You are right that not all the presentations were “5 people at 10 minutes each”, it was my imprecise short way to describe it but the majority of them were quite close to, I mean, there were no in deep presentations “one person x 45 minutes” what makes any similar event (in the opinion of coordinators) an “overall good picture of things” but not getting close to ‘advanced’ in my opinion.

A better balance between different types of formats in presentations could do it better. That was too the opinion of the people I could talk to, although it is not a representation of a wide opinion, of course.

Maybe my expectations were too high but ‘advanced’ was in the tile.

Don’t worry for the SMX Connect system problem, these things happen from time to time.

I can tell you that we don’t have a set format for any of our US shows. We create an agenda, then we have a coordinator available to program the sessions however they want. It’s really up to them.

It’s not 5 people at 10 minutes each. It is often 4 people at 12-15 minutes or 3 people. But it will very. For my first session on Bing/Google, I had four speakers, but two of them were given up to 25 minutes each to talk. The other two had no formal talk time (from the search engines). They were there for Q&A.

It’s not about bringing in famous presenters. It’s simply because the coordinator usually has several people they think will combine to provide an overall good picture of things. Panels are also good insurance in case someone gets sick (which happens far more than you might think). And I think it’s nice to have a variety of perspectives. But again, it’s not always the time format you’ve outlined.

I’m sorry you had problems with the SMX Connect system. I’m not sure which contact form you used for help. I know the team does a pretty good job of getting back to people, so my apologies that this apparently didn’t happen.

Danny (we met at SMX Madrid’08 where I was presenting) Why the format is so different in this side of the world? “panel: 5 people x 10 minutes” versus ‘one person x 45 minutes presentation’ as we have more often in Europe? last ones give the opportunity to go deep in subjects, the first one
makes it not advanced at all.

I understand that it must be attractive to bring enough people and this is the reason to have ‘famous’ presenters but if they are not going to be able to explain any advanced topic what is the point to be there while I can find much more insightful articles daily? only for the networking?

by the way, I was registered, but I could not access the, registered area, sent an email and never got answer back so I missed all these opportunities to join the Topic Lunch Tables and prepare networking beforehand.

If I could just put power strips out everywhere, I could. But you get charged a seriously large amount for these. Lots and lots. So we aim for a mix.

I’d have loved a session with Yahoo and Bing answering questions on the transition. We tried and tried. Kind of begged. They weren’t willing. They didn’t feel they had the right answers to give yet.

Privacy is interesting, but it remains more a consumer issue than one for search marketers. That’s why when we have limited session, as with Advanced, it was a pass on that topic.

The industry leadership keynote is interesting, but we’ve typically done these for the bigger topic shows of SMX East and West. I think from a programming perspective, they make more sense there. Advanced is more a “roll up your sleeves” type of thing.

Thanks for the feedback!