Yulbiz 2007 - Best of Montreal's Business Blogosphere
Yulbiz 2007 wrapped up last night at Cafe Melies with the Yulbiz November edition, featuring the release of the new book Pourquoi blogger dans un contexte d'affaires (Reasons to Blog in a Business Setting). After the jump (the read-more link), I've got the news, gossip and best of all - some cool pictures and video of Yulbiz November's participants! Plus, a wrap-up of my Yulbiz 07 experience and the people it's allowed me to meet.
I'm writing this from school and have unfortunately left the cards I was given last night at home. So if I forget to mention you, just drop a comment and I'll be sure to update this post.
After saying hi to my friend, expert internet marketer Michel Leblanc, and new acquaintance Mathieu Bélanger, of K3 Media web agency (more on K3 in a minute) who were standing outside (see picture above) I went in and spotted Eric Kucharsky (left), of TechnoMontreal whom you'll recall I met at an earlier Yulbiz. I took a picture, but he was in a conversation so I didn't want to interrupt too much.
To start things off, I sidled over to the cool camera lady from Canoe.ca. We talked about how she came to be working as a camerawoman and it turns out she studied biology and then journalism, with a view to getting into scientific journalism. That said though, she says she's having a blast at Canoe! I can't find the video on Canoe, she had no business cards and my memory isn't working so great on 5 hours sleep. So, if you want to help me out and comment to tell me her name, that would be great.
I caught up with Bruno Bhutto (please correct me if I'm misspelling that, Bruno), who was a panelist at FacebookCamp, where I also spoke on Facebook advertising. We had a fun chat and he told me about this photoshop community he's been with for a good 5 years, called Worth 1000. As in, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Particularly cool are these two aggressive looking plants: Bang Bang and Revenge.
Bruno and I shot a video describing the site. He describes the contests on the site, mentions the mainstream media have picked up on it and more.
Stupid Blogger/Blogspot isn't letting me upload, so that'll have to come in a later edit.
Soon afterward, I caught my buddy Sylvain Carle in a shot with Bruno. Sylvain (and Michel) are co-authors of Pourquoi blogger along with some of the other folks. I picked up my copy last night and it's really looking good and enjoyable, though I haven't read it all yet (so maybe it sucks around Sylvain or Michel's chapters ... not! ;) ).
Sylvain also discussed his chapter of the book with me in a video, but that'll obviously have to wait. Speaking of which, how do you rotate video? I shot it with my handheld camera upright...
Pascal Veilleux of NSI and myself discussed what he and the gang are doing with corporate blogs and all, and it sounded quite exciting. Pascal's on my list of experts on corporate bloggers, so if that's your bag, you should go over and give him a shout. Again, I'll post the video later.
Further in, I sat down for a quick talk with my buddy Andres Restrepo, whom I also met at a previous Yulbiz (if you're no good at reading between the lines, the name of the game is consistency and frequency). He's now working for Ressac (smart move, Ressac!) where Julien Raby, who's now heading up Cossette's search marketing arm, used to work (btw, Julien, you guys need to rank for Cossette search marketing! Let me know when Cossette's at least got a specific page in place and I'll modify that link to SEOmoz's Service marketplace).
Passing by at that specific moment was another friend I made through Yulbiz, popular blogger (and videoblogger!) Philippe Martin, who's the go-to-guy for making and http://www.nayezpaspeur.ca">designing blogs! Notice that the link to his site is a deeplink. I used to just link to the homepage, but his design skills placed a tab to that part of the site above the fold and made me notice it! So there you go, he'll help you do better SEO too!
Following this I was fortunate enough to chat with my friend Nicolas Cossette, who blogs on SMO (aka SMM) and works at NVI Solutions. I also met a couple of new people. For the first time, Guillaume Bouchard, NVI's CEO, showed up as did his new hire, Samuel (don't think you told me your last name, I'm afraid). It was great talking to him and I think it's fair to say we both learnt something from each other (I learnt some tips on closing the sale, he learnt my credit card # ;) ). Here are Nicolas, Samuel, Guillaume and I:
See the FacebookCamp shirt I'm wearing (click the pick to enlarge)? That's from speaking at FacebookCamp Montreal, and the shirt and conference were partly sponsored by K3. Thanks a lot for the generosity Mathieu!
Anyways, if you're looking for SEOs who know the French market, besides Michel, you'd be hard pressed to find a better crew (Michel's not a crew, but you get the idea) than Go Referencement. (If you want something in English ... I'm outranking Guillaume and NVI for Montreal SEO ;). Write me: Gab at seoroi dot c o m.)
Next up I had a quick hello with Etienne Denis, CEO of 90 Degres (who's looking for a French editor for his company's content services). Yet another fellow I'd met at a previous Yulbiz! I've got a video with Etienne too.
