I'm finally back in Seattle, after another fascinating day of playing with some industry leaders, gurus and fun guys. This morning I crushed my alarm clock after it went off at 8am. I finally got up around 9 and out of my room around 10am - just in time to catch the link building forum with Thomas Bindl, Debra Mastaler and Eric Ward. They gave me some good tips on how to link build for e-commerce sites - I used the example of Shoes.com as I had met their in-house SEO the night before and spotted him in the room (unless my hangover memory was too shot to remember him correctly).

I also had the unfortunate realization that the question I posed to the panel was the first time I had spoken since the night before, leading to a frog-like sound pushing into the microphone - apologies to those who were wondering how a dead iguana managed to belch at an SES session. Luckily, after the panel, Elisabeth, Debra, Thomas & I had lunch downstairs in the Marriot's beautiful and pricey restaurant. Let me note that this was the absolute first meal I had had since arriving in San Jose - everything else was little trinkets of food, or Luna Bars I managed to stuff in my laptop case before leaving. I was so thankful for real food, I didn't even realize that Thomas had stolen the bill and paid before I even knew it had arrived - thanks Thomas!

At lunch, Elisabeth had two quite strong bloody marys to "pick her up". How did I know they were strong? I had one myself, and noted that her guess was right - the "hair of the dog" was just the thing to turn around a nasty morning. After lunch, we went to the site clinic, where Elisabeth heckled the poor site owners (sorry to Cherokee, in particular), turned off the lights and laughed so loud during the clinic that we had to leave and go into the hall. Sadly, dear readers, this was the end of the conference sessions, but don't worry - more fun was had.

I went down to the speaker ready room and spent an hour or more being trained by Gary Price (of the SEW blog) in the non-existance of privacy. He was able to show Barry (Schwartz), Ben (Pfeiffer), Chris (Boggs) and I all of our previous addresses and employers, the names of every girl we had ever dated and what the cover of the New York Times looked like on the day we were born - all with the help of library card (note to self: get library card). More on this tomorrow when I get my notes from his private session and the URLs.

I decided to go over to the San Jose Tech Museum afterwards, which I discovered was primarily for kids. It was, however, hilarious to see the "whack a spam" display behind DaveN & Dax (infamous in the spam world) who were there with Chris and Jen (of JenSense). I also got to watch a Sony Aibo robot dog do tricks and learn all about the woman who invented Kevlar - fun stuff.

This took me back to the Marriot, where Barry waited patiently in the lobby for 4-5 straight hours, meeting and greeting the folks. I took the opportunity to go swimming at the Marriot pool, despite having stayed at the Hilton (technically) and found Thomas (Bindl), my lunch compatriot, already there tanning. He and I chatted some and I got some sun that will hopefully help rid me of my terrible farmer's tan. After a couple hours at the pool, I changed and went back downstairs, where I met Ron (I'll get his name and URL in here tomorrow). Ron runs an SEO/M company that caters primarily to government and non-profits. He and I went to dinner at Johnny Rockets where he filled me in on all sorts of interesting tidbits (like the fact that Photoshop doesn't optimize photos perfectly, since it leaves header information in the image). From dinner, I caught a cab to the airport and flew home.

Let me just say this - if you haven't been to an SES show, you don't know what you're missing. Well, now you do, since I've filled in the details, but you should still go.