A New Direction in my Professional Life

Some of you have already heard, but effective immediately, I am taking a sabbatical from Apogee Search. The economic seas for the last year or so have been quite rough, and the Apogee Search ship was buffeted just like everyone else. Going into this recession, the search marketing industry was rather arrogant. "We're the trackable part of marketing," we all said. "No one is going to cut back on us."

Escaping Dell Hell

I'm fed up with Dell Computer. Their systems and service have gotten progressively worse over the last few years, and I'm not going to take it any more. The final straw was the most recent computer I purchased from Dell Online. You see, for some reason, Dell doesn't tell you when there's a problem with the order. They just cancel it. No email. No call. Nothing. [...]

Speaking at PubCon this Week

After two whole days at home, I’m on the road again today. This week it is PubCon in Las Vegas. PubCon, from Webmaster World was originally a show focused on technologies, strategies and tactics for websites, but has morphed over the years into one of the leading shows on search and internet marketing.

I am on a panel called “Universal and Personal Search – This Changes Everything” on Tuesday and one on “Brand Management” on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, I’ll …

Speaking at Innotech Oklahoma City

For those in the Oklahoma City area this Thursday, I’ll be speaking at Innotech’s eMarketing Summit. My topic is titled “Video Optimization and Local Search: They’re here, they’re hot, and they work”.

While I’ll be speaking in depth about how to optimize for video and local search, I’ll also be speaking more broadly about vertical and blendedl search, and how one’s interactive marketing efforts should be adjusted for them.

Hope to see you there!…

Speaking at Interactive Strategies on Wednesday

Those in the Houston, Texas area on Wednesday will be able to find me at HiMA Interactive Strategies Conference ’08. I’ll be speaking on “Vertical Search – And How It’s Going to Rock Your World” at 11:10am in the Search Marketing track. Learn how to get your digital assets to the top of the search engines.

I look forward to seeing you there!…

Apogee Search tops ABJ’s Fast 50

Tonight my company, Apogee Search won the award for Austin’s fastest growing company under $10MM from the Austin Business Journal (aka the Austin “Fast 50”). I was given the honor of accepting the award on behalf of Apogee’s team.

They counted up from 25th to 1st. As the growth percentages for the winners were announced, I was doing the math and thinking that we had a good chance to be near the top. I didn’t think the odds were high …