I’m on a plane from Newark to Seattle. It’s late at night, and the first hour was spent on the ground waiting for low CIGS (low ceilings of clouds & rain) to clear. So, while I still have another 4.5 hours in front of me, I’m just grateful to be in the air.
The last week was a whirlwind – although that’s nothing new. For the last 4 years, the acceleration brought about by my job feels as though it has no end. I’ll find myself getting 6 hours of sleep a night (sometimes less), answering 150 emails a day and barely noticing that I’m in a different city every other week. It’s a good thing. It feels almost comfortable. Or, maybe, more accurately, it feels good to be uncomfortable – to be challenged.
The whirlwind started on Sunday, when Mystery Guest dropped me off at the airport. I have a consistent pattern when it comes to business travel. I’m almost always making presentations, and since I despise presenting material I’ve already used before, I force myself to make new slides, new “decks” (apparently this is what important business people like me call Powerpoint files) for every speech. It’s probably not the most practical thing, but I like to think that I’m not just presenting for the audience, I’m doing it for myself, too. If I get bored with my material, how can I be excited to share it with them?
I board the plane early and read until we’re in the air and “approved” to use laptops. The book is pretty awful, although I don’t know that yet. I’m still in the honeymoon phase of it, when the writer was putting forth a real effort. But, at 20 minutes into the flight, I grab my Dell and start turning the outlines I’ve emailed to Karen into presentations. I can’t grab screenshots from the web, which are an essential, but I can figure out what I need on each slide, and that will save me a lot of time later on. I also have my collection of vector illustrations in Flash, including Googlebot, Yahoo! monster and crudely traced representations of people to combine with arrows and thought bubbles. These I can do on the plane.
In 1997, when I started working on the web professionally (sort of), I fell in love with Flash – the animation, the sound, the unbridled, free-of-tables formatting made me a fan. For almost 4 years, I worked in Flash – building ever more complex animations and designs. Then, one day, I read Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug’s masterpiece on web usability. I haven’t built a Flash website since, and the world is probably better off for it. My artistic ability suffers from a lack of… let’s say talent.
But Flash has served me well – the palette tools and my familiarity with the layers and systems for creating basic designs means that I can now use it as a Photoshop substitute, never having had the patience to learn that program.
Later in the week, as I’m giving my hour-long session on the Essentials of Social Media Marketing, I’ll marvel at how I raced through 113 slides in 50 minutes. The Guy Kawasaki, 10-20-30 philosophy just doesn’t work for me. Luckily, the audience seems to like it, too. Karen hasn’t sent me my feedback scores yet, but based on the in-person chats I’ve had with attendees, it went pretty well. I guessed right that Danny’s new SMX Social conference would draw a savvy crowd, so even though my job was to present an introduction to the material, I raced through it, tried to present it in an entertaining way, and, hopefully, educated the stragglers of the group while I was at it.
After the session is over, I get to watch my co-worker Rebecca give her presentation on Linkbait. When I started speaking at search marketing conferences, I was 25 years old, and one of the youngest people in attendance, nevermind on stage. Rebecca’s in a similar spot, although the crowd at SMX, both on and off the podium has plenty of early-twenties professionals. I think it’s her sarcasm and her fearlessness to reference off-color and pop culture influences that helps her connect with the crowd. She’s young, but she’s capable, and she’s got a few years of experience and a number of noteworthy success stories under her belt. I wish she could be more confident sometimes, but once she settles into the role, she performs well, and I think I’m the only one who notices that her voice is just a little bit off. Besides which, at her age, I was still designing websites in Flash for clients who paid $1,000 for a month of work.
Personally, I feel like I’ve always been too young. At five years old, I felt a little too young to travel across the country by myself on a plane (ironically enough, taking the same route I’m taking now). At 12, I skipped a grade in school and felt too young to be with the older kids. The next year, I’d repeat the grade at a new school to help make up for it. At 18, I lived in Prague for 4 months during my freshman year at UW. I was lonely and confused and awkward, but at least I picked up some Czech and developed a lifelong love for Pilsner Urquell (which thankfully found its way to US supermarket shelves just a couple years later). At 25, standing in front of an audience of 300+ in San Jose, I felt pretty good about my presentation on search algorithms until the first person from the audience came up after the session and asked how old I was.
