Cre8asite Storms the HighRankings Conference Options

[Grumpus]

FRAMINGHAM, MA (erm, Natick, actually) - I just got back in from Boston way and thought I'd share the story of my excursion. It's not that anyone really wants to see this, but I'm still a bit hungover and don't feel like programming anything...

The mission was to meet up with Bill and Kim and invade Jill Whalen's SEO Conference just to make sure that everything was up to code.

I left the house yesterday at around 1:30pm and made the 85 mile trek to Framingham Massachussetts - the town where I was assured that the Crowne Plaza was located. The hotel web site, yahoo, and the several people I asked all said that that is where it was. So, I got off the Mass Turnpike in Framingham and headed to the 1300 block which consisted of a donut shop and a small store that advertised "Checks Cashed Here!" in bold letters across the dingy window.

So, I muttered something unitelligible under my breath and headed toward Natick where I was certain that the hotel would be located. It was.

Being the cheap sob that I am, I went to the travel lodge next door to the Crowne Plaze and got a room because I was assured that it was going to get very drunk out later that evening. I then headed next door to see what I could see.

There was no one at the door to the conference room so I poked my head in the door. I was mentally chopping the bodies off of the 40 or so people in the room to try to match them up with the various corresponding forum avatars. There were various whispers in the back of the room that amounted to something not unlike, "Who's that creepy guy in the stripes?"

No good, I was distracting people from the conference.

So, as any good Grumpus would do, I headed for the bar. After drinking a very tall, yet inconceivably narrow beer, and carving my name on the stool so that it would be ready for me should an emergency beer situation arise, I saw signs of activity back in the conference wing. So, I headed back over there.

Matt Bailey was just getting set up to do his statistics talk so I stepped inside to listen for a bit. He opened his speech with explaining how statistics can be fun and made good use of the Star Trek Red Shirt Syndrome as an example. (Did you know that if you are wearing a red shirt in Star Trek, your chance of survival is about 12%, but if Captain Kirk gets lucky it shoots up to around 84%?)

After a few minutes of listening and enjoying it all, Lee (the woman doing the main organizing of the conference) came up to me.

"Are you a Grumpus?"

"Only if I haven't had my coffee yet."

"You can go sit back there with Jill and the others if you'd like."

So, I headed back there. Jill looked at me as I sat down. I glance up at her thought bubble and it informed me that she knew she was supposed to know me, but she wasn't sure, so she just smiled and turned her attention back to Matt. I introduced myself (quietly) and the ice was broken.

By now, Matt was off the Star Trek analogy and was talking about cookies and log files. Several people in the front of the room were taking advantage of the moment to catch up on some sleep.

Another few minutes passed I saw Bill appear in the door to the conference room. I looked at Matt - statistics. I looked at Bill - beer.

Statistics?

Beer?

Sorry Jill. Sorry Matt. I gotta go.

So we shook hands and, before we released our grasp, our feet had somehow made the corner and were heading toward the bar as if driven by instinct.

After a bit of small talk and statements like, "You're so much taller than your avatar," Kim and Eric showed up. Kim was somehow stunned that I actually looked like my Avatar picture and wasn't a grim and bitter 55 year old with clogged arteries and a mild heart condition.

Getting Kim to have a cocktail was rather like trying to unlock your car door with a rock. It can be done, but it takes a bit of finesse.

More Beer (and fuzzy navel for Kim).

By now, the conference was due to be done, so we headed back over to figure out what was going on for dinner. Team Cre8asite stormed into the room as if we belonged there and gathered in a circle with the HighRankings crew (minus Scottie who was in the corner on a laptop and she didn't have time for us. I guess she was downloading porn or something... I dunno...)

Christine Churchill handed me a brain, which was a nice thought. I had to give it back to her, though, since I couldn't figure out how to install it.

Scottie finally came over and informed us that all of the legends about her being a big time party animal were just that - stuff of legend. I was fairly certain that that was a falsehood, but... Time would tell.

"We're all meeting in the lobby for dinner at 6:30."

Someone had a watch and said that 6:30 was 45 minutes away. Eric and I looked at each other and realized that that was just enough time to have another very tall and remarkably narrow beer (or two). So we left the circle with Bill close at our heels.

Before long, we headed toward the brew pub that was going to be serving us dinner. Team Cre8asite piled into Kim and Eric's SUV. We had a map, but Bill and I were fairly useless when it came to navigating because we couldn't see out the windshield because of the giant SpongeBob air freshener. We got to the X on the map and discovered a very large and very dark (i.e. We're Not Open) building. We drove around the parking lot a bit more (the lot was roughly the size of Rhode Island).