About that time I caught up with a recent acquaintance and new friend, Claude Malaison. He's been involved with tech stuff since before I was born - literaly. Besides organizing Webcom Montreal and suchlike (he's the French Canadian Danny Sullivan!), he's President of Emergence Web, a boutique agency focused on Web 2.0 strategy. In any case, I pulled Claude into a pic with Nicolas, Philippe and Stephane Waffo (another new acquaintance and a cool dude :) ). I also got those fellows in a shot with Martin Lessard, a terrific blogger whose first chapter in the Pourquoi blogger book I'm really enjoying - check out Zero Seconde for more Web 2.0.
Left to right: Martin Lessard, Stephane Waffo, Philippe Martin and Nicolas Cossette.
Same order: Stephane (slightly cut out, sorry!), Philippe, Claude and Nicolas.
By the way, please don't read anything into the size of the pics. I'm just playing around with formatting and seeing Blogger's capacities (also trying to speed up load time), as I don't often get to do a post with pics.
As the night began to wind down, I saw my friends Kim Vallee, Muriel Ide, and Jerome Paradis. Muriel's started a jewelry line! Jerome's developing a Facebook App that he's nearly got finished! More info when it's out :). (Speaking of which, Martin's talking about a televised debate about Facebook at ZS.)
Here are Jerome, Kim (far right), Stephane and his friend whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment (Stephane or Stephane's friend, if you read this, please comment to remind me) - but who happens to be a really good communicator. I think I bored his ear off for a half hour and he showed interest throughout!
Finally, I had the opportunity to meet the excellent Tristan Peloquin of Technaute. He's only started blogging since last March's Quebec elections, but as this brilliant fellow can attest, that means nothing. We emailed around the time of the elections on political marketing. Tristan, if you're reading this, Epiar's blog has the Presidential ROI thing I was telling you about. For my other readers, Tristan also wrote a chapter in the book, fyi, and from my previous reading of his writing, I'm sure it'll be great!
Here are some other posts on Yulbiz you might like
Besides writing grandiose openings with questionable grammar, I've got a laundry list of reasons why I'm the biggest Rockstar WebGeek (specifying webgeek, because when you're going to a conference by and for webmasters ... well, Dave Navarro isn't about to show up) and why I should be selected to party with Shoe et co. in Vegas.
If you're totally clueless about what I'm talking about, this is an entry to Shoemoney's Rockstar contest. Warning: there is some adult oriented humour and a liberal dose of sarcasm - if you can't take a joke for what it is, please don't read any further.
Also, for my regular readers, this is a more personal post not quite related to the regular content of this blog, so take it for what it's worth (some young adult type humour) and not as a reflection of my professionalism.
[...]
Why are you still reading?
For starters, I spent a month and a half travelling this past summer in the Middle East. Not only did I not get shot or blown up, I actually took shots and threw up! Err, wait, scratch that. I partied like a rockstar, swam with the fish, charmed the chicks (a little chopped corn will go a long way towards pleasing the little furry future chicken filets... no, seriously). And besides being a pimp and having a damn good time of it, I'm rocking this SEO game like stoning was legal!
Let's have a look at each of those points.
1) I got more partying done this summer than Paris Hilton's done advanced calculus! Or more than Matt Cutts, whoever's smarter/done more. (My $500 are on Paris.)
Here's yours truly crowd surfing at 2 am on his tour bus (in the blue shirt and grey boxers).
Are you ready for some more? (Crowd: "Oh yeah!" Rapper: "Are you ready for some more?" Crowd: "Oh Yeah!" Rapper: "Cuz you know I want to feel it, and you know I need to feel it." Lol, don't know why that lyric just popped into my mind, but I couldn't help slipping it in there.
With a friend, I tamed a bucking camel (while wearing short shorts) and propose to repeat the ride on Jeremy's back in the Nevada desert (harder too, because he's got no hair to hang on to!).
Further to that, I went incognito, Indiana Jones style, through water tunnels wearing what turned out to be a day-glo turban (Did you know white Ts make good turbans? Bet you didn't! Next time you hear someone make a racist "towelhead" remark, call them on their ignorance ... the term is "Tshirthead".)
Did I mention that when I party and get rowdy, the people around me get their smiles rearranged? You contest judges wanted to talk about fighting, well check this out:
OK, OK, so maybe it was a fossilized piece of junk from an archeological dig and not some guy's jawbone that I ripped out. Still, I think hanging out with me would be very beneficial to our judges, each of whom seems to have some issues with their smiles. I mean, consider:
Dax is actually frowning! If I had my picture taken with my pants around my ankles, I'd be doubled over laughing!
It seems that Rebecca, Neil and Shoe also have an issue with smiling, as you can see from them hiding their pearly whites...
Shoe's got his arm around a Hooter's hottie! And he's not smiling! And then he's holding a massive cheque while again, his cheekbones aren't the slightest bit perky!
Rebecca's a little more subtle with it. She's in disguise here with a mustache so she can plausibly deny it was her. But we know she's hiding that grin just the same!
And Neil's slurping on a beer bong. Looks like the social communities of college fraternities is what he's really studying!
