So what happened in my 2 days at SEMCON 2007?

1. Honestly, I wasn’t interested or should I say didn’t pay attention much to other topics other than the ones discussed by:

• Benj Arriola - SEO for Megasites.
• Jayvee Fernandez of b5media - Effective Web Copywriting
• Hans Koch of syndeomedia.com - Pitfalls of Pay-Per-Click
• Marc Macalua - Innovative Landing Page Optimization.

2. I was looking forward on hearing Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl.com for his topic “The Art of Linkbaiting” but unfortunately, by the time he was speaking, I was having a short chat outside the hall with Derek Callow (Regional Marketing Manager - South East Asia, Google), Aileen Apolo (Google Philippines) with 4 other Filipino seo wherein some good plans for local search industry were discussed.

3. It happened that I paid Php7750.00 (it should be Php8500.00 but I got a discounted rate) without checking the speakers list and their topics so I was a bit disappointed when I learned the first day that Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com will just be delivering keynote address and not what I’m expecting that he’ll be discussing a certain section of optimization deeper.

4. I preferred walking outside of the hall whenever a speaker talks about his company though I am not really against what their doing as I know that they are marketers and the event is a great opportunity for them to market something, it’s just that it’s time for me to pee or have a smoke while the real topic isn’t discussed yet.

5. I quite disagree with Rhiza Sanchez about this Pink hat seo stuff. I know that there’s black hat where seo’s do some unethical stuffs to achieve something, white hat doing plain clean stuffs and (might be) grey hat doing both. I think doing girly stuffs can be classified either black or white, it just matters on how you apply it. But it’s her stuff so she can say whatever she wants, this is just my personal opinion.

6. Great food.

7. I met some other local seo’s aside from the usual ones that I have seen several times.

By the way, I learned a lot about ghost, magic, getting yourself banned several times at adsense, talking to yourself in your own forum, and a lot more hilarious things during a fun coffee session with Hans Koch, Mike Lopez, Jenny Trinidad, Abel Quitoriano, Benj Arriola and Jason Torres right after the conference.

I’ll be waiting for Jenny’s pics so I can steal some to add in here and make an update later.

Overall, it was still a wonderful 2-day event and I’m looking forward for SEMCON Philippines 2008.

Quick Update: Photos I forcibly asked to be shared to me from fire_lady of SEO Blog Zone and 2 more coming from Aileen Apolo’s picasa album!