The panelists did a superb job of outlining their positions on search without taking shots at their competition. The overriding theme heard throughout the evening, both in the panel and the backroom discussion:

lists are just the beginning –

I heard a lot of talk about video indexing, audio indexing, and all company assets (lee) that can be digitized. The need for optimization doesn’t end with text on the page, of course, and this will be more important as the SE’s mature. Another theme was the importance of personalization. It’s somewhat of a four letter word among SEO’s, but it is happening and I think it’s an opportunity to defend your niche, if you have one And the last words I heard a lot of were ‘live’ and ‘universal’. Yep.

There were a few people I am a fan of that I wanted to meet going into the event and actually got to speak with, Chris Dohman of mimasm.com, and Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com. A few other folks I met for the first time – Annie Picken from Arcstone, Ari Malek from WSIWebImpact, Chris Mayhew from Page10, and Lin Combs from Eye4Image.

Some others I hope to catch next time – Paul Jahn at LocalMN, Mary Weintraub of AimClearBlog.com, Nina Hale, and

Prince…

Isn’t he an SEO?

If he was, he would probably just be a symbol, like ^ or something. You can be the first to rank for that I believe

^