from the SMX venue, it appears to be the best combination of free wifi, location and features for the price

I’d like to thank Andrea Hadley, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for this invitation to speak at SMX, I really appreciate participating in Search Marketing Expo! Should be great fun and mutual learning as always.