When I first got to know Stan James (Lijit’s Founder), we had a great conversation about a conference called Gnomdex in Seattle. I thought I had heard of such a conference in my startup days out in San Francisco, and sure enough I had.
In the late 1990s, I worked at a startup in Emeryville, CA. While there, several of the developers received an email from a guy named Chris Pirillo, and wished they could attend a conference in the corn fields of Iowa. It was called Gnomedex.
Lijit was a sponsor of the conference in 2007, and last year I attended. It was an amazing conference. Probably one of my favorite of the year because of Chris’ curation of speakers (including the guy that drove the Mars Rover!) and the community interaction of the attendees.
As I laid out my wishlist for conferences to speak at in 2009, Gnomedex was high on the list. Over the course of the year, Chris and I became better friends, and I was honored to be asked to speak at Gnomedex 2009. Talking about the impact blogging and community have had on my life (The presentation was entitled “How to be Awesome…er”) I really enjoyed speaking in front of the Gnomedex attendees, both in there and virtually.
Here are my presentation slides:
As always, it was great to connect with current and future Lijit publishers. Gnomedex has been a great measure of Lijit’s growth. In 2007 and 2008, we were the new kids, and most of the conversations I had about Lijit were filled with explanations of what we do, and why its interesting. Now, with our strong feature set and new monetization options, the conversations are much more focused on how to work together.
If you have a short list of conferences, please put Gnomedex on the list. Its an amazing conference, on par with SXSW (except without the size and craziness), and is the only conference that I lament missing sessions.
Cant wait for Gnomedex 2010!
