Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

Hey All!

To see the Poker Tournament Pics or to win a T-shirt.

To read about or see pictures of the Werewolf at Pubcon.

To read about the charities.

I am still in awe of the event and the tournament. Thanks again to the first pubcon sponsors of a Poker Tournament.

Everyone I spoke to was thrilled about the event. The only two complaints I have heard about the entire event were a few people said that the waitress service was too infrequent, and one person complained that some of the pictures came out blurry.

The photos as mentioned were a last minnute action as I got permission from the Nevada Gaming Commision a short time before the event and did not have professional equipment for the photos.

As far as the cocktail waitress issue goes I have allready met with the poker director at the Venetian (more about this later) and she  and I have plans for mucho cocktail waitresses next year, plus something else that should add the capital f and the exclamation point to fun for the enent next year.

And yes, unless I am trampled by a herd of 600 pound bunnies, there will be an SEO poker event with a Pubcon sponsor or two next year.

Lots of people got involved with the Name the SEO contest to win a free t-shirt. There are still many unnamed SEO’s where a free t-shirt may be won. As soon as I have all of the photos up I will set it up so the winners can pay for shipping, and the shirts will roll out, assuming there are enough to go around.

Next week when I am back in the office, I will ship out the t-shirts to the sponsors who have waited patiently.

(FULL DISCLOSURE ON THE HANDLING OF THE MONEY BELOW)

I am still letting the money trickle in and the final expenses trickle out of the pay pal account set up for the event. Probably next week I will issue the initial checks to the charities for the majority of their payments, with a small check to each to follow in a few months when all the pennies have settled.

Overall the event still has a few expenses waiting to be covered that I have just covered myself that total maybe around $200. So unless someone can give me a compelling reason why not, I am going to give a few t-shirts to my freinds and keep a few myself, and then sell whatever t-shirts if any that are left after the above, and use the money to cover the few hundred bucks the tournament is still short. If there is any extra income after selling the t-shirts then it will be split amongst the charities with absolutely nothing going to myself excepts some uber cool t-shirts (do you think this site will rank for that?), some sweet photos, one of the best memories of my life, and a truckload of new friends.

By the way, if you got to the end of this post after all that financial disclosure stuff you were probably pretty into the tournament one way or another. I am listening to suggestions now for future SEO events of different types. So if you have any input send me an e-mail at dk = @ = purposeinc.com of course without the = signs.

Much Love,

Happy New Year,

dk

This is my full o’ photos post on the SEOMoz, Werewolf, Search Spam.

Here is the permalink for the werewolf search spam page.

This post will alternate with the Name The SEO page every few days for a while.

The accuracy of the below data is roughly as believable as my stories during the playing of the game. If you uncover any inaccuracies (which will be many), or would like to give me correct names, then please comment them at the bottom or e-mail me at:

(dk -at- purposeinc.com)

and I will edit and correct it.

After the Google get to know the engineers, those of us lucky enough to have registered on time (all were invited), went into a room where we found tables, M n M’s, and bar mix on the table, with a bar in the back. We were seated in groups of I think about 16 people.

It was one hell of an event, and I had the time of my life. Matt Cutts photos at the bottom of this page.

Each person was given a deck of cards, Thank You Rand, they were fricken awsome, and must have taken a lota, lota work to make!

Each group only needed one deck though to play.

This is Anna and her delightful husband. They both live in Russia, and he is a Britt, Cheers mate!

The rules are in Red Italics Below.

How to Play Search Spam
Objective of game:

Blackhats, your goal is to eliminate those do-gooder Whitehats.

Whitehats, your goal is to rid the world of those pesky Blackhats.

Game instructions:

1. Someone: pass out Search Spam cards (8+)

2. All: assign a Moderator

This was our moderator. He did a great job, until after the first game of one of our players refusing to stay dead, he gave up on us, and referred to us as being like a rowdy fraternity.

The below are actual photos of our moderator patiently explaining how to play, while we behaved like a group of 4th graders.

