SMX West was great, folks liked my presentation on what’s new in social media marketing (though they said I spoke too fast) and I met a whole load of awesome people, some of whom are new acquaintances and some of whom are friends I already had a relationship with. The show was good for a handful of high quality leads as well as another handful of secondary quality leads and opportunities for content distribution (more on that when I share my presentation on 13 ways to do distribute content without resort to Digg or SU).

The exhibitors were an interesting mix, some of whom had interesting stuff to share (the new PixelSilk CMS) while others were flat out boring and generic. I think Third Door Media (SMX’s organizing company) should institute a quality score to ensure that advertisers get the maximum ROI from their booths – make sure that they do something to draw in foot traffic and leads. The List did a great job by offering a free sample of their unique product, as did Widemile with their insert-card survey, the answers to which they offered to share with participants (as well as raffle a $150 Amazon gift certificate to participants, but that was a secondary consideration, personally). The search agency booths were rather bland and generic, unfortunately for them. Kind of ironic, really. Ever hear of being remarkable (the Purple Cow principle…)? That said, Bruce Clay was a fascinating interviewee who generously shared his time and wise insight. Be sure to check out that interview when I publish it!

I finally met Avinash Kaushik in person as he was setting up his booth with Market Motive, after corresponding with him on and off. I’ll be editing this post to link to some of the folks I met. If you want a change to the description and or link/linktext or a second/3rd link, email me.