Last week Thursday Cape Town SEO geeks were treated to quite the evening. It was Mozcation, an event the industry leading SEOMoz guys throw and boy did they throw it well!
It was a seriously well organized event and there were only two issues I had with the entire thing:
1. I didn’t get a cool ready made name tag and I had to write my own one :(
2. The panel was too short in my opinion.
Yes seriously those were the only two issues I had with the whole thing. It was a very well organized and well run event. They seriously covered it all.
Arriving to the Awesomesauce
On arrival we headed over to the registration desk. They couldn’t find my ready made name tag so I just drew my name on one and off I went. We were each given a wicked Mozcation T-shirt, a cool snappy wrist thing as well as two free drink tickets – winning! We also got a little goody bag filled with stickers, a MozBot key-ring as well as a wicked SEOMoz water bottle.
We mingled around for almost an hour and got to take some photo’s with the man himself. What a genuinely nice guy. He was very humbled and actually interested in you. He took the time to find out my name, what I did and how I was enjoying the event. Top marks there! In fact, all the SEOMoz staff were fantastic. I managed to chat to Jen Lopez their community manager for a couple minutes and she was just the same – warm, inviting and just eager to share as were all the other Mozzers as well.
We headed inside and listened to a local SEO panel for around 30 minutes. In my opinion, the questions weren’t terrific but they were all well answered. Was good to see some of our local talent on stage. The panel was a bit short, but hey, what can you do.
Left to right: Shaun Jordaan(Synergize), Allen Jaffe(R.O.I Media), Christine Da Silva(MIH), Chris Mills(Imod Digital), Rafiq Phillips(iDrive)
Fresh Web Explorer
Next was a talk from two Mozzers introducing a new piece of juicyness from the Moz team called Fresh Web Explorer. It is basically a new way to discover fresh content and looks to be fantastic. I can’t tell you more than that ;)
Rand Himself – The Psychology of the Nudge
Next was the big man himself – Rand Fishkin. His talk was centered more around CRO and consumer psychology, but it was a great talk. The nerds in the room I think wanted a few more facts and maybe some more numbers, but the talk was still fantastic. He has quite a way of presenting and manages to keep you glued the entire time. You can learn so much about being on stage from him. He had quite a bit of energy and you just kept wanting more!
Unfortunately we ran out of time for a Q&A session with Rand inside, but he stayed for at least another hour and a half outside mingling with people and answering questions. They had some treats on hand and I might have shoved a King Kone or two into my face – Ssssh!
All in all, it was a fantastic event with great people, some really valuable insights, and I think created a hunger within the local community to try and host more conferences like these on our own to keep growing and educating ourselves.
For more photos check some out here and here.
Hey Jen
Thanks for the comment. Yea it really was inspiring and hopefully we can setup some more events like this in the near future. Maybe I can tap the great Mozzers for some ideas closer to the time ;)
Thanks again for joining us! I’m glad you had a good time. :) My favorite part was this: “…I think created a hunger within the local community to try and host more conferences like these on our own to keep growing and educating ourselves.”
That is exactly why we do community events such as Mozcation! If you need help at all getting this started, please do let us know.
:) Yea it was. Nicely done on the panel btw ;)
It really was an amazing event!