Think Visibility
Yesterday I attended Think Visibility in Leeds, and I'll be honest - I didn't enjoy it all that much. It was organised by Dom 'The Hodge' Hodgson, and was the second Think Visibility of the year. The previous one, which was held in March, receieved some awesome reviews.
I'll admit right now, I'm not a marketer. I don't do SEO. However, I am someone who likes to try things before writing them off - so off to #thinkvisibility I went.
The Good
I came away knowing more about the internet than I did when I arrived. For me, that justifies the cost of the ticket.
I attended five presentations throughout the day, all of which were an hour long. I missed Judith Lewis unfortunately, as I had to take a session out and deal with some work that couldn't be put off. I followed her session on Twitter, and it looked very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing the slides - although I won't get the experience of sitting in the room and actually watching her present.
Zoe Piper
The talk of the day for me, was by Zoe Piper's talk on How To Win At The Content Network. She was up against Rob Manuel, of b3ta fame - but there was still quite a decent turnout. I wasn't sure which session I'd attend, but I'm glad I chose Zoe's.
There were lots of animals with big eyes and cats in hats interspersed with valuable content. She covered the different locations that your ads may appear, and which places have better conversion rates. I was surprised to find out that parked domains actually have a decent conversion rate as I usually just click away without reading what they have to say.
Zoe also covered the three campaign options available in adwords, and when each should be used. I also learnt that you can excluse sites that are underperforming from your campaigns, something which could be very useful to me in future.
The session lasted about half an hour, with time for questions at the end. Unfortunately, no-one had any questions to ask. I don't know enough about the area to contribute, but it seemed as though the session had covered everything everyone wanted to know.
Joost de Valk
Joost was the first session of the day, which unfortunately meant I missed the first 15 minutes of his talk. However, it looks as though I got there just in time based on his slides. Joost's presentation was the only talk that I really engaged with. He was a little worried that some of the slides were a bit too technical (not that they wouldn't understand, but that they wouldn't be relevant) for some of the audience. Personally, I loved hearing about how to optimise websites and improve load speeds by using CDN's and caching.
Joost then went on to talk about how analytics should be at the forefront of your website growth plan. Analytics are nice to look at, but are useless without goals. Set yourself attainable goals - be that a certain number of commenters, RSS subscribers or content downloads. All of which can be tracked using Google Analytics with some configuration.
He then went on to briefly talk about using social media to promote your content. There's been a lot of discussion about using url shortners, and link rot on the web recently. Joost believes that running your URL shortner isn't only a good precaution against link rot, but it also makes you one of the cool kids. He also talked about using social media buttons on posts (infact, he developed a plugin to do it) and his experiences with it. While buttons like Delicious and Twitter help, digg buttons don't. If someone unknown on digg submits your post, it'll never make front page. If you want that kind of exposure, get some well known friends to submit and blog about it.
The Bad
Food, by sk8geek
We've had the good, so now it's time for the bad. To start with,the venue was almost impossible to find (and I live in Leeds!). I arrived in Clarence Dock (just the other side of the canal) at about 9:50, and didn't make it into the first talk until 10:15. A few of the people I'd spoken to gave up searching and just got a taxi there.
I was right at the back of the food queue, and there was almost nothing left when I got there. There were a few cheese sandwiches which were alright, but the egg and tuna (not together!) sandwiches didn't look too appealing. Fortunately, there was a steady stream of tea and coffee available all day which helped. Unfortunately, the tea was cold until about midday so I avoided it until then.
The Ugly (That'd be me)
This was the first conference I've been to, and had to pay for. No doubt that's influenced my opinion of the day. Don't get me wrong, it definitely wasn't a bad conference. It's a hell of a lot better than I know I could do, and fair play to Dom and his team of helpers. The day went off without a hitch technically, and the speakers all knew what they were on about.
However, I attend these events for the social aspect as much as the talks. I know that it's all down to me, but I felt a little out of my depth with all of the marketing professionals who's job it is to sell all day long being there. They were all really confident and knowledgeable about their area of expertise, whereas I knew nothing. This made it difficult to approach someone and strike up a conversation as we didn't have much in common - as opposed to the crowds at hackdays and barcamps.
I thought this would be alleviated a little after a few beers at the afterparty. We had 10% off with our Think Visibility passes, so I thought it'd be a good night and I'd meet lots of people. Unfortunately, half a pint of Magners was £3.15, even with 10% off. There was nothing on tap, and I didn't even want to ask how much a whisky was. This led to me leaving at about 8pm after a nice chat with Paul Robinson about MVC frameworks, and hearing about some of the stories he had from his years in the industry (including being forced to spend £1.2 million on a project that could have been done for £50,000)
If I could make one suggestion for the next Think Visibility conference, it would be to choose a better afterparty venue (Mr Foleys maybe? 
). Having it in the same place as a lot of people were staying meant that a lot of people disappeared for a while at the beginning of the afterparty. As the prices were pretty extortionate, a lot of people left early, completely missing those who went to their room for an hour.
Congrats
I'd like to finish off by congratulating Dom on his second conference. He had a great team of helpers in Heather, Lorna, Carolyn, Caius, Leeky, Jonny and Sean. Plus of course, Dr. Tim. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Hodgetastic put together in future.
Related posts:
Hi Michael, Thanks for the honest review.
The Location and Food, I agree that unless you know Clarence Dock, its a bit difficult to find and something we will certainly be more focused on next time, Food was a disspointment and something we’ve taken up with the venue, when we first met the venue we discussed specific plans for lunch and teas however due to a staff member leaving, those plans were never in place, I can only apologise and say that you weren’t the only one that thought that.
