When Kevin Ryan came onto the scene as SES’s “new Danny Sullivan”, I think many previous SES fans were kind of curious to see what exactly he would do with it.  It had been mentioned that Kevin was going to put his own brand on SES, and well, he has done exactly that.

Now, since I don’t know Kevin very well other than in passing at SES, it is hard to really say what kind of person he is.  But he has certainly managed to put his own special, uh, spin on things, to say the least.  A spin that has left many shaking their heads and wondering what he’s on.

Now, it is hard to kind of explain what happened in one particular session today – SEO Rehab, so I will let the following live blogging recaps and Twitter.

First, the ever popular and shoe-stylin Lisa Barone:

Kevin spends way too much time talking about rehab and other psychedelic things. He’s making me uncomfortable.

Hmmm… psychedelic things.

Kevin Ryan, for as much as I love him, has lost his mind. He’s “editing” Dave Naylor’s PowerPoint signs with things like “Boser is scary smart”, “Gray freaks me out a little”, and other such things. And then black hat SEO gets mentioned and Kevin stops the conversation saying he doesn’t want a blogger to say that he held a black hat panel.

Yes, Kevin Ryan actually spent a good portion of the time leaning on the podium and editing a powerpoint to spam himself (Twitter, Facebook and Linked In) while ignoring the panelists.  TopRankBlog got a great photo.

Another few tweets:

SEO Rehab Session…so far, we’re talking about cannabis & chocolate cake (by @toddmintz)

going to hell in a handbasket quickly…  (by @barbaraboser)

Later, in his next panel, Facebook, Feeds and Microblogging, he mocks one of his speakers with this.

@andybeal is a pain in my butt

Hitting up Summize, there are more comments about how Kevin Ryan is acting in his sessions.

That was way too long of an introduction from Kevin Ryan at #SESSJ. This is not about him., Be quiet (by @JohnWEllis)

@KevinMRyan is running his second sassy panel in a row… (by @kristenmc)

I don’t know about you, but it is kind of scary that this is the face of Search Engine Strategies.  It makes me wonder if SES going to continue to be a cutting edge search conference as it was under Danny Sullivan or is Kevin Ryan going to take it downhill with what he perceives to be “humor” with cannabis and psychedelics.  When you have bloggers publicly stating their embarrassment and uncomfortable-ness, those are the impressions that the masses of readers are going to be left with, and will help make future conference attendees go with SMX or PubCon over SES, because more than a few attendees and sponsors have said this will be the last SES they attend, which clearly makes you wonder how much of that decision is purely based upon the behavior of Kevin Ryan at the conference so far this week.

Maybe others think this kind of behavior of the person supposedly is in charge is good and brings up the college party atmosphere from a more stuffy corporate impression it had at SES New York.  But if people want to party, they can go to PubCon.  What will make people come back to SES after this whole impression people are left with.

This is a guest post by SEOBitch

So all the buzz about SMX Advanced was about how dark it was. But there was another thing extremely noticeable to me too, and that is how seriously under-represented women were at the conference. Someone pointed out a few weeks before we all made our second annual pilgrimage to Seattle that there were hardly any women listed on the panels on the SMX agenda. Now, we all know how things change and like half the speakers end up not being added until the week before. So I kinda filed it away with the things that make you go hmmmmm and promptly forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until the conference was underway and it was like stepping back in time. Where were the chicks?

It seems that Danny Sullivan believes there are no women capable of speaking on Advanced SEO. Looking at the schedule, there are about five women panelists (not including the moderators, which were mostly SMX/SearchEngineLand/Sphinn peeps anyway) and most of the female speakers who were asked to speak presented about advanced advertising not advanced SEO.

So where the hell were the women? Is this 1970 when women stayed home with the kids while they lovingly sent their husbands off to work? Should we go put on our aprons and dust the countertops with flour for bread making? Because Danny must not think women are capable of breadwinning in the SEO world since none of the top SEO women I know were asked to speak.

Even the audience was skewed way more to the male side (although granted, some of them do look asleep). Heck, SEOMoz accounted for most of the hot chicks in attendance. At previous conferences in the SEO conference circuit it has felt much more gender even, while at SMX Advanced they were far and few between, if you didn’t count the booth babe types loitering around the expo hall with their botox and silicone. Heck, even Matt Cutts was surrounded solely by men.

Then you have Gray Wolf who was criticizing BlogHer for the fact you have to be a chick to speak, going so far as to call it sexual discrimination. Well, it is any surprise when you have supposed industry leading conferences like SMX which is really more like Search Male Experts than Search Marketing Experts? What SMX did is far worse than a conference that has openly called itself a conference for women. I am not a “girls rule, boys drool” female by any stretch of the imagination. But when Danny Sullivan is making it rather clear through his choice of speakers that when it comes to SEO that males are far superior to females, why shouldn’t there be a BlogHer to counter balance that just a bit?

