I did not realize that Converge South was a conference for business owners and entrepreneurs until the keynote speaker started talking. It’s my fault for not realizing that, though. I didn’t do much research on it beforehand since I knew I was going no matter what. I think I was hoping for something more creativity-centered. It was really more about how to use different tools and media available online for businesses.
I had a lot of trouble taking the keynote speaker, Tracy Myers, seriously. He is a hugely successful car salesman, with a slew of rewards and accomplishments (and probably money). And he is definitely a likable and positive person, but…
His presentation slides were written in Marker Felt, which is not a bad typeface if you’re teaching elementary-age children how to bake cupcakes. And his examples of “good” websites looked like they were from geocities in 1999.
I just felt like his marketing strategies can really only apply to a few niche markets. Not every business can benefit from sending out a newsletter than intentionally looks like the National Enquirer, or from having the business owner walk around wearing a tacky stars-and-stripes top hat.
I was also shocked by what he said about writing a book. He essentially said that it doesn’t matter what is in your book, because no one will read it. He said it just matters that you publish a book with decent binding so that people will see it and just assume you’re an expert. I don’t think he was lying–he’s right. I worked in a book store and have witnessed countless times the power a book with shit content can have over people just because it’s a book. I was just shocked because he doesn’t see this as a problem. He just wants to perpetuate the downfall of valuable literature and add to the clutter of our lives.
He did say a few good things. Like, it should be easy to find contact information on a website; and using your picture can help your business (I wouldn’t take it to the extreme that he does, though, OMG). Myers also pointed out the value of social media for businesses, which is definitely true. And, ultimately, a good bit of his advice would be more relevant for me if I wanted to become a business owner or be in charge of an organization. So it wasn’t all bad. I just had to weed through all the clutter to pull out the information most useful to me.
I also had some more positive experiences at Converge South!
I went to Phil Buckley’s talk about SEO. I was glad that he gave a brief history in the beginning, because I didn’t know all the details. He talked about Panda and Penguin, and gave easy-to-understand explanations of how they worked, and showed a hilarious Monty Python clip to demonstrate how Google was coming and everyone knew it but they didn’t care, and then everything changed and nobody was ready. I was also happy because he stressed that having a well-designed, user-friendly website with excellent content is the easiest way to be on the first page of search results. He discussed AdWords and Google Analytics, which are helpful tools if you are a web developer or website owner and you need to keep track of your website traffic. He also said, “Google understands almost everything.”
The lunch speakers were all really good, too. Even though some of the information wasn’t relevant to me specifically or I already knew it, I think those quick presentations were an effective way to give an overview to different things that a lot of the people at the conference probably would find useful.
The other talk I went to was Mark Traphagen’s discussion on Google Authorship. I was torn between going to that one and the Responsive Design one, and I decided I’d go to the Google Authorship one because I had no idea what it was. When you search for something on Google, and in the results list you see an article with a picture of the author and links to find out more about that particular author, that means the author connected their content to their Google+ profile. Traphagen gave a step-by-step guide on how to use Google Authorship and also spent time explaining what it was, how it tied to Google+, and some future predictions on usage such as Author Rank. I don’t know that I personally would get much benefit from using Google Authorship features, since I don’t foresee myself blogging or writing a lot of articles on a regular basis, but it was really fascinating and useful to know how that works.
In the end, Converge South was a positive experience for me, even if it wasn’t what I expected. Now I can say that I’ve been to a conference! And maybe just the conference experience alone is the most valuable thing I can take away from it.