This is about my 10th WebmasterWorld PubCon I’m flying to and somehow I feel like there has been a shift in how this event is - at least to me.

Back in 2003 when I attended my first PubCon in London it was something completely different as I’ve never been to a bigger search event before, except a very small “Suchmaschinentricks Stammtisch” in Munich back in 2001 or so. The event itself was pretty unspectacular, drinking beer in a Pub, some guys standing on the bar and cheering to the folks. One of the most memorable moments was when Barry Lloyd from makemetop just said “Enjoy your drinks” and stepped down again. The rest of the event was dedicated to drinking and talking to people. Being 20 at that time and the first time on a commercial flight a few hours before, this was crazy. Basically it was all about networking for about 2-3 days.

Now I’m sitting on the plane again, roughly 4 years and 300 flights later and I feel like the world completely changed, at least the way search conferences behave. People fly to Vegas for a week to party, drink and go to sessions. Sessions haven’t been there in 2003 - weird. There are thousands of people coming (back then it was like 300-400 or so) and somehow everybody is excited and talking, sorry blogging about it. Rumor has it that secrets are still being shared and some people exchanged beer against Champagne, Jägermeister, Wodka or Goldschlager. Does this mean the industry has matured? I don’t think so, it just grew and the same problems are out there: Trying to be on top of the SERPs, but now there are way more people doing it, but we didn’t get so much more keyphrases. So we have to diversify.

Old school spammers became consultants or radio stars, former programmers became Spammers, former consultants became enterpreneurs and some just disappeared and rumor has it that they retired. But what does this have to do with PubCon? People are seeing PubCon differently. Whereas I used to go to PubCon to see friends, meet new people, drink, party and do some shopping it’s now a little more about business, getting things done and making sure you come back home with the highest ROI. This is probably also the reason why I’m doing one of my shortest trips to a conference in the US - 3 nights. Some might say this is crazy, some might say it’s effective. For me personally it’s both, but also a little sad and exciting.

I think the next years we will see even more professionalism going into the search industry. More structure in the way work is performed, more structure in the way it’s reported, measured and charged. But this is all because more and more corporations realize that search is todays direct marketing. I really wonder when the DMA or the DDV in Germany wake up and make their own search conferences. Considering how big these are (32 billion EUR spent per year in Germany on direct marketing) and what kind of power they have in terms of lobbying I think that they will make the big search conferences in 2012. They’ll have less drinking, more pitching involved, less partying, more booth work, less friends and more competition. Overall I’m not quite sure if I like this way from a personal point of view, but think that it will be a great step forward for a very young industry.

If you happen to see me in Vegas, please walk up to me and introduce yourself - right within the spirit of PubCon to meet new people!