Kothapally Arun

If you have been following my live twitter feed you might be knowing about my mixed responses about the India Search Summit. It all started out OK until our bus broke down because of a Tyre puncture. One of the worst things to happen on a travel especially when its 2AM in the morning and you have a very important conference to attend the next day. Leaving comfort to the air we ran after buses asking whether they are going to Chennai? We missed a couple of buses and finally we caught hold of a Gold Class from Shama Travels.

I Soumen and Liyaqath made some place near the drivers seat and sat down. That was one of the most uncomfortable “yog asan” I have ever taken. We tried to sleep but out alarm clocks(Drivers brake) made sure that we were reminded of the pain. We had a stop at a crucial four way where we could give some respite to our bottoms.

With a few AHs and UHs(don’t take it other way) we finally reached Koiymet Chennai with fine guidance from a God in human form.(He looked like that) Took an Auto for a feeble 250INR!!! and placed our lives in a mans hand who twists the handle like we turn a top. Finally reached Tidal park and we got a guest room in the locality.

We rushed to the India Search Summit 2010 only to know Mahesh Murthy has not come and also that we missed an important talk on SEO for e-commerce sites. We wiggled in to the corner of the room and met Narayan Hariharan who I later realized was my FaceBook friend.(World is too small) We heard to what Sanjeev Agarwal was saying or rather were made to hear. Then came the lunch. Please don’t take us as voracious eaters. Our coming to the conference and time of lunch happened through chance and not choice. Took a few fuzzy pics and off to lunch.

Met RoyRWC and Nishanth two amazing people to talk to. Coming back to the conference we had talks on social media for consumer experience and Web Analytics followed by a smart question by Ashwin.

Can we measure user engagement by using Api ?

Silence broke in to entire hall. Followed by few arguments and rants about unhappiness on the way the conference has gone. Things went on and then started the site clinic. Everyone started to grab the mike and you could see typical SEO arguments which are always good. Then came a discussion on Google’s partial behavior towards exact match domain names. Many dint agree and I raised a war cry.  I ranted about a case study which I have observed here at my work. I expressed my view with great conviction and I heard a round of applause. (Thanks to kiruba for the pic)

The day 1 ended in a quiz and awesome Madras Filter coffee. Over all Day 1 was OK from my side.

Day 2

We rushed to the conference room on the day two only to find an empty one. Were people not excited? I don’t think so…

Had lot of time to tweet and take few nice snaps…….. and my fingers twitched.

The Second day started with Gillian Muessig’s Webinar on How Search is evolving and how to keep up. The Day 2 went one and was more social media focused. Few of the noteworthy presentations were

How to Develop Personal Brand using Social Media by Kiruba

How Social Media is boosting Search Engine Rankings by Kapil Nakra

Its all about back links by Jayashree Ramasubramanian

Measuring the Un-measurable – ROI on Social Media by Sorav Jain

FaceBook Marketing Mantra – Faheem Ahmed

The day winded up with social media expert panel discussion where people coined doubts about how much ROI on social media can be measured, which online marketing strategy to use? and the like.

India Search Summit 2010 Takeaways

1. There are many invisible start ups fighting to get attention. India looks like a place for many upcoming entrepreneurs. Many people are brave enough to put their neck out. Are you?
2. Dis-Passion can be easily spotted. Found few people who I don’t know their intentions in coming to the conference.
3. There are few brand agency very serious about social media. Social Media will be big in India.
4. Being OutSpoken and logical at the same time is rarely found.
5. People don’t want to listen any more they want to talk. Listening to a talk for even 15 minutes is painful. This is BAD!!!

Overall it being my first search conference I felt the India Search Summit was good but if you ask me whether I would be in India Search Summit 2011, then I would have to look at the agenda first.