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Quote Of Day 2 – SES San Jose 2008

samjohnson

Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)

“The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement.”

Missing Dixon Jones

My mate Dixon Jones won’t be at SES San Jose this year 🙁

Dixon and I go way back to about 2002 when I was working at Looksmart. It was Dixon who got of the phone with my boss Rob Pearson and let the world know on WebmasterWorld that we were about to close.

When I surfaced at Microsoft in 2005, the SES London panel where I made my speaking debut on behalf of adCenter was where Dixon gifted me some comments during his opening address which enabled my presentation to begin with the immortal line:

“Microsoft…….Sexy……..I bet you’ve never heard those words uttered together in the same sentence before!”

Since then we’ve become great friends and always have a picture taken of the two of us where ever we are in the world!

I’ve got so many I thought I’d publish one a week until they run out!

mel-dixon-iceland-07

First up is us at Kristjan’s Icelandic Internet Marketing Conference in November 2006

It was very dark in Reykjavik that week, which must explain why Dixon got dressed in that shirt!

Internet Advertising Is An Over-Rated Fad

Seeing Rred

Well that’s what Dan Sabbagh, the Media Analyst for the Times Business Section said yesterday!

In his article, largely about digital TV advertising he claims “it should be remembered that Internet advertising is, like all fads, over- rated!”

In more than eight years I’ve never heard it called a fad and certainly not over-rated.

In fact, those that try it for the first time can’t believe they’ve been wasting so much cash on traditional forms of media.

Going on to criticise Google is just silly and negative.

According to the IAB, Internet Advertising was responsible for 15% of the £18.4 billion advertising spend in the UK last year – 38% up on 2006. Of that 57% was on search ads – well over £1 billion!

You can’t ignore growth like that Dan!

A bit difficult to grasp if not properly informed maybe, but it’s no fad and if anything, far too under-rated!

SES San Jose 2008 – 10 More Reasons To Attend

Search Engine Strategies is next week! Back in February I wrote SES London 2008 – 10 Reasons To Attend and won Best Photo Of A Marketing Trend for the photo below which was part of a raft I took entitled A Few Pictures.

So now I’m making it to SES San Jose to support my Microsoft colleagues who are speaking at the conference here are 10 more reasons why you should attend:

  • It’s the 10th Annual Event – 10 years is a long time in new media so there is bound to be some nostalgia and “the way we were” angles to a lot of the presentations
  • I gather it’ll be the biggest ever held with over 4000 delegates to network with and learn from – Matt correct me if I’m wrong!
  • Kevin Ryan has to be the wittiest moderator ever! Sure he’s not British and putting on that accent?
  • The hotels are all pretty close together near the convention centre making easy access to all the bars for those late night secret strategy discussions
  • The Google Dance – Always a hit and I do love the Googler’s faces after they ask me which company I work for!
  • The Weather – It’s like October here in London – See what the BBC Weather has to say about San Jose!
  • Black Hat White Hat session should be awesome, although I’ll probably only understand 25% of what they’re saying!
  • The Keynotes Look Fab – Satya’s normally a hit so make sure you catch him!
  • Dan Horton from Bronco tells me Dave Naylor is like a “caged tiger” right now so do catch him speaking where you can – it’ll be worth it I promise!
  • I’ll be there and the first 10 people to mention the magic word “cricket” will get a beer and a T-Shirt from me!

Microsoft Office Ribbon Inspiring UI Design

Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox just gave me the heads up on the 10 Best Application User Interfaces of 2008.

Nice to see Eyeblaster’s Campaign Monitor leading the charge for the Online Advertising Industry!

image

The article describes why and what makes a good design interface and what I found interesting was Jakob calls out Microsoft Office’s “Menu Ribbon” as a factor in these great design examples.

“Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.”

Although a caveat is, “Microsoft user interfaces have not always been shining examples of good usability; the company has embraced usability in a big way only in recent years. About 10 years ago, the main design criterion was to pass a Bill Gates review, and Billg’s definitely not an average user.”

I think we’ve all come along way in the last 10 years!

Don’t you?

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