3. Mod: tell everyone to sleep, tell Blackhats to open eyes

Everyone in the group goes face down and pretends they are asleep. They pound on the table and make noise so that no one will hear any of the other activities about to take place.

Two or three of the people get cards stating they are black hat. No one at this point knows who anyone else is. The black hats are told by the moderator, to open their eyes. This is Rand telling the black hats to open their eyes so they can see who each other are.

4. Blackhats: open eyes, kill a Whitehat

The black hats then decide without speaking who they want to kill of the other folks, who since they are not black hat, must be white hats. It was at this moment that I made my fatal mistake. When as a black hat I opened my eyes, I stopped hitting the table, so the guy next to me knew that I was a black hat.

I later killed Mario before anyone else believed what he said. His brother was sitting on the other side of him, and was also a black hat. Mario never stood a chance. He was a good looking kid while he was still alive.

5. Mod: tell Blackhats to sleep, tell Reinclusion Requester to open eyes

At this point, one of the white hats will have looked at his card and seen that he is the Reinclusion Requester. This is in reference to the fact that some people, whose names will not be mentioned, who previously got busted for buying like 10,000 paid links, and then got kicked out of Google, were then able to clean up their act, and then ask Google to re-include them in their listings.

6. Requester: open eyes & save someone (saving self=acceptable)

The Requester (Reinclusion Requester) then is able to pick someone while no one else is looking that he wants to save. If for some reason the black hats killed this person, then the Requester can bring them back to life before the village awakens. The person he saves can be himself. On the card this is Danny Sullivan. The only person who knows for sure at the beginning who the Requester is, is the requester himself and the moderator.

7. Mod: tell Requester to sleep, tell Revealer of Hats to open eyes

The revealer of hats has the ability to point to one person each night at this point, and the moderator will tell him if the person he is pointing to is a black hat, or not. The revealer of hats card is Matt Cutts. The only person who knows for sure at the beginning who the Revealer is, is the revealer and the moderator.

8. Revealer: open eyes, pick someone to see if he’s a Blackhat

The Revealer will then pick someone and the moderator will tell him if the person is a black hat or not.

9. Mod: tell Revealer if he picked a Blackhat

This is where the moderator tells the Revealer if the person was a black hat or not.

10. Mod: tell Revealer to sleep, tell all to open eyes

The Revealer then goes to sleep, and then the entire villiage, black and white hats, all wake up.

11. All: awaken, find out who died

The moderator then points out who the black hats killed. If the person who was killed was also picked by Danny Sullivan, the reinclusion requestor, then no one dies. This was often done dramatically by Rand who would pull the person in their chair away from the table.

12. All: decide on who to kill

The white hats, with the black hats hidden amongst them, then decide who they think was the real black hat, and then lynch that person. This is where it got really fun. In our first round I was one of the black hats. I was guilty as hell.

My co-black hatter looked as innocent as a cream puff shown below. The look of innocence is on his face, but if you look deep into his eyes you will see they are as dark as coal.

These two below decided I was the black hat, but most people did not believe them.

When asked to defend myself I simply kept clicking pictures and saying that I was a shade of grey. I don’t pretend I was good lier which is why I think Brent was able to take my money so fast playing poker.

The person accused of being a black hat must give his defense, and then everyone votes. If you are accused and the majority votes to kill you, you are hung and out of the game. The variation in rules happens here as to whether you reveal your card at this time or keep it a secret. Our table never seemed to remember which version we were playing, which is partially why our moderator headed for the hills after our first game.

13. Lather, rinse, repeat

The person dies, you go to sleep, and the black hats wake up again, and all of the above steps are repeated.

14. Blackhats: last standing = you win!

I came real close to this, but with only three white hats left, they killed me!

15. Whitehats: kill Blackhats = you win!

Yeh, whatever……

16. All: sign up for SEOmoz Premium Membership = you win!

I am extremely grateful to Rand for his work and organization on this event. Bottom line, he has gotten a boat load of links from me, and tons of praise about his tournament. He is clearly a link baiter extraordinaire, and I’m not just saying it because he is thinner and better looking than I am.

So below are tons, and tons of pics. I will comment where I know a bit about