Rebecca’s wrapped up and I’m at lunch with Michael Gray. I love the way he talks – his cadence and thick Long Island accent are a prefect match for the content of his rants against Google’s latest policy. I hate to run, but I have to meet with a client all afternoon. Thus, it’s onto the 1 train to Chambers street, where, with the help of a brusque policeman, I find the 7 World Trade Center building, get a badge from security, and ride elevator bank D up some 3 dozen stories. I’m meeting with the publishers of Inc & FastCompany to talk about something new they’ve got cooking up, but when I arrive, all I can do is stare at the view.
Far below, cranes and bulldozers are clearing earth, moving steel and preparing the ground for the site of what will be the tallest building in New York. Far off in the distance, my friend Kate points out the Tapanzee bridge. She tells me that as they tear down the floors of the adjacent, asbestos-afflicted building, the view becomes ever more magnificent. There’s undoubtedly sadness here, but there’s also the promise of something new, something incredible, something that can serve as a symbol of renewal and triumph over adversity. I think someone far wiser than me once said that America is both cursed and blessed by its short memory. I can’t think of a more appropriate symbol of that sentiment that what I’m looking at now.
Three hours later, I’m stepping off the 1 train and hiking back to the hotel. After a couple hours on email, I’ll join some friends for dinner, where we’ll bump into Garret Camp, the founder of StumbleUpon. Together, we’re amicably kidnapped and carted in a cheap limousine (they’re about the same price as a cab when you have this many people) to midtown, where we smoke cigars in a bar that almost throws us out for being underdressed (I’m in a suitcoat and jeans).
It’s after midnight when I get back to the hotel, and outside I meet up with Guillaume – my great friend from Montreal. I can tell he’s upset that we haven’t seen much of each other this trip (and probably won’t since he’s going back to Quebec the next day). Guilt is a constant at events like this – and I’m more sensitive to it than most. After all, it was only a couple years ago that I dined by myself most nights at a conference, hung out alone in the bars and hoped that someone I’d recognize would come along and chat. When I’d make a friend, I’d feel that same pang of envy when I’d see them coming back from a late night on the town with a crowd of compatriots. Luckily, Guillaume’s surrounded by people, so I feel a bit better when I beg forgiveness and ride the elevator up to my room.
Sleep is a constant problem for me. Unlike Danny Sullivan, I can’t stay out until 3am, then arrive bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning at 8. My sleep requirements have always been high, and without 7 hours, I start to look and feel like some sort of SEO zombie, cursed to optimize SERPs and feed on brains. I’m constantly waging a battle against the blog – where I know that if I don’t produce something new and something worth reading every night, I’ll lose readers.
It’s a fact. Looking at our visit and subscription stats, you can see the pattern clear as day. If, on a given Monday-Friday morning, nothing new has come out on SEOmoz, our feed subscribers go down some fractional amount, our daily visit numbers drop 15-25% and we have fewer signups for accounts and fewer premium membership signups. Conversely, when I put something truly excellent on the blog, the positive results are equally visible. Visits are up, links are up, premium signups are up and all is right in the world.
But, the toll is heavy. Most nights I’m home in Seattle, I start formulating the blog post I want to write on my walk home from work. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to traverse the 1.1 miles from my apartment to the office – a saving grace, since I almost never go to the gym or use the elliptical machine I bought last December. From 6-10:30pm, I play husband (even though technically I won’t become one until next summer). Mystery Guest works out, or does laundry or watches TV (when she’s had a really tough day) and I cook. I’m by no means a gourmet, but I’m competent about 70% of the time, and I push myself to try new things, work with good ingredients and generally get better at preparing food. By 11pm, though, it’s back to the computer and onto the blog (once I wrap up another 40 emails). If I’m lucky I’ll spit out something in an hour, and can go to sleep by 12:30am. If I’m stumped, or take on an overly ambitious post, I’ll be up until 2am or later.
This happens tonight in New York. I’ve just finished the post on the Visuals of the Search Results, but it’s 2am and I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow. Morning comes and sure enough, my eyes are dry & red – probably exacerbated by the cigar I had last night. There’s no time to waste, but time gets wasted anyway as I discover my room’s iron is out of order and have to call down for a new one so I can get my shirt done in time to leave. I wanted to take the subway, but am forced by tardiness to hail a cab. I’m meeting with the NY Jets organization on 57th street to talk about their search strategy. Thankfully, the meeting is great, mostly due to the incredibly friendly and receptive people I’m meeting. After the meeting ends, I whiz back to the conference, just in time to grab a hot dog from a street vendor and make it my talk on Micro Communities.
