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.