We are just returning from Search Engine Strategies Toronto, our third time exhibiting and our fourth visit. I’m sitting with 4 of my colleagues in the Porter Lounge at the Island airport in Toronto, after a great sushi dinner at Fune’s.

This year the show was held at the Sheraton downtown on Queen street, it was a much smaller venue than all previous years. The carpets were incredibly ugly but the internet access was really fast – possibly for the first time in 30 shows. The Sheraton hotel in general of course is great, the rooms were fantastic, Trader’s bar serves great beverages and hotwire got us rooms for $76 instead of the show special of $199 (hint – if you travel lots and don’t use hotwire I bet you’re wasting thousands of dollars).

On Monday night after the first day of the show we held the first ever Acquisio party, which was co-sponsored by our good friends at Page Zero Media and NVI Solutions – Andrew and Mona at Page Zero actually did all the work (thanks a lot guys!). The event was held at the Drake Hotel on Queen, on 2 floors including a rooftop terrasse, we had about 160 guests who stayed with us til well into the next day, and we managed to actually drink as if we were 300. The party was memorablke, the food was excellent, especially the sliders and the fries.

On Tuesday I had my first official speaking engagement in a non-sponsored session. Subject was Canada specific issues in paid search. I outlined 4 main issues:

• Small market
• 2 currencies on multiple search engines
• 2 official languages
• Rogue american advertisers

Other speakers on the panel were:

Ari Shomair, Director of Marketing Optimization, henderson bas
Guillaume Bouchard, Co-founder and CEO, NVI
Heather Dougherty, Research Director, Hitwise

We should be back next year for another great canadian search marketing show.