Finally, we saw a woman walking through the parking lot so we rolled down the window and asked her if she knew where John Harvard's was. After she picked herself up off the ground and got her laughter stifled, she pointed to the building about 12 feet away and smiled, "It's right there."

Eric let us out and went to go park. He parked in Framingham (and yes, we were still in Natick...)

Once inside, we got beer (and a fuzzy navel for Kim) and headed back to the special room they'd set aside. Seating was a commodity and they stuck Kim, Eric, and Bill in one corner (the smallest corner I've ever seen, actually), and they stuck me in another corner (a corner so small that it was fighting with Kim and Company's corner for the world record of tiny).

I was lucky to be seated with Matt Bailey, his wife, Christine Churchill, and Amy Edelstein (a friend of Christine's who I don't think really hangs out in the forum world, but she was amusing enough to talk to...) Anyway...

So, we're looking at the menu and trying to decide whether we wanted pan roasted salmon (however you might accomplish roasting something in a pan is beyond me) or filet mignon (which had two stars after it on the menu, but there was no legend to tell us what those stars actually meant). After a few moments we'd all pretty well decided what we wanted to eat.

At that point, the waitress came over and snatched up all the menus muttering something about "These aren't for you!"

New menus were distributed and we had to choose our dinners all over again. (Fish sticks or cube steaks, if I remember correctly...)

By then, Kim and Bill were throwing sugar packets at me from the other impossibly small corner. To my horror, I realized that Matt had already hurled all our sugar at Scottie and all we were left with was Sweet n' Low. If you've never tried to throw saccharine packets, then you can't truly appreciate the fact that I was effectively unarmed in this war.

Dinner was over. I went out to smoke (some 40 people or so and I was the ONLY smoker in the bunch - seemed odd to have that many computer geeks in one place and have no smokers in the lot, but that's another story...)

We headed back to the hotel (after walking the 12 miles to the car) and set up camp there. More beer, but at that point, Bill, Matt, and I were really the only ones still hangin' (i.e. drinking) - something about an SEO Conference in the morning or some such nonsense.

And then it was off to bed. I woke up early, headed back over to the hotel to steal a free breakfast from Jill, but no one was up yet except for some woman who kept insisting that I was the guy who was supposed to have the AV equipment for the room.

So, I left a note on the registration table and headed back home.

And that, my friends, is the story of Grumpus and Team Cre8asite Storming the HighRankings Conference.

G.

[ILoveJackDaniels]

Great story, Grumpus - had me laughing out loud in the office. Sounds like you had a lot of fun!

By way of coincidence, we had a very small cre8 meet in Brighton yesterday, in Orsino's. I'd tell you all about it, but I'd rather leave it to Ammon to explain his quizzing the waitress about syphilis ...

[Respree]

Very amusing story, G. Sounds like you guys had a blast.

[Ruud]

Well written.

Impressed that you still remember that much :-)

Ruud

[Ransak]

It does sound like you had fun. Boston is a great city - Hard assed too as I remember it was the only city my fake ID didn't work at when I was but a wee lad.

Frank V.

[Black_Knight]

Sounds like fun, grumpus. Going to be having a fair few beers in Brighton today ourselves, though if done right, nobody will be able to remember a thing to report back afterwards.

[Grumpus]

Bear in mind that, yes, there were many beers, but they were very narrow...

G.

[Advisor]

Hehehe...very good, and very accurate accounting of the event (from Grumpus's point of view of course).

For the record, Grumpus in real life, is about 12 - 15 years younger than his avatar. I don't know how he did it, but he somehow managed to get a photo of himself in 12 - 15 years and use it here. Really weird!

The funniest part of this event for me was when Kim first got to the hotel. She saw me sitting on my usual conference couch in the lobby as I'm known to do, and came over to say hi. I was talking to KC from New Zealand and didn't notice her. She started waving her hands in front of my face and said hi. I had a puzzled look on my face because she obviously knew me, and I could tell that I was supposed to know her, but she just wasn't ringing a bell. Then she said she was Kim, and it all made sense. I introduced her to the others, and she nodded and said hi to them all, and then I introduced her to Bill...thinking that surely she'd recognize her very long-term online friend, and she just nodded with a blank look on her face (similar to my look with meeting her), and was like "Bill who?"!!! The look on her face when she recognized Bill was priceless! (I remember the same thing happening when I met Ammon in London a couple of years ago.)

