I was at Internet World a couple days ago and was pleasantly surprised with the turnout. My last show was 4 years ago and it was one of my first speaking sessions outside of the US…I was not impressed. Besides the cost and the incredibly vast spread of attendees, the show is unfortunately turning back into (or still is) a commercial opportunity for most of the speakers.

I have been receiving some great feedback from people that went just for the speaking sessions and one thing rings true amongst them; they really don’t like spending money or time on 30-minute commercials.

I’d like to think I somewhat led the way to my primary conference track which is Gaming, Affiliates and SEO conferences turning into something more than a day of infomercials with my Top 12 SEO Tips for 2006 through 2011, as well as my many other session topics. I try to offer at least one thing to every attendee, regardless of their knowledge level, and in plain talk.

As a one-time Super Affiliate I’ve attended my share of conferences and my ‘pet peeve’ is when a speaker that I either paid to see (even if it was a free event it was always a 2-3 day event in another town) or didn’t pay to see, spent my time telling me what his company did rather than telling me how they did it.

These days most SEO conferences like SES and SMX are relatively commercial-free but still have commercial nuances to them.

I understand that there is a massive expense to attend these events as a exhibitor, (5 figures), but for the last 4 years I have never had to have a booth or pay for much at nearly 100 conferences. I just came to the conference and spoke about SEO. I did, and still do, meet with anyone on a one-to-one basis and talk to them about anything from advice to whatever for free. I write for many magazines like GPWA, IGB and EGR and it’s the same deal there – NO COMMERCIALS. I mean yea, I say where I work in my bio but other than that I don’t demand free ad space or require any commercial inclusions whatsoever.

This is how it should be.

The conference hall session rooms at the Internet World conference were packed at most sessions, and standing room outside the rooms for most SEO and Social Media sessions. So I can’t help wonder how many people walked away feeling like Adwords Guy.

He says on his blog, “I found the presentations to be for the most part incredibly boring. They’re delivered by companies more interested in pitching their own services than being generous enough to provide any actual useful information. People queue for half an hour for these half-hour adverts, to then clap at the end.”

How true is this?

In my industry people like Dave Naylor, Rand Fishkin, Jason Duke, Bob Raines, Dixon Jones, Christopher Cemper and I’m happy to say myself, have realised everything comes back to you in some way and teaching is preferred to pitching. Most conferences now are even trying to charge me to speak or require a booth, much like Internet World and CAP conferences.

I remember the day when every conference organiser in the world was calling and requesting I speak without requiring I buy  booth or sponsor them. Many paid or offered to pay and I always did it for free. The same people that approached me previously to speak were (and are) now having sales people calling me.

To a point I understand its a business and yadda-yadda, but what a slap in the face when we are the people who make your conferences! So I hope a few of you organisers are reading this. The feedback I get is that the sessions aren’t long enough in the case they were good information and not a commercial, or they were allowed to be too commercial altogether which made them way too long.

I guess when a conference is free with registration (which they sell a couple hundred times over) you have to expect a bit of commercialisation, but get the other people in there that are truly there to help and inform.

Gary Beal
Head of Search
GaryTheScubaGuy