SEO Roadshow

[massa]

Hope to see a lot of you there. I KNOW who's there will see a lot of me as I plan to get really drunk, spill my guts revealing all my link acquisition secrets and dance naked on the tables.



(there's a mental image NO ONE needs to see! I was a reverse male stripper back in the 80's. I would go to bars naked and then charge women for me to cover up the naughty bits. )

[JasonD]

Hey Bob. If you don't keep your clothes on I'll get straight back on the plane to London!

Cya there

[I, Brian]

Bob, if Jason offers you a pizza, say no.

[JasonD]

I thought you liked them Brian? I know 4 Eyes ate the contents when he got home!

[Mike Grehan]

It's late when I arrive in my home city of Newcastle, and the airport is busy. So busy, I can't get a cab and decide the metro will do.

My wife is tapping perfectly varnished fingers on top of a suitcase when I arrive home. She is bored sh*%less waiting for me.

We throw stuff into the car trunk… and then we're off over the borderlands into Scotland. We hit the rush hour traffic, and then every single farmer's truck ever invented, which still remains on the roads.

Sometime in the future, before I die, I may become a mass murderer of anyone who sits in anything which looks remotely like a farm vehicle. I do believe the government may actually pay me for that. The amount of valuable time saved by killing farmhands and dumping their stupid vehicles into a ravine may be one of the greatest innovations in traffic management this century. Perhaps I'll even get knighted for this.

The iTrip on my iPod is beginning to drift between channels on the car radio. My wife is playing her current favourite, a little retro with "Whitesnake live" and in between, I can hear some political debate and the odd burst of some very strange country music. I have an idea to resolve the iTrip problem, which some of you may have suffered also.

Take the iTrip from the top of your iPod, curse at it… then open the window and throw the useless pile of sh%t out of it…

This certainly worked for me.

We arrive very late and almost out of gas, in Edinburgh.

I call a restaurant and get in touch with Bob Massa who is throwing a swanky SEM VIP dinner. I explain my wife and I will be late, but we're on the way. We get there too late. Most people are already beginning to speak a variation on Swahili and Tatiana and I have some catching up to do.

Within a short period I'm also able to be understood. The lessons I took on injecting pure Russian vodka directly into my eyeball seem to have come in very useful here.

We leave the restaurant and head back to the SEO roadshow venue…

Everything goes black.

Second day.

I wake up in the morning and there is a vague sort of cymbal sound in the distance. I look around the room and remember the fact that I'm attending the SEO roadshow. I check under the sheets, just in case Ammon Johns may be lurking there as a little surprise… But no!

There's a naked lady in there!

I check again, and then decide it needs to be recorded, so I take a few pictures of her while she's still sleeping.

This is going to be amusing I think. As the naked woman is my wife.

While I'm waiting for her to wake up and happily doing some Photoshop work on my latest pictorial creative work, the cymbal sound starts to get closer. Oh no… Not again…It's the Gong!

At just that point, I think I should check my wallet for receipts from last night. Already, I can feel the tears welling up. But no… There are no receipts at all. Bob Massa has paid for everything.

Slowly I begin to chant a little prayer, dance naked in the room and thank Bob, as tears of joy begin to stream down my face.

The gong is getting louder, but without the receipts from last night, it's like a light symphony to me… Until my wife awakes, that is, and the whole thing is drowned out by the most horrendous banshee wail I have ever heard. This is swiftly followed by a sickening thud to my nether regions as my wife discovers my latest work of photographic art.

Later that day, I limp slowly to the roadshow venue where I begin to feel no pain at all - thankfully!

Blah, blah, blah. Yada, yada, yada. And slurp, slurp, slurp go the little girlie drinks. What a great event that was!

Next, I'm in the finest restaurant in Edinburgh with my dear friend Ralph (fantomaster) Tegtmeir and his business partner Dirk. As well as Barry Lloyd, his lovely wife Hilary, DaveN and his wonderful wife Becky and also Mikkel.

Unfortunately, the table is not big enough for us all, the restaurant is too busy to squeeze in extra people and DavN and Becky (having eaten there before anyway) graciously leave the rest of us to it.

Much Haggis is consumed and plenty of hearty drinks, including the Scottish dream drink, Glayva, which my wife has suggested Dirk should try while the smoking lepers are all outside in their little colony.

We leave the restaurant and head back to the roadshow venue where I sit and talk absolute sh%t about my Blackberry and insist that everyone should have a little play with it…

At some point, everything goes black again…

I wake in the morning and check under the sheets. Yes, the same naked woman is there. However, I do not reach for my camera this time, as I'm still showing a little black and blue from the day before. Hilarious though that was, of course.

Without any prompting at all, the gong player is back, but this time he has brought an out of tune bagpipe player with him. And inside my head they are having a crack cocaine party together.

I tentatively pick up my wallet and look again, with gongs and pipes screeching, for any receipts. Once again, God has sent his Angels and there are no receipts in sight. Dear Ralph and Dirk have paid the entire bill.

Whitesnake live has now joined the maniacal thrashing inside my head, and yet, all I can feel is, tears of joy steaming down my cheeks, again.

It's time to check out and go home. I drive my car out of the hotel car park into the city centre to get my bearings… And promptly run out of gas!

Still… Where else can you get this much adventure and fun in such a short space of time?

NFFC and all others involved in bringing us together, Gawd bless ya!

And this time… not a park bench in sight! (Which is good - as sitting is still slightly uncomfortable for me.)

Some pictures for you here http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/seo-roadshow (steady on though… they're not the ones you might be thinking of ;-)

[Chris_D]

Mike - great event review.

Possibly a little more detail than was required.... but very entertaining!



I for one am glad there were no pictures of everyone playing with your blackberry...