Anyway, it was a great event, and even greater because we got to meet so many from the cre8asite team. Thanks for taking the time to show up to have a few drinks and some great conversation. I know there are a lot of pictures of the Cre8/HR teams together somewhere...I think Scottie's gonna post them soon if she hasn't already.

Jill

[Tim]

All sounds like a lot of fun!
One day we'll have something like this in Australia....

I know there are a lot of pictures of the Cre8/HR teams together somewhere...I think Scottie's gonna post them soon if she hasn't already.

Here they are (I think these are the ones you are referring to): http://www.highrankings.com/photos/thumbna...ls.php?album=11

[bragadocchio]

I didn't see flashing red lights in my rearview mirror until I was most of the way down the New Jersey turnpike.

It was a good trip until then.

I was about 90 percent of the way home on a 316 mile drive from Farmingham/Natick, Massachusetts, and the High Rankings Seminar. I was feeling a little giddy then -- a mix of exhausted from the trip, and energized from meeting some very nice folks, and sharing some enjoyable conversations.

I pulled into the slow lane, and the New Jersey State Trooper sped past me. The red lights vanished into the distance in front of me.

I'm not sure that I can match Stock's story telling skills, and I think I might have a few more gaps in my memory over my journey of the last four days.

But I can safely say a had a fun time.

My goals for the trip were to be able to hang out with Kim for a while, share a beer or two with Stock (Grumpus), meet some of the folks from High Rankings, and maybe even squeeze a visit into Boston.

I rented a car for the journey, and they gave me a bright red Neon with a couple of thousand miles on it. A good sign in my eyes. I took off late Wednesday morning, following directions I got from Yahoo. They were spot on the first 310 miles, and then I ran into the same confusion Stock had finding the hotel. I stayed at the budget hotel next door to the one the conference was held at. (You do get what you pay for.)

After collapsing in my room for a couple of hours (not the last time I did that over the last four days), I walked over the the conference hotel, hoping that someone would be around for the seminar. I got to meet most of the High Rankings crew face-to-face, after looking up from the placard in the entryway listing the forum agenda, and recognizing Jill, amongst a group of other folks who I had only seen before in forum avatars. I walked over, and introduced myself. It was my first chance to meet these bright, fun, intelligent people in person, and I'm glad that I had the chance to spend some more time with them over the past few days.

Kim and her fiance Eric showed up about forty minutes after I did, and wandered over, introducing herself. She asked Jill who the guy with the long hair was, and even said "Bill who?" when she was told.

Since then, I've had the chance to:

[list]Be charged by a Grumpus shouting "beer",
Go on a Starbuck's run with Kim,
Avoid most of a food fight at the High Rankings Seminar Dinner,
Shake hands and say hello to Qwerty and Cline,
Talk about ppc (pay-per-click), old houses, and moving around a lot while growing up, with Christine Churchill,
Survey a couple of excellent workshops presented by Karon and Scottie and Kim,
Be extremely charmed and impressed by the generousity, humor, and wit of all the High Rankings crew presenting the seminars and their families.[list]Thank you Jill, Scottie, Debra, Christine, Matt, Lee, and Karon. It was a pleasure meeting you all (and Grumpus and Kim). I had a chance to talk to some of the seminar participants, and it was easy to tell that they were very excited about what they had been learning, and very happy to have attended.

[scottiecl]

Boy, I'm glad those lights weren't after you!

What's with the serious, grumpy looking avatars? Here's the Bill I met!



Lots of laughs!

And people say I look young- I look like an old lady next to Stock:

[img]http://www.highrankings.com/photos/albums/stock2.jpg[/img]

[Note the long, oddly narrow beer] Did you get carded or did you just have someone else go to the bar?

[scottiecl]

I'd also like to add that when the sugar runs out, switching to sweet and low is rather uncreative- I found the strips of red cabbage from the salad to be more effective.

[Grumpus]

I was gonna throw the cabbage, but the cabbage (and some other leafy thing that wasn't quite lettuce) was the only part of my salad that had any dressing on it...

---

I'm not sure how old you folks thought I was, but, I haven't been carded for well over a year.

G.

[bwelford]

I'm not sure how old you folks thought I was, but, I haven't been carded for well over a year.

Ah, those were the days.

It's even more upsetting to be given the senior discount without even asking for it.

[cre8pc]

I don't know where to start! I had a blast the entire time. Meeting people for the first time in "real life" was a little funny but the High Rankings gang immediately put me at ease. As we got to hang out more, it felt like a family gathering.

Eric and I left the dinner at 7pm on Friday, saying our final goodbyes. We'd hope to leave later and avoid traffic. We were wrong! We hit a 5 mile accident backup in Conneticut, near Hartford I think, putting us at a crawl. We didn't lose the massive traffic until we got to Route 287, outside New York. We got home at 2 in the moring and had to get up at 8am to get our kids from our respected "ex's".

Later, while putting the dog in the back of my car to go somewhere before heading off to an all day football game (my son's team...they won, 27 to 7), I was so tired out and of body that I slammed the hatchback car door directly on my own head!

The force of the jolt cause me to bite into my tongue, and that bled for awhile. Eric kept checking to see if I had a concussion. I felt weird for the rest of the day, but insisted on going to the game. Eric drove the car though.

Jill Whalen is one of the nicest folks I've ever met. Very generous. I was an unplanned, last minute attendee, but Scottie still let me help out with her usability workshop on Friday. I knew the gang (Jill, Scottie, Deb, Matt, Karon and Christine) knew their stuff, but I was completely and genuinely impressed with how well they are as speakers. The handout I got from Karon's Copywriting workshop is something I highly value.

After a night of beer and tons of laughs, Matt managed to deliver a workshop on stats at 8:15 in the morning. Deb, Christine and I strolled in for that around 9 :wink: Jill, meanwhile, was doing another workshop bright and early around the corner from Matt's.

I'm in rambling mode here...have these images of Stock, who is incredibly good looking and hilarious, in my head mentally sparring with Eric, who thinks a lot like Stock does. But, I also couldn't get over how young he looks. I really thought he was some grumpy old guy when he first came on the scene here.

Meeting Bill was hysterical. How could I have not known it was him sitting there? We had just arrived and were weary from the 6 hr drive. I didn't expect to see anyone right away. My contacts weren't focusing right... Overall, the feeling I had with Bill is that I was with a brother. I didn't want to drink too much because I was cherishing every moment with Stock and Bill and I didn't want to forget a second of it.

I can't stand having my picture taken. My weight goes up and down and since working from home, esp. this past year, it's been a constant source of frustration for me. And yet even though I was torturing myself about that, everyone there managed to put me at ease, no matter where we were or what we were doing.

I came away with many things, which I'll likely be writing about, probably in my blog. I learned there is a strong need for the work I do and I also saw more connections between usability and the various aspects of SEO/SEM.

If I had to pick one thing that stuck out, it would be unique relationship between this forum and High Rankings. There is such respect and mutual admiration there. Bill, Stock and I were warmly welcomed by the High Rankings people. Some attendees hadn't heard of Cre8, and I had explained each time that Jill and Scottie helped get this one going and then went off to run HR's, but that we were close friends - the two forums. I think that's a special thing.

If Jill and Company hold another one of these seminars, I can't recommend them enough.

[projectphp]

It must be so weird to finally meet people. I am never sure if the people I know online are "friends", something mildy different, or something very very different. It is nice to find out that friendships online carry over into the Real World v1.1.

...PS, think it's hillarious that Kim asked "Bill who?"

[ac]

Kim you are not the only one that has run into a hatchback door, when I was younger I moved an entire business and home in a little Datsun Hatchback.

Well at the end of all the moving, I cut my face right above my eye on the hatchback door by walking into it.

Never slammed one on my head, never thought this was possible, glad you came out of the meeting alive.

Meeting Bill and G would be tough for anyone, you know how much G scares the hell out of everyone.... :shock: :shock: :shock:

[Grumpus]

you know how much G scares the hell out of everyone...

It's mostly all for show, tho.

G.

[Advisor]

You know, regarding the Cre8/HR kinship...

When I first told Lee that some cre8ers were going to show up for dinner, and mentioned that you were a different forum, she got a bit nervous and said, "We don't want any brawls at dinner, ya know!"

LOL

I explained to her that we were all friends and there wouldn't be any brawling. Of course, I didn't think about the food fights that always ensue whenever Scottie is involved. She just can't help throwing things...that one...

Glad you had fun, Kim, and thanks for your kind words...all of you!

[cre8pc]

Dang it! A brawl. Stock, why didn't you think of that? :doh:

Still recovering from the bump on the head. To make matters worse, I had round 3 on a pain in the neck (no pun intended, ha ha), root canal today. I may be feeling "off" from bashing my head because my doctor, who knows me pretty well, says I look "out of it".

More than usual anyway :wink:

I have some pictures too. Nowhere near as much as Scottie took! Will post them and let everyone know where I put them.

AC, thanks for trying to make me feel better.