It’s day two of SEM Konferansen in Oslo, Norway, and rather than try to share content from the conference (which I’ll attempt to do in a more formal post next week), I thought we’d return to some SEOmoz roots and do a photo mashup combined with my terrible sense of humor. Remember kids, no sleep + traveling to foreign countries = weird posts from Rand.
Sunrise over Oslo; if you look closely, you can see all the trolls turning back to stone (that’s why blog comments in Norway are so high quality during the day).
Naturally, the hotel room looks like a disco, complete with catwalk (yes, seriously, there’s even a separate light switch labeled “catwalk”)
The Grand Hotel on the High Street in Oslo. Thanks to recent shifts in the exchange rate, lunch is now the same price as a roundtrip first class ticket to Seattle (seriously, Oslo is the most expensive city I’ve ever visited).
Notice that once the temperature in Olso registers above freezing, locals immediately remove their shirts to avoid overheating.
I’m sure this photo will come in handy for a slide deck in the future. In the meantime, feel free to insert your own caption about relative progress levels of technology
Why aren’t there more photos of Rand & Geraldine from day one? This should answer the question (notice the footlong bags under my eyes)
A fortress near our hotel is in the process of being renovated by the defense department according to a nearby sign. Supposedly this will add +2 to troll defense systems.
Eniro’s CEO, Jesper Karrbrink, appearing far too fashionable for the search industry.
Lisa Myers of Verve Search (formerly Lisa Ditlefsen) presenting (brilliantly) on SEO at the conference. Despite being Norwegian, Lisa presented in English solely for my benefit (I presume).
Jon: The only window in our hotel room is floor to ceiling and looks onto the lobby from the bedroom.
Magne: Oh yeah! I saw you in your boxers this morning while eating breakfast downstairs.
Rand: Have you been working out?
Jon: This is getting creepy.
Adam Lasnik properly covered his heart to sing the national anthem for Norwegian conference-goers (funnily enough, he does this whenever he’s asked a question he’s not allowed to reveal – part of Google’s new, patriotic plan to deal with search ranking secrets)
“The algorithm moves really fast, so you have to have a beard at least this long to keep up” -Rand
“And then if I push this button … Oh crap … Does anyone know what ‘selfen-destructert’ means?” – Andrew Goodman
Rand: The more I drink, the more Norwegian I understand.
Jon: Hmm… And yet, the more you drink, the less English you understand.
We now return to our regularly scheduled blog programming. Please forgive this jetlagged lapse.
p.s For more photos, see this set on Flickr. Many thanks to Everywhereist for the camera work.