To be fair, sure, maybe there was a whole crew of women who were asked to speak at Seattle but for whatever reason couldn’t make it. And I am not asking anyone to pick a girl based upon the fact she has boobs instead of a dick, base it on skill level. But I heard from many who weren’t even asked to speak in the first place, women who I consider to be top SEOs in the industry and the same women that many males consistently talk about as being the best of the best. I am not going to call any names out because a quick Google/Yahoo/Live search will show who people feel are the top females in the industry but let’s just say I was rather surprised.

Will the next Advanced Search Male Expo be as skewed towards being an Old Boy’s Club with the girls on the outside looking in? Only Danny Sullivan’s glass ceiling knows that. But it is a sad state of internet marketing when one of the most respected and recognized people in the industry obviously feels that women just aren’t cutting it in the world of SEO.

Intro from Shoemoney: A month a go I was talking on Instant Messanger with a very well known female SEO who also works for a very large and well respected SEO Firm and she expressed how she wishes she had a place to vent her frustrations on the industry. I told her I would give her a platform. She choose the pen name of SEOBitch. Please welcome her.

It seems lately that everyone wants their shit on the front page of Digg or Sphinn or wants to get those millions of StumbleUpon views. And yeah, the vast majority of what I see that people want to hit those front pages is just that, shit. And inevitably, many of these so-called social media experts and wannabes spam all their friends and frenemies asking for those precious votes. But want in on a little dirty secret? Those requests actually make me hit that tempting little “Bury” button, instead of voting you up by one. And know what else? I wield more power since those bury votes can do far more hurt than that single Digg vote would have done for you.
So want to know why I bury instead of Digg? Let me tell you tell you how you all piss me off when asking for those Diggs and Stumbles.

You’re only good for one f’in thing

If you instant message me, and your entire interaction with me is “Can you Digg this for me, thanks”, and especially when it comes complete with an obfuscated tinyurl so I can’t even see what it is you want me to Digg, like hell I will Digg it for you. If you can’t even bother to ask me how I am because you are too busy with your mass IM Digg campaign, like hell I will Digg it. IM the next sucker who is willing to bow to your every command, because you know what? That sucker isn’t me.

Bend over

If I haven’t heard from you in six months and I get a “hey, how are you?” out of the f’in blue, sorry if I am a little suspicious of your motives. Because chances are after I say how I am and then ask how you are, I’ll get a “fine, fine, hey can you Stumble this?” And yes, chances are pretty good that I won’t since you clearly didn’t give a shit about how I was, all you wanted was my popular Stumble account to show my Stumble friends that I thought your shit was actually worthy. So why don’t you just ask me to bend over too, while you’re at it? What you are doing is the same damn thing.

Shut the tweet up

If 80% of your tweets are asking for a vote of some kind, or worse, all your “New blog entry” tweets go straight to your Digg or Sphinn submission pages of that blog entry, surprisingly I won’t really feel that inclined to give you my vote. And chances are pretty good you will get an unfollow pretty quickly by me and many others too. At least combine some of your pathetic attempts to garner votes with tweets about something to mask the obvious, that you are only on twitter to use and abuse your followers.

F’in spam folder

Want to know the fastest way for all your emails to go straight to my spam folder? When you only ever email me when you want a vote or stumble. And just because I can’t see who else you emailed doesn’t mean you can fool me into thinking that you only emailed me and not the 80 other people you did. I might let it slide once or twice, but three times in a week? Your emails will start automatically going to my spam filter where they will never see the light of day. And bonus bury points to those who email me with nothing but “Digg” in the subject line and the URL in the body.

CC’in asshole

And if you forget to BCC and f’in CC us all? Well, let’s just say that is a pretty tempting opportunity to email you back, and yes, I will definitely CC everyone in on it, about what an asshole you are for exposing all those email addresses when many of them are blackhat spammers, if I don’t respond back to everyone with a nice little FU email instead. Trust me, your popularity will wane after that little stunt.
The moral of the story? If you are a friend I actually talk to on a regular basis, meaning conversations that don’t end with you asking “can you…”, I will pretty much Stumble and Digg anything you ask, and even the things you have blogged that you don’t ask me to. But beware, if you are one of those f’in so-called friends I only hear from when you want something from me, trust me, your spam campaign would be better off steering way clear of me and my bury, desphinn and report spam abilities. Because if you are an asshole to me, you are definitely going to get asshole back.