Greg ... well, let's just say that with a smile like that he makes a hockey player look good... A for effort at least!
The only judge who does a half-decent job (and has a nice smile - props to your dentist) is Dave Dellanave:
The relation between this and PubCon is simple. By making fun of the judges I'm getting them - by means of reverse psychology - to secretly want to be my friend and invite me to go with them to PubCon. If you're going to socialize and network (and maybe even pick up a girl or two), a little bit of charm is essential - and your humble servant has plenty of that. Which brings us to point two:
2) Picking up the girls. If you're going to party like a rockstar, you're not just going to be getting wasted. You're going to be macking the hell out of a room. In my month and a half of travelling this past summer, I picked up no less than 5 girls and was offered to join the mile high club on my plane back home by a sixth.
Have a look:
Here's your favourite rockstar taking a short break from dancing to smile for the camera with the cute girl he picked up over the weekend. Note also the white pants, like a certain rockstar who's popular in Vegas wedding ceremonies.
And like any self-respecting rock star knows, it's not sufficient to just pick up one girl a night.
Heh, my eyes look so conniving/evil there. Sure sign of a party animal rockstar ;).
Following that, there was another cutie who I unfortunately did not get a chance to take pictures with, and whom you'll have to take my word on. Next up was this delightful young thing from Toronto, which just goes to show that even Toronto can get some things right. Did I mention this was a Montreal SEO blog?
The story here was that I was walking back from a cafe and saw this girl and her friend. I thought they were cute, recognized the uniforms they were in as being from an organization I'd had an interest in and chatted them up. Next thing you know I've got a hot date Friday night! Fun in the [setting] sun, as they say.
Note also the smiling! (This image wasn't cropped, it was just self shot from very close.)
I then met a girl who had an awesome personality and whom I was dating until just a few weeks ago.
We were walking along and saw a harpist and just had to take a picture - I mean, when do you see a harpist street performer around? I thought it was funny that as a harpist, she also harped about getting a donation before she'd let us take a picture with her. If you're keeping count, this is #5. And still more smiles.
The airplane girl I won't post a picture of because it might upset ms. #5. But fyi, I turned her down as ms. #5 and I were still dating at the time. ("How un-rockstarish and boring! How non-controversial!" I know, I know... )
Bottom line: Pick me to go with you to PubCon and not only will we party, you guys will get a crash course on smiling, keeping up the smile as much as possible without getting tired and making smart conversation to pick up girls (or guys, for you, Rebecca). And for you Greg, until you see a dentist, I'll teach you to be a good listener ;).
At the end of the day, most girls and guys aren't expecting to date supermodels (though if you're a self-confident and only occasionally own-horn-tooting, wink-n-a-smile-ing, easy-chatting p-i-m-p like yours truly, you can have that expectation). They want someone friendly, who'll smile and listen to what they have say with interest while making them feel good about themselves. Like your humble servant, moi.
3) I'm an SEO rockstar.
Consider a couple of the things I've written, results I've achieved and some of the research I'm undertaking.
1) Sitelinks research project: What in the algo triggers the attribution of sitelinks to a site?
4) At the ISEdb, The New Directory. Imho, Seth and the good folks at Squidoo have gotten a good portion of the idea right, and it appears Gooruze will be doing the same.
5) This piece on linkbait at Pandia addressing the essential characteristics of succesful linkbait based on 5 cases. (Rebecca, the Moz is in there, so do check it out.)
6) These articles at Youmoz which are pretty dandy and instructive, imho:
Besides that, I'm #1 and #6 on Yahoo for SEO Montreal (was #1 and #2 earlier in October, but the SERPs have just changed very recently).
My SEO ROI .com referrer logs already show top 50 rankings on SEO consulting, and it's only been actively promoted for a few months.
I'm a multi-disciplinary fellow. I have:
Planned and supervised the design of my SEO ROI site from A-Z this summer, including graphics and code;
Re-wrote the copy and some html code on the landing page for this Montreal hotel which increased their conversion rate, an impressive feat considering it was already above the industry average;
Ranked this blog top 20 for Local SEO and this site often comes up in Map results for Montreal SEO on Google when the SERPs have Maps integrated (it would be awesome to attend the PubCon local sessions!);
Built a domain portfolio that counts awesome generic KW domains including a handful that have 6 figure + Overture results (not to mention LinkBuilding.ca ;) ). Do I care if they're .ca? Not so long as Google etc. don't.
Scored a minesweeper best time on expert of 120 seconds, or ~1.2 seconds a mine.
So if you can excuse the hard-selling, excessive bragging and weak self-deprecating jokes - I may be a rockstar, but I'm a n00b at this contest stuff - I think you'll find in me a fun guy to hang out with and one who's happy to listen to you :). Bring me to PubCon!
SEO Montreal is a Montreal-based local Search Engine Optimization consulting company. Nous sommes une agence spécialisée dans le référencement. It is part of the SEO ROI family.
