This was my second year attending Pubcon, a “Search, Web 2.0, Net Marketing, SEO/SEM, Affiliates, Domainers, Video, Multimedia : aka: Webmastery.” That’s a lot of words needed to describe a conference, but it’s fairly accurate, as Pubcon covers quite a wide range of topics. Which is one of the things I love about it.

The keynote that really stood out was by George Wright of Blendtec. I wasn’t all that familiar with the Blendtec ad campaign before the conference, but I still found George to be an excellent speaker who did a great job telling the story of a tiny company who increased their sales 700% all thanks to a marketing campaign started with $50.

I spent Monday morning in sessions on two great sessions about video. I want to specifically mention Robin Liss of Reviewed.com. I saw her speak last year as well. She seems genuinely enthusiastic about what she does, which always helps make a speaker more interesting. She also really knows her stuff, and I was able to come away with a lot of notes.

Another speaker I enjoyed was Wil Reynolds, who gave a talk about keyword selection and had some excellent tips, such as seeing what words people used to tag their bookmarks on delicious.

A third speaker who I want to mention is Ted Ulle, of webmasterworld.com, who absolutely knows his stuff when it comes to information architecture, and often overlooked part of web design.

I have pages of notes from this conference (which luckily are all digitized this time around), and can’t wait to start discussing and implementing some of these ideas.

The only criticisms I have about the conference are in regards to the logistical parts of it, not the speakers, so I suppose that’s a good thing. Here’s a few suggestions for Pubcon 2009:

• Better directions. Everyone I saw went to the Las Vegas Convention Center South Halls first (where the conference was last year).
• On that note, maybe consider moving back to the south halls. The session rooms in the North Halls are three times as wide as they are deep, leaving you craning your neck to see the speakers and the powerpoint.
• Include coats and gloves in the registration bag. Seriously, I think I got frostbite in some of those rooms.
• Charge $10, $25, $50 more for tickets and DO NOT RUN OUT OF COFFEE! Also, while know it’s a minor complaint, a lot of the breakfast food tasted as if it had been sitting outside for days.

Those are just some minor gripes on an overall excellent conference.

On a personal note, I had a blast in Vegas as always (Stomp Out Loud and Craps both provided a lot of entertainment), and am very glad we took Saturday to see Death Valley, which is a really amazing place.