I’m on the panel with Liana Evans, and in the past, we’ve had our differences. However, a week before the show and after a rather painful blog post, we shared a few emails and a phone call. Talking to Liana, I realize that she’s got some very valid points, and that I owe her a serious apology. She’s more gracious than I could hope for, and by the time we see each other in New York, we break out in smiles and hugs. As much as I love the Internet as a medium, there’s no doubt that the lack of human contact can make for bad situations sometimes. It’s something I’ll have to work on – especially since I’m terrible at not taking things personally.
Micro Communities is a hit. From all the notes I can see the audience taking, I know that there’s a lot of new information. Liana follows up my broad overview with a specific example of how she used social media marketing to micro communities and achieved great success for a client in a very competitive industry. It’s the perfect counterpoint, and the audience is overrun with questions, so much so that Danny has to cut us off with a half dozen hands in the air. After the session ends, Liana and I field individual questions for the full 15 minutes. I’m thrilled when I can refer a gentlemen seeking services to Liana’s company – KeyRelevance – which has been on our Recommended List since its inception.
I want to stay and see the other panels, especially the advice from Jon Hochman on Wikipedia, but I’ve got a prior commitment. I walk down to SoHo – about 20 blocks and buy some presents to bring home to Mystery Guest. After so many trips to New York, I’m a seasoned veteran, and after three short stops, I catch the subway up to the meat-packing district and walk back to the conference, where I’m just in time to hear the last session of the day wrap up.
I spend some time chatting with Andy Greenberg from Forbes, whose demeanor is the complete opposite of every other NY reporter I’ve ever met. He’s a pleasure to talk to – warm, engaging, utterly fascinated by social media & SEO and genuinely curious. He mentions that an article on using Digg to reach Google is almost certainly part of his agenda for the week and sure enough, 2 days later, there it is.
I don’t know that I’ve ever handled public relations and press relations properly. Every time I talk to someone in PR, they always ask about our agency and are shocked to hear that we’ve never engaged one. In deeper conversations, I’ve heard tell that PR folks can help turn a short piece into a long piece (with a photo), turn a piece of advice into a sure mention in a story and even pitch the mainstream media to help attract coverage. It’s something I need to look into, as press is something we’ll need if we want to reach our goals for expansion. We’ve been lucky so far, but it would probably be hypocritical to think that we can manage PR ourselves as well as we could with a talented agency or even a consultant. After all, what is SEO if not public relations for the web?
With the conference over, I hop in a cab with my luggage and head for Museum Mile. In rush hour traffic, it’s a 50 minute trip and I arrive at 92nd and 5th at 6:40, 10 minutes late for the lecture I’m attending with my grandparents. Luckily, it turns out to be the best part of the day, and maybe my favorite part of the trip. Camille Pissarro’s great-grandson is speaking about the famous impressionist painter and his relationship with a contemporary and peer, Paul Cezanne.
I love this. I grew up in Seattle, but would spend at least 2-3 weeks every year in New Jersey with my grandparents, and we’d frequently drive into the city to visit museums and attend plays. My family was never wealthy, but two seniors and a student (especially with my grandmother’s NYTimes subscriber’s card discount) was a perfect way to spend an inexpensive day in New York. Museums are great equalizers – school kids from Harlem and jewelry-clad Upper East Siders co-mingle brazenly, appreciating beauty in their own personal ways. There were certainly ages where I didn’t appreciate it, but even just out of high school, I can recall loving museums, galleries and exhibitions wherever I traveled. Seattle’s own dismal fine arts scene only heightened the experience.
Pissarro was born to Sephardic Jews on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas (where I believe SEOmoz’s own Jane Copland still holds several swimming titles) and emigrated to France at a young age, but retained his Danish citizenship (as St. Thomas was a colony of Denmark). Our lecturer regales us with a passionate, and clearly personal, examination of how the artist’s life influenced his art and its shocking break from the standards of the age. An hour and a half flies by, and I find myself wishing he had more slides to show and more stories to tell. As we leave, my grandfather, SEOmoz’s Si Fishkin, fills me in on the details of the Dreyfus case (which Pissarro’s great grandson mentioned but did not elaborate on), an infamous tale of antisemitism and corruption late in the artist’s life.
The next night, we’ll see Henry VI in a playhouse at Drew University in NJ, and despite the 3 hours of patricide, fratricide and homicide, love every minute.
Thus ends a week in New York. I’m only 100 emails behind and I don’t have to blog tonight. Next week I’ve got 3 phone calls, a couple lunch meetings and a video-over-Skype interview. We’ve got 2 clients who need site review reports, a new contract to get out to the Jets and 3 presentations to build for SMX Stockholm. That, and we’re hiring 3 new positions. To quote Rick Moranis; “No, no, no. Light speed is too slow.”
