For those who aren’t here, I have to tell you; the dancing horses and intergalactic light show are amazing. I never knew you could train a horse to do taps… ok, I might be exaggerating a tad. There are however a lot of search happy conference goers that are all geared up for the days to come. 20 sessions in the first day and a lunch-and-learn with Google Webmaster Central, there’s something for everyone here. I went down the path of Online Video Advertising, Podcast & Audio Optimization, Mobile Search Optimization and ending with Meet The Mobile Search Engines. I have a note book full of observations and takeaways that I will share (only a couple – I’ll expand on some topics more after I digest and continue additional research):

• Integrating multiple touch points, realize that interactivity doesn’t mean “press play.” With dynamic video applications being created and measured, sticky video is the key to user interest and brand awareness. As in all things, a single tactic is just that – blur the lines between traditional school of thought to engage the user from multiple areas; video being one avenue.
• When producing Podcasts the key is still content. Transcripts (that’s FULL transcripts) are such a valuable and essential part of the process. Cumbersome and time consuming? Yes. Potentially very costly depending on the amount of archives you may need to produce? Yes. Something I would urge any podcaster to do? After hearing all the implications surrounding NOT doing transcripts and the contextual benefits, you better believe I urge you to.
• Rick Klau from FeedBurner was extremely informative. I am really looking forward to pouring over my notes on his talk and reading his suggestions. He also has a blog that I am very interested to jump into as well.
• My favorite quote of the conference so far was uttered by one of the members of the Google Webmaster Central panel… I’ll end this post with it, so keep reading.
• Dust off those old 1995 websites folks, you’ll be needing a refresher course in how to design for Mobile Search. Now, I’m not suggesting we all head back to frames and such, but minimalist design, content rich… ok, I guess you could call that appropriate web 2.0 practices but I wouldn’t have gotten the same reaction from you. Mobile Search; the great frontier awaits.

All in all my gray matter is starting to fill up nicely. All the sessions I was able to attend have been very informative, dynamic, and well presented. As I stated earlier in this post, check back for future exploded posts on these and many more topics covered in toda y’s sessions. Also, be sure to check back tomorrow for yet another installment of SES 2007 NY.

So what’s that awesome quote you’ve been waiting for…

Flash question popped up about Flash being crawled by engines and will content and images be indexed?

“…it’s like taking a television commercial and putting it on the radio and complaining that you don’t see the pictures…”

More to come.