Looking Back On eBay Devcon Boston 2007
Last week Dave and I went to eBay Devcon/Live!. It was a conference like we had never attended before. It was a pretty large expense for us but we met some really interesting people and had a good time.
My presentation on SEO I think went pretty well. In the preso itself I really touched on basics then tried to leave enough time for people to ask questions to cover other stuff. I was a bit unsure of the audiences background. This was my first time speaking at a non search engine/affiliate conference so I was nervous of either being to basic and putting people to sleep OR to advanced and losing the crowd.
I have to say speaking wise this was an amazing experience. It was really scary and also really cool. I was the ONLY speaker for a 1 hour session (for the SEO session). eBay had 2 A/V people per room and they were top notch sound crews. They wired me up so I could walk around the room and give my presentation and also gave me wireless controls for the projector and a laser pointer in case I needed that. Probably doesnt seem like much but I feel it made a huge difference. Ever talk in front of hundreds of people and try to point to a 2 foot link on a 30 foot screen on stage? Its pretty hard to show what your talking about. The laser pointer was REALLY useful the 2 times I used it.
About 1 hour later I did a panel with Christine Kim, Lily Shen, Alex Schultz and John Coronella titled “Affiliate Industry Summit Panel” ( Not to be confused with the affiliate summit ). It was a q&a session and I think was packed with great info. I got some really interesting questions fired at me like.. what sites/ideas have you had that floped? Just some really good questions. It was really nice to get quesitons like that then the normal “what would you do if you were just starting out”. Lily moderated the panel and did a fantastic job.
Then only a few minutes later we had lunch with John Donahoe, President of eBay just prior to being called on stage to be presented the 2007 eBay Star Developer Award
You can see the video from our interview right after we were presented the award here:
ShoutOuts:
Alex Schultz - Great doing the affiliate summit panel with you. Also thanks for the great information on data mining and conversion. Very much look forward to working with you in the future. Alex recently made a super viral cocktail facebook widget which has over 10,000 users already. The widget has a search able database of cocktail recipes. Pretty awesome for facebook users!
Christine Kim AKA CK - Ck is one of the biggest reasons AuctionAds even exists. She has been our goto person at eBay everytime we have had questions or issues. We are always amazed how she exceeds our expectations.
Jarrod Schwarz - Now in charge of eBays AdContext, Jarrod is always fun to talk and he always has great ideas on how we can improve AuctionAds. Jarrod also did a great presentation on building shopping portals with the eBay API (PDF download available on site)
John Coronella - John was one of the first people I met in this business and when I talk about how I can count on 2 hands all people I really would trust in this industry John would definitely be one of them. Good to see you again John.
Sunny Li - Wish we would have got to talk more. good to see you again!
Shawn Hogan - I had not seen or talked to Shawn in like a year. I think he has a new girlfriend or something.
Matt Ackley, eBay VP - Good to see you again. I’m just going to tell you I let you think you were going to win in bowling so next time we will have to make it interesting! Also Maybe you could get some form lessons from CK 
Lily “the pool shark” Shin - Always nice to see you! I wish we could have played a game but from what I was told its better we did not!
Rob Cross - Awesome to see you again Rob! We look forward to working with you API ninjas in the future.
Debbie Levitt from ASWAS VERY nice to meet you. Debbie was one of the better speakers I have listened to and gave a stellar presentation. She made me really think about some of the business approaches to building eBay applications. You can check out her blog here.
Dan Serpico - You are a madman! Thanks for everything!
Josh Wetzel - You rock! See you soon.
- 37 Comments. What say you?
- RSS
- Delicious
- StumbleUpon
- Furl
- Digg
Shoe Please tell me they have your SEO session on video? I heard you told people to purchase reviews and links?!?
hmmm kind of.. you really had to see the presentation
I do not think there is any video
Good interview, very professional.
i can just see you whistling with your hands behind your back
“EXCELLENT” … as was said just a few times in that interview …
Was this a paying gig?
Btw - you lost like 400 rss subs over night. Whats going on with that?
i fail!
Hey! Is that Norm from Cheers in that first picture!?
No we couldn’t afford the real Cliff and Norm. They were better impersonators than they were actors.
-Alan
Congrats on that speaking gig and congratulations on that award. Nice work!
was there actually any talk about ebay cutting their google budget? I wonder if their conversion there is as good as yours for AuctionAds ?
too bad there’s no video for the presentation
btw, very professional interview..
Agree, good job
I cant comment on that
i’m not sure if that’s his real hair either…
Congrats on the award! It sounds like your presentation went well, too bad it wasn’t on video like others had mentioned.
I tried to view the video shoe but it says the video is no longer available? Did you take it down?
Wow, congrats on the award. From the sounds of things, it looks like there’s some pretty good reason(s) why they split from Google. It’ll be interesting to see(hear) what they’re up to.
Would’ve been great to see how things went down on video, yeah.
I’m sure I would have loved that interview, too, but unfortunately it says the video isn’t available anymore.
its up again now… dunno what happen
I just sent over the final version of Jeremy and David’s Star Developer Award interview so Jeremy can update the embedded interview, but here’s the link in the meantime if you want to view the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVy_DMdnphc
It was nice to meet you, Jeremy and David!
Shoe, you and a lot of other guys go through a lot of trouble to give these speeches. However, at least to my limited knowledge, you aren’t getting much out of it besides being looked at as one of the leads in the industry.
Is there any other incentive to doing these types of events or do you just do it all for fun?
Man I gotta tell you it really energizes me. I have so many people come up to me and tell me what they are working on and things they are finding out it really pumps me up to do more.
I mean it was a big expense for us to attend this conference (5k+) let alone speak for free at it. Even with eBay covering 1 night of my stay my hotel bill was $1350.00 then dillsmack also then both our airfares and then just cab expenses + food + drinks + misc it ads up super fast.
I often ask myself if it is worth it. Sometimes you can get caught up in the fact that people actually care what you have to say and not really measure the give/take properly.
Now this conference was very unique because we were being presented an award and really had a amazing PR opportunity for AuctionAds. We were interviewed by about half dozen publications.
So to answer your question. There was definitely value in THIS conference. I am glad we attended. I can’t say that for all conferences.
Wow i will do a full post on this in the future
I have a lot more to say on the topic
hah by me or?
I really wish it was video taped to share =(
And besides the big expenses , you guys sure know how to have fun
Why did you speak for free? You drive so much traffic through auctionads, make so much dinero for them and they can’t afford to pay a true guru to speak? I don’t get it…
The “how to build a portal” PDF is only a one page splash screen. Do you know if they have the whole dealio available for download?
Well, keep in mind - its marketing - People will seek him out in the future. People will “know’ who he is and automatically apply credibility.
Are some of these conferences in Europe? Is somwhere some list of conferences related to this business?
The first German eBay Developers Conference happened in Munich, Germany this in May 2007.
Congrats on the award. You guys have been working your butts off for months. You deserve it.
So when is eBay going to buy AuctionAds?
Nice of eBay to comp you a night of hotel. Boston ain’t cheap..
[...] at Pepperjam would like to congratulate Shoemoney Media Group on the success of AuctionAds and on the incredible success the system has had since [...]
[...] (memorabilia obviously comes to mind) and has been such a success that Shoe and Dillsmack were presented the super-prestigious eBay Star Developer Award at the recent eBay Devcon in Boston. Here’s an interview with the two after they were [...]
[...] week when I was doing my wrap up of eBay DevCon in the Gary R Hess commented: Shoe, you and a lot of other guys go through a lot of trouble to give [...]