DISQUS

Tamar,

I had a great conversation with Li, Searchcamp Philly's organizer over the weekend where we talked about the programming and positioning of this event as it relates to true barcamp-style unconferences. I had a very negative knee-jerk reaction to the website they had set up to say the least. My first thought was "OMG, (yes I txt my thoughts) here's a group of search marketers hijacking the barcamp movement for their own gain. Wonder why search marketers have the reputations of snake-oil salesmen?"

The statement is over the top I know, but I have two dogs in this race. I've been in search for over a decade, I've been building and nurturing communities for the same amount of time and have been a search marketer for about 7 years. So I fall on both sides of this issue.

My initial assumptions were wrong thank goodness. However the http://searchcampphilly.com site is this event's own worst enemy. Which brings up another point: if these folks are working to create a terrific unconference event, how did they not know that this would be an issue? In my mind, this is still unresolved. But in the end, Li assured me that there are all the ingredients to a real unconference event here and that the group heading this up will make the necessary changes to the site so everyone knows that.

Again, I'm thankful I reached out to talk to Li on the phone to find out what the organizer's true intentions are here. There are going to also be several open tracks in true barcamp style where attendees can sign up and present on their own topics along with the terrific speaker lineup she and her team has set up. It is important that the press on this event makes this clear since this event is borrowing the name and logo from the barcamp movement that this is more than an smx-lite or search engine strategies lite.

I still expect the organizers to do more with the copy on the website to make it clear that this is a community event and not a standard conference with a preset agenda filled with circuit speakers. In the meantime, I have committed to speak at the event and viewzi has become a sponsor to show our support for the ideals behind unconferencing and to help the organizers with the event anyway we can.

I am sure the organizers will follow through with their commitments and back off search marketing, keyword laden copy and spend more time focusing on the community by providing a proper tool like the http://barcamp.org wiki to allow people to sign up for sessions and reach out to fellow attendees. At the time of this writing there are no tools available specific for this event that allow the attendees to connect and communicate before the event.

I expect this will be a top notch event and hope to meet lots of new friends there!

giovanni gallucci, viewzi

friend me up! friendfeed.com/giovanni | twitter.com/giovanni | flickr.com/photos/theagencyblog/

John,

You make some interesting points in your piece here. In fact, the reason why we *don't* have our own crawler is because we think Google is doing a pretty good job at that :-)

We focus on the UX and use public API's to drive the data tier of our engine. Seems to be working out for us pretty well at this point (less than two months after launch).

Anyhoo - like the blog.

giovanni gallucci, viewzi.com evangelist

facebook: giovanni@gallucci.net | friendfeed.com/giovanni | linkedin.com/in/ggallucci | twitter.com/giovanni

Viewzi makes search fun.

Thank you for introducing your readers to viewzi.

If you or your readers would like to suggest features you'd like to see in future releases of viewzi or come across any issues when using the site, please drop me a note at giovanni(@)viewzi[dot]com or let me know via twitter: http://www.twitter.com/giovanni

-giovanni, viewzi evangelist

Pretty much? How about "like totally?"

Darren,

Have you tried viewzi yet? I'd argue that we do searchme better than searchme AND a whole lot more. We're in private beta now, but you can get access by going to http://www.viewzi.com/invites and using "gio" as your referral code. Let me know what you think.

-giovanni
viewzi evangelist

Arnold,

Thanks for the nod! We're excited about the platform and what it means for the future of search! If any of your readers want instant access, they can bypass the normal review for invites and just use "gio" as their referral code at http://viewzi.com/invites

Happy searching!

-giovanni

Anyone who'd like to have a peek at viewzi can go to http://viewzi.com/invites and use "gio" as the referral code for instant access. Let us know what you think of the beta!

-giovanni, viewzi evangelist