Ten Top Stories from Day 1 of SES New York

The Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2009 Conference and Expo started a Tweet storm earlier today. The opening keynote was by Guy Kawasaki, a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures, who spoke about “Twitter as a Tool for Social Media.”

1. Andrew LaVallee of The Wall Street Journal Digits Blog captured the top story of SES New York in his headline, “Guy Kawasaki Can Handle Being Called a Spammer.” LaVallee wrote, “To kick off his keynote speech at SES, a marketing conference in New York, Guy Kawasaki asked how many people in the audience were on Twitter at that moment. Hands shot up across the packed ballroom.”

2. Mel Carson, Microsoft’s adCenter Community Manager for Europe, posted photos of the event on his blog in a post entitled, “SES New York Photos — Day 1.” One of his photos shows the volume of Tweets about Kawasaki bringing down Twitter during his keynote.

3. Anna Maria Virzi of ClickZ focused on the Twitter tips and tools that Kawasaki shared in his keynote in her story entited, “Twitter Tips: Advice from Evangelist Guy Kawasaki.”

4. I was able to interview Kawasaki after his keynote and asked him how Alltop, the “online magazine rack” of popular topics, has used Twitter to promote itself. Despite some audio problems (which have since fixed), I also asked Kawasaki abut a new term he had coined called “UFM.”

Guy Kawasaki Tweets About Twitter Twits & his Reality Check

Although Kawasaki’s keynote about Twitter was the top story at SES New York, there were others.

5. For example, Mike McDonald of WebProNews interviewed Matt McGowan, Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, about highlights from SES New York 2009. According to McGowan, SES NY will house more than 5,000 people this week including over 100 exhibitors and sponsors in the Expo Hall.

Highlighting SES NY 2009

6. Another top story was the session, “SEO: Where to Next?” Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media covered this session in a post appropriately entitled, “SEO — Where to Next.” According to Barone, “You know what my favorite thing about SES is? It comes with Mike Grehan.”

7. Another top story was the session on “Budget Migration: Going Digital Without Impacting Your Brand.” John Gaffney of the Econsultancy Blog covered this session in a post entitled, “Century 21, Avon ring up total digital makeovers.”

8. Peter Provost of the AimClear Blog covered the “Survival of the Fittest 2.0” session. His post is entitled, “Bad Economy? Party like 1999, Market like 2009.”

9. Bas van den Beld of SearchCowboys.com shared several photos from the event in his post entitled, “Looking at SES New York.”

10. Finally, one of the ten top stories was the Exhibit Hall traffic visiting the 100 sponsors and exhibitors at SES New York 2009. My post to the Search Engine Marketing News Blog on Search Engine Watch was entitled, “SES New York is a Search Expo as well as an SEM Conference.”