sorry I didn’t say hello on the night and thanks for sponsoring the event. The reason I mentioned Steve was because he was the first person who showed me how fascinating search can be.

If they run it again next year, I think you should speak at it!

(You wouldn’t want to sponsor it anyway for fear that some poor idiot like me might think the topics were organised to make them attractive to sponsors).

Tom

PS: Are you doing these posts for search rankings

Thanks for the post. It was shame Steve wasn’t there. I think he was in the Munich office, or Milan, or possibly New York! Okay. I give up. I’ve no idea where he was and I’m just glad I don’t have to manage his diary!

I know I’m no Steve replacement (no one is!) but I was there as Head of Search. We had some senior paid search managers from the London office too.

If there was another PPC Earthquake next year do you think we should sponsor that one?

Thanks for your write ups of Chinwag Live. It’s always good to hear the opinions and recommendations of people who come along to our events and I’m sorry we didn’t get to chat directly last night. Chinwag has been running online communities for aoens now, so we’re well-used to hosting critical debate.

You’re gonna love the unusual noun in our next event. It’s not proper English and very naughty, but for reasons of “searchbility and Flickr tagging”??? Sheesh, if only we had the time to be so calculating! We just like our titles quirky and memorable, much like Brits like the punning headline as opposed to the AP style of plain headline writing prevalent in the US.

Not all events we organise will appeal to everybody, and we’ve had quite a different crowd at each one so far, yourself excepted. You make quite a few points here that are worth discussing further, but I want to address three specifically.

“Chinwag, should either declare itself an industry event (i.e. about the structure of the industry and industry politics, and pick some really contentious industry debates – who’s best placed to do search, an open debate on advertiser funding etc.), or broaden the debates to cover something actually new, something outside the audience’s comfort zone.”

To be totally clear here, our events are not always going to be about things that are “contentious” or “actually new”. We are more concerned to facilitate useful and interesting discussions about issues that *matter* to the digital community and that people want to talk about. They may not always be thrilling or breaking new ground, although new trends and business challenges for the industry have been the focus of 2 out of 3 of our events so far.

When I set up and ran the Beers & Innovation series in my previous role at NMK, innovation was the focus of every event. You should check these nights out if you haven’t already as they are still happening and might float your boat.

In turn, I dispute your point about Chinwag’s “current mild ambivalence to matters of interest”. If the changes in the PPC field were not of interest, people wouldn’t have come to the event in the numbers they did. Our previous two events were also very topical and over-subscribed far in advance. Where then is the ambivalence?

Finally, to suggest that our editorial independence as regards our events’ subject matter and speakers is in any way influenced by the sponsor is a fundamental error. There is no influence allowed and that is our policy. Other companies go that route, and there is a place for those events when the paid-for speaker and sponsor slots are made wholly transparent. However, this is not an approach we are pursuing. Our need for sponsors simply arises from the fact that our business model is based on advertising and sponsorship and our events must be revenue generating or we could not continue with them. So there’s no secret handshakes or insidious influencing I’m afraid.

Anyway, can I just say, nifty use of images in your posts – especially the one of Janice from Friends for Mobile Metamorphosis

Obviously the mechanics of Panama, adCentre and AdWords are detailed and functional and may not interest those of us on the outskirts, but the subject matter itself couldn’t be more relevant or vibrant.

PPC has gone from nowhere to 7 or 8% of the US and UK ad market in five years. In a very real sense, its effecting the way brands and consumers meet and is a harbinger for a very different commercial world. As per the economist thing I quoted the other day, there is a huge open question of why Google (or Yahoo or Microsoft) gets to take all the profit for the act of consumer handraising. And Privacy. Google may not be a danger in this area but they are certainly redefining it.

And what about the banner, will that last, and for how long. Does advertiorial still work, what the effective rates between human driven content referal and systems driven? Consumer reactions to these tools, the long term effects of efficient markets for advertising on the model of product propositions.

I’m sure it’s a question of expectations but I’d be great if these events were a little punchy I think – not mud wrestling so much as debate.