The After Party : We tried… in all honestly, but its damn near impossible to get a private space on a Saturday night in Leeds (with wheelchair access which foleys doesn’t have, trust me we went in and begged them!), in the end the City Inn offered us the space for free so we took it, we are still looking for alternatives though.
I’ll talk to you about it a bit more at the next geekup / event.
Dom
Interesting feedback.
I’m sure they’ll be interested to read this, but just to give you my thoughts as I’m in the same position as you. However, I attended the first ThinkVisibility which was held at OBH (and then we went round various bars in Leeds afterwards), and I think that the upgrade to a slightly larger conference with (no disrespect to the brilliant speakers at the first conference) some higher profile speakers did probably add an element of… professionalism?… into the conference; the first ThinkVis was certainly more of a low-key informal affair than the second appeared.
What you’ll probably find is that the more specialised ThinkVisibility conferences next year will be more up your street. ThinkVisibility never really pretended to be anything more than an online marketing conference – SEO and affiliate marketing. I still have no real knowledge of SEO or online marketing (aside from what I’ve picked up at the two conferences) and at the moment I’m perfectly happy just being a developer, but I did too feel a little out of my depth in the “SEO crowd”… but decided I’d throw myself in and see what I got out of it.
The only real complaints I’d heard throughout the conference were things that Dom and the staff had no control over – mostly, the food and prices of the drinks. I’m not making big money and I found the drink prices too high, but to be a serious conference I do think it needs to be held at a decent venue – the food was abysmal, but the venue certainly worked for the conference (and from what I heard from the other regular conference attendees, that’s fairly standard of conferences in the industry. If the only thing you can fault is the venue and the fact it was too SEO-orientated (it was for my tastes, but it was an SEO conference!) then the positives of what you enjoyed should have been worth it.
As I say, the next conferences will certainly be specialised in different areas and may be smaller, so don’t write off ThinkVisibility just yet…
@Dom: Cheers for clarifying a few things. Disabled access and the fact it was Sautrday night weren’t things I’d thought of. Makes a lot more sense now, thinking about it
@James: I won’t be writing ThinkVisibility off any time soon, and will be watching for the next speaker announcement.
I agree, the only things I could fault were either out of Dom’s hands or a personal preference of mine. I should probably have just thrown myself in as you did – but that’s something that I need to work on for next time
I typed the venue into google maps, it stuck a pointer on the site of the casino (Albiet before it was built) And I walked straight there in 20 mins from the station area… Dont see why its any harder to find than anywhere else.
Also, a lot of conferences I have been to have provided only around an hour of drinks at the venue at the end.. and then everyone was left to do whatever they wished. I liked that an actual place was specified, so everyone could end up at the same place.
@James: I checked it out on Google maps too. Thankfully I knew it was near the Royal Armouries, so I could follow those signs. However, even the people who worked around that area had never heard of the casino. Some tried directing me to the Grovernor casino, in the centre of town.
As for only having an hour or drinks afterwards – I guess that’s a difference between conferences and barcamps. As I mentioned this was my first conference, so thanks for letting me know that’s usually what happens.
I have to say, I believe that the gathering after an event is the most valuable part for everyone and am a little surprised they’re not usually organised. A conference brings a lot of like minded people together – being able to network with people with similar interests is a big selling point.
Yep, I wish I could have stayed later at the drinks after, but I had lots of work to do last night, which I had been putting off for days! Still managed to fit in a few pints though !
Actually, SQLBits had quite a party afterwards, with the usual Wii / Xbox stuff, including free wine/beer. It was free also!
Heya Michael – thank you so much! I’m really glad you found the talk useful
I worried it was a bit short but it’s not a huge subject to cover without doing a seminar or something more interactive. I’d have liked a few questions but it depends how familiar people are with Adwords I suppose.
Re. it being hard to talk to people – most of the crowd would be SEOs but I think you just have to jump in and introduce yourself. At least if you approach a speaker you can ask them a specific question about their talk to get a convo going. I know I’d have liked to meet you – it’s a really supportive/friendly crowd on the whole. Maybe people should have their job title on their name tag though so we can avoid salesfolk?
One thing some of the speakers (including me) were guilty of was getting dinner before going to the drinks, so any attendees who went straight there would have been disappointed if they wanted to talk to us. Like Dom said though, at least we had a venue and I don’t think you can herd 100 people in the same direction at the end of a long day! Maybe some chatting/networking time could be scheduled in to the conference next time.
Anyhoo, thanks again for the feedback – hope to see you at the next networky thing in Leeds
Some great feedback and discussion on the conference. I pretty much agree with everyones views. I just wanted to say that I’m not an SEOer, I’m a designer. I went to the last event and who most of the speakers personally. I must say though that the seo crowd is the most inviting, crazy and honest group I’ve met. DaveN from Bronco initially invited me to an event a year or so ago but he’d seen my work and was interested in meeting me. Since then I’ve always felt welcomed and never out of my depth. Obviously I couldn’t hold down a technical SEO conversation with them as I know nothing compared to them, but when I do ask a question I usually get an answer. Again, fantastic review, honestly wrote and will be great meeting up at the next event… Gary
Nice to see other people leaving you comments Michael
SEO/Marketer’s in general should have no problem talking to you about their jobs/roles/what they do, I’m sure if you just jump right in, you will be welcomed fine.
I don’t know how it works in Britland, but down under when we do these, ive always had a good time with people that don’t exactly know much about SEO/etc. As long as you have the time to jump in, any question you have, someone will have the answer to.