Search Marketing, John McCain and Life-Saver Machine Guns

The Dallas SEM presentation was just a blast. As seminars go, this one was made interesting by a few reasons...winter weather in the burbs, John McCain visited our hotel, and I got my picture taken in a 1962 British tank. Huh? That's what I first said too...

I left Dulles Airport on Monday morning and the weather report said to expect 70 degrees and sunshine in Virginia. Of course, I land in Dallas and it is cold and rainy. Murphy and his darn laws... Anyway, I got to spend the day at my cousin's house, just outside of town. Jeff is always got a project going on of some kind. Well, I was delighted when I found out that he had a tank in his garage! He picked it up from a re-enactment enthusiast and fixed it all up. The machine gun on top is equipped with a nitrose hook up - it can shoot a life-saver some hundred feet! I couldn't resist, so I mounted up and checked out the radio head gear...

Well, after checking out the military vehicle and a nice visit with my cousins, Aunt and Uncle, it was back to work...

The weather in Dallas was not so much a big deal until 5:45 AM Tuesday morning, when the presenter from Constant Contact dropped me a note that she'd be late arriving because of a road closure outside of town. Time to improvise, I did a four hour session instead of 90 minutes! She arrived later in the day and was able to deliver the e-mail marketing workshop in the afternoon.

The morning session was great - we had such a wonderful mix of people. I was pleased to meet the folks from 1 Stop Pool Supply - they sell all kinds of swimming pool supplies and accessories. In addition to their thousands of products, they have an impressive Google Adwords spend - I could probably learn a thing or two from them!

Did I mention that we found out at the last minute that John McCain was visiting the Fairmont the same day we were there? All day there were news people, secret service and the like running around - there was a definite buzz in the air.

All in all a great experience and I got to meet so many nice people. I got an interesting question about the use of the Meta Refresh, that I explain on the NetSol blog...

Next Week is NYC - the Big Apple!