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5 Reasons NOT To Attend The SOBCon Blogger Conference

SOBCon 07 is fast approaching, with a great number of outstanding bloggers descending on Chicago for the 2-day event: May 11-12th.

You can still sign-up. It’s only $350. Compared to some of the prices I’ve seen for similar events, it’s a good deal.

Lots of great speakers will be presenting. Andy Sernovitz. Liz Strauss. David Armano. And lots more…

Feel free to check out the full schedule.

Everyone’s giving you lots of reasons to attend. All of them valid. But I thought I’d flip the message around, and ask, Why shouldn’t you attend?

  1. You Don’t Like Blogging. It’s true after all: blogging is a fad. Kind of like email. And no good comes out of it either…Bloody waste of time connecting with people, earning a living, having fun. Who wants all of that?
  2. You Don’t Like People. I’m with you on this one. Who wants to meet smart, amazing, engaging people who will openly help and guide you? Meeting people sucks. They’re always breathing too close, or shaking your hand, or listening to your stories, or connecting you with others, or becoming clients, mentors and friends. Who needs all of that?
  3. Your Blog Is Already Perfect. You have enough traffic. You have enough links back. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of RSS feed subscribers. Six book deals. A movie about your life is in the works. You hit the front page of digg every day and other bloggers worship at your feet. If that’s the case, please don’t come, you’ll only embarrass the rest of us!
  4. You Smell. I can’t help you much here. Take a bath and get your butt to Chicago.
  5. You Hate Me. For starters, I’m speaking. So if you hate me, you’ll be stuck listening to me ramble about some nonsense, all the time wishing you could throw stuff at me (please don’t!) And secondly, I really don’t want to see you. I mean, you hate me. That’s not very nice.

    Luckily, there’s only a handful of people that hate me, and a few more that find me mildly distasteful…right?

So there you have it. Five reasons not to attend SOBCon 07. Pretty compelling stuff if I do say so myself. And I do, cause I wrote it.

SOBCon 07 is going to be a lot of fun. And I suspect a mind-blowing learning experience.

I can’t wait to meet so many of the people I’m already interacting with online on a regular basis; people that have quickly grown into friends. And so many of the attendees I don’t know at all, which gives me an even bigger opportunity to connect, network and have fun.

We’ll see you in Chicago…

Test Your Search Engine Knowledge With Search Engine Smackdown

The folks at Pronet Advertising have just released a Flash-based online game called Search Engine Smackdown.

The game is simple – pick a fighter – Larry or Sergey from Google, Bill or Paul from Microsoft, Jerry or David from Yahoo, and duke it out by answering a number of search engine related questions.

How many people will really pick Bill Gates as their fighter of choice? Come on!

Some of the questions are easy, but others are definitely a bit more challenging. And, most of the questions are quite interesting too. You’ll have some fun and you might just learn something too!

I’ve already asked them to add a Pause button, and I’m sure they’ll make a handful of improvements over time.

Go play Search Engine Smackdown!

This is a great example of buzz marketing at its finest. It’s fun, catchy, and helps Pronet extend and develop its brand and reputation in the markets where it does business. Nice job.

Will Your Kids Be Bloggers?

It seems likely they will. Blogging is already darn close to being mainstream, and with the volume of social networks out there, including those geared to young people, it wouldn’t shock me if every kid on the planet had a blog someday.

My son is no exception. He’s almost two and a half.

At dinner I was talking to my wife about blogging. I said the word “blogger” a few times.

My son repeated me and said, “blogger.” (He’s got an amazing vocabulary for his age, don’t ya know! You should hear him say “humongous.” Anyway…)

He said the word twice, then looked at me and said, “I have a blogger in my nose.”

Yup, all the kids are going to be bloggers. And they’ll still be plagued by boogers.

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About Ben Yoskovitz
I recently joined GoInstant as VP Product. GoInstant changes how we use the web, making it shareable like never before.

I'm also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously I founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). I'm a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach me at byosko at gmail dot com.

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