So I’m not really sure what this panel is going to be about because I originally had something else scheduled. Still, I think this will be a good time, and this way I don’t have to run between rooms for the next session. This also means I won’t lose my seat.

It’s a win-win. I mean just look at this line up:

Moderator:
Matt McGowan, Incisive Media

Speakers:
Steven Kaufman, MediaMath
Jonathan Mendez, RAMP Digital
Dax Hamman, iCrossing

Read more of Search Becomes the Display OS from SES Chicago 2009.

We’re in the home stretch now. I’m still nervously checking my flight status but at the moment I might just get home tonight. Score.

The panel is providing their own music as we get ready for a rock star session. Marty Weintraub is blasting “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind and Muhammad Saleem requests “Beautiful Day” by U2. We get about a minute of that before we switch over to Vertigo and there’s some chatter about the original iPod ad. We got through a couple more U2 songs before switching to Rush. Marty, meanwhile, has been encouraging everyone to sit as close to the front as possible, promising that it will be worth our while. I hope there’s crowd surfing.

Read more of the Facebook Rockstars Roundtable from SES Chicago 2009.

Okay, so I had this awesome introduction written up but then Word locked and I had to start over. It’s pretty much par for the course since I don’t think any of the panelists have presentations (which in Fishkin’s case is a good thing — we don’t need 70 slides in 30 seconds, Rand).

Can’t tell the players without a program: Brian Lewis, Engine Ready, is moderating this motley crew of speakers. From left to right: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz.org; Michael Gray, Atlas Web Service; David Naylor, Bronco; Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance; and Karen Weber, Irwin Union Bank.

They’ve promised a fair fight tonight, this morning, whatever. Look, I haven’t had any coffee or breakfast yet. [Hehe! You're funny when you're grumpy, Susan. --Virginia] Anyway, the dudes are SEO, the chicks are PPC. Everyone gets a couple seconds to introduce themselves.

Read more of PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle from SES Chicago 2009.

Welcome to Wednesday, day three of SES Chicago. We have been promised that never again will this happen in December. I checked my flight when I woke up and it’s already listed as delayed. It doesn’t take off for another 11 hours.

I’m going to try not to worry about it and just focus on the excellent keynote that we have today. Dan Siroker will be talking to us about the Obama team’s online strategy during the campaign, which is pretty awesome.

Dan wants to focus on five practical takeaways in his presentation.

He starts off by showing some clips from Obama’s visit to Google two years ago. Dan was then a product manager for Google Chrome. At the time, Obama said (in the interview) “I want you to help.” Dan took that to heart and moved to Chicago for a month to help and then later joined the campaign as the director of analytics.

Read more of the Morning Keynote by Dan Siroker from SES Chicago 2009.

The Wi-Fi has totally choked and it’s making everyone cranky. Also, I do not believe that most of the people sitting at the front “press only” table are actually press. (See, I told you there was cranky going on.)

It’s up to our panel to make things better. For that we turn to moderator… that’s not Tessa Wegert. I don’t know who it is. Oh, okay, here’s Tessa. Hi Tessa!

Anyway, our speakers are Greg Finn, 10e20; Denise Chudy, Google; and Jennifer Evans Laycock, Search Engine Guide.

[Randomly, it bothers me that the tagline for the San Diego viral conference is "Get out of the cold and into the know." Why not "Get out of the snow"?]

Greg Finn spent most of last night trying to convince me to go easy on him during his presentation. I don’t know where people get the idea that I’m the mean one. He’s up first.

Read more of Igniting Viral Campaigns from SES Chicago 2009.

So lunch is over, or so I hear, and now we’re heading into the final three sessions of the day. First up, it’s time to talk news and we’ve got a good panel for it. Moderator Tim Ruder, PerfectMarket, and speakers Brent Payne, Tribune; Topher Kohan, CNN; Rochelle Sanchirico, Washington Post Digital; and Muhammed Saleem, ChicagoNow, will be giving us the ins and outs of keeping up with the world.

Brent Payne is going to start us off. He’s talking about breaking news opportunities as well as the flaws between Google News and Google search.

There are huge opportunities with breaking news events. The Tiger Woods story was more popular than sex or porn during its peak on December 3 and 4. Their traffic doubled on the weekend when the story broke. Then they got into Google News and then dipped again after they fell out of Google News.

Read more of Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News from SES Chicago 2009.

I’m taking a chance today on the Local Search Summit that’s going on. Who are the speakers? No clue. Is this going to be any good? No clue. But what’s life without a little unknown?

Having stopped at the Starbucks (where they’re only making straight up coffee, bother), I’ve found my way upstairs to the small local search room. There’s no mic, one of the speakers has lost his voice so he’s not staying, and they’re talking about turning it into a site clinic. Possibly this was a bad choice to liveblog. I can has nap?

Our speakers, as best as I can tell: Gib Olander, Localeze; David No Last Name!, Local Splash [She's lookin' at David Rodecker. The Local Search Summit could use some more speaker info on their site, and apparently in person, too. --Virginia]; and Mike Belasco, from somewhere in California. [I'm pretty sure she means Mike Belasco of seOverflow in Denver, Colorado. Locked in Chicago's snowy grip, the California girl is clearly pining for piece of home. --Virginia]

Read more of Local Search Ranking Factors from SES Chicago 2009.

Good morning and welcome to day two of SES Chicago! It’s snowing outside and when I mentioned I have an 8 p.m. flight out of here tomorrow night all the locals sort of laughed at me. You don’t suppose they know something I don’t, do you?

Mike Grehan starts us off again with some housekeeping details and then introduces Shari Thurow to introduce Peter Morville who is our keynote speaker today. He’s the author of Ambient Findability and co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. We’re going to be talking about findability and usability. Good times.

Peter takes the stage and says he’s going to move pretty fast today. Bother, I knew I should have gotten a coffee.

What is information architecture?

• The structural design of information environments
• The combination of organization labeling, search, and navigation systems in Web sites and intranets

Read more of the Morning Keynote by Peter Morville from SES Chicago 2009.

Last panel of the day and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Guys, I’m totally out of liveblogging shape, no joke. But this session is completely worth it even before we start because I’ve finally met Kim Krause-Berg in person. My life is complete.

Our moderator is Beth Harte, MarketingProfs, and our speakers are Liana Evans, Serengeti Communications, and Andy Beal, Trackur (who Virginia interviewed last week).

Li Evans is up first and she looks fantastic, by the way.

What’s the big deal about ghostwriting a blog? It’s done with books all the time, right? But the difference is that there’s not a personal connection there with the book. There’s no expectation that the reader is getting YOU.

Read more of Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter? from SES Chicago 2009.