Some quick stats from the SXSW Interactive Festival, to give you some idea what it was like:

• Verbal NDA’s given, between Lance and myself: 6
• Movie stars seen: at least 5 that we know of
• Tradeshow schwag items gathered, each: about 500,000
• Tradeshow schwag items that were actually cool: 3
• Best - but least effective - tradeshow schwag item: magnetic buzzing balls handed out by a company whose name I can’t remember
• Internet-related company founders, coders, financers, and top executives seen: hundreds
• Best sessions: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, talking openly about how the company reached the success it has; Jared Spool, illustrating with magic tricks the importance of illusion and magic in meeting users’ needs; Guy Kawasaki, moderating a panel discussion on social media.
• Lance’s top memories: meeting Guy Kawasaki; dinner at Vespaio; screening “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
• My top memories: Seeing Helen Hunt speak; watching the Zappos.com team appear out of nowhere to hand out hundreds of rain ponchos when the weather turned bad
• Minutes of boredom: 0

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Now that we’ve had a chance to catch our collective breath at CLM, here’s a quick look back at SMX West, the hot new search marketing conference and expo co-chaired by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman.

SMX West was held Feb. 26-28, and despite the early calendar date was heavily and enthusiastically attended. News had evidently spread about the success of the inaugural SMX conference, SMX Advanced, which was held in Seattle last summer (and is scheduled for June 3-4, 2008).

Day 1: Danny kicked off the event with a rousing and inspiring keynote address on the future of search titled “Web 3.0, 4.0 and Beyond”, followed by breakout sessions. The sessions are generally a combination of short presentations (5 - 15 minutes each presenter) followed by a question & answer / panel discussion period. In the afternoon, our very own Amy Konefal presented on the topic of Avoiding PPC Pitfalls on a panel with Addie Connor from Course Advisor, Inc. and David Szetela from Clix Marketing, moderated by Matt Van Wagner.

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Friday night, the 19th of October, marked the debut party for our new authors’ book, Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers and Prospects into Leads. Surrounded by family, friends and colleagues, Lance and Sandra presented all of us with a copy of the book. We celebrated with a decadent meal, delicious wine and titillating conversation. At last! I finally have my very own copy of the highly anticipated new book.

The evening started with champagne and savory appetizers (bacon-wrapped dates, anyone? Really, they’re awesome). We then made our way to Carpe Vino’s “Cave” where we were treated to a fabulous meal including a double magnum of 1982 Chateau Pontet-Canet Bordeaux (which Sandra loved).

The authors then presented each of the guests with a copy of the book amidst other gift exchanges (including the shirt we hope Lance will wear at the Voices That Matter conference this week.)

Once we were able to stop thumbing through our books, we continued with our conversations and dessert.

A good time was had by all. What a wonderful way to introduce the exciting release of their new book.

Thank you, Lance and Sandra – and congratulations!

From the Team at CLM

View related topics: lance-loveday, sandra-niehaus, voices-that-matter, web-design-for-ROI

Success! After nearly 10 months of effort, Lance and I sent the final-final InDesign files for our new book, Web Design for ROI, off to the publisher on September 17. If all goes as planned, it will be on realspace bookstore shelves by mid-October!

We’re very excited by this, of course. Once we’ve recovered a bit of equilibrium, we’ll post more about the grand adventure. For now, you can read a bit more about the book and pre-order it via our book companion site, www.WD4ROI.com. See you there!

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