So i went to Leeds on Saturday to go to this web conference - it were well good > thanks @Thehodge and http://www.thinkvisibility.com/ met interesting people, learnt stuff, ate pizza, drank beer > tick tick tick and tick ~ what's the story?
This is the story:
Woke up at half five still pissed up from the night before, rolled out the door forgetting to fill my pockets with bidnis cards or eat or drink anything and cycled off to Kings x where i was greeted by a toad dressed up as a ticket guard who wouldn't let me get on the train until i went and got a special ticket for my bike instead of a coffee > as if to prove what an evil bitch he was he didn't even check the ticket when i got back.
I tried to have a little kip on the train but there were these two posh kids telling each other about their amazing university lives really loud sat on the table across - one of them actually said: 'it reminds me of that time you rinsed out your fathers credit card at the golf club' and that began to roll around in my head like a wasp in the bedroom. They eventually fucked off though and i made it to Leeds with no further bother and 40 winks squeezed in.
I like Leeds, it's a bit cleaner than London and there is a bit more air in between things - also if you follow a sign it points to the thing it says it does - instead of leading a merry dance around the thing.
I have little interest in SEO (view my sauce) but Joost de Valk and Judith Lewis gave such good talks (and Judith chocklits) that I accidentally learned some interesting stuff, things that i will doubtless never put into practice on this blog but was interesting and well recieved none the less > Joost had a cool voice as well - he could start a sentence with a Dutch accent then go full English for the middle eight and end mid Atlantic but with a sprinkle of the odd word as Northern Irish > he told us *A SECRET* > and I am not telling ANY of you fuckers what it is. I saw some 'mazin demos of eye capture technology and usability studies from a fit lady called Fiona [edit - from Simple Usibility - cheers Dom ] > Tom Smith did a my favourite presentation on 'making social media suck less' with all hand drawn slides and diagrams (style and concepts that i will most likely be stealing in the very near future) AND I did pass up Rob Manuel's talk on sickipedia for a talk on corporate blogging from Karyn Fleeting because i am a fucking professional > that's right.
Most importantly I got to watch @juliansambles from the Telegraph die on his arse telling a room full of seo, very basically why seo was important and give a very boring, self congratulatory to the board style presentation explaining pretty much fuck all about what he did to optimise search results, proudly showing aged hand picked stats about how the Telegraph was AMAZING and sheepishly doing a swifty over his slides about how brilliant digg and voting sites were for seo when Joost had just exposed it as a bollock. HOOT
~ Also he seemed almost incapable of completing a sentence that did not contain the word 'guys' (more often than not preceded by the word 'hey') AND he had pink mum-jeans on with a shirt tucked in and nice school shoes liek a city exec in disguise when there is a soap dodger march on. OH I am being a cunt for fun - he wasn't that bad really > but he did keep talking right to the end so no one could ask him who he thought he was doing a presentation to or if he even knew that the Telegraph had been cained like a bitch by the Mail just because they have better celeb news. HELLOOOO LOVES - P.S. > anyone who thinks i think i can do better should read any previous posts where i have royally fucked up presentations and stood there, on stage, crying, in a puddle of my own piss.
Laters i went and talked about stalkers, fireworks and making unicycles for shaved pets in pizza express with me new twitterbuddies @AlCarlton (who sponsored the event with Conference Calendar) and @DanJHarrison (who makes cakes in difficult shapes).
Then i had to get the 8:15 train back because it was the last one - can you fucking believe that? last train on a Saturday night between 2 major cities is 8:15 -I didn't believe it - I says to the the ticket guy (in my best authoritative London tones) "Now, listen here my good man. I'll have none of your northern cheek, i must return to London later than this or i shall have to do the journey sober ...and none of us want that on our conscience do we?"
He said I could get Stellas on the train.
