As we ride into the sunset on the final day of SES (like the cartoon car from Truelocal.com’s booth, pictured left) we’ll conclude our coverage by sharing a little pictorial: three-and-a-half days worth of search goodness (click the links for pop-ups).
Although conference touts reported record crowds, badge registration was a snap (okay, it was if you snuck up after the keynote like these guys). The whole operation ran pretty smoothly, although we’d like to get our mitts on the person who elected smooth jazz the official conference music (while we can’t show you a picture of smooth jazz, we can show you our despair each time the cloying sounds erupted from omni-present speakers in the session rooms). Somewhat more soothing were the dulcet tones emitting from Jeremy Zawodny – here he is holding court after the Pundits on Search session.
And who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch (*with pre-registration fee, subject to availability)? The first three days offered boxes packed with cold sandwiches and chips, but Thursday’s repast has a decidedly New Yorkian flavor: warm corned beef reubens (we think) and giant pretzels. The staff had its work cut out for them keeping up after the throngs (and their unending supply of spent coffee cups – that’s after Tuesday’s first session), but they did an excellent job tidying up after us.
Did we happen to mention the record crowds? Here’s the first floor of exhibits just after the gates opened, unleashing the horde. Some booths were merely professional and pristine (check out our well-appointed Reprise Media construction) while others evoked the atmosphere of a carnival midway – Advit’s featured a wheel of fortune that awarded iPod Nanos to lucky contestants.
Before we forget, here’s one last look at that record crowd, this time from the second floor. Many of the upstairs booths were impressive; we’d love to show you iProspect’s cool ‘panning for gold’ themed layout – it was like something straight from the Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyworld – but we were disinvited from photographing the display by a surly gentleman in a secret service get-up, so this artist’s rendition will have to do. If we had to pick a favorite, though, it would have to be Yahoo!’s: after a long day on our feet, their couch was the premiere sight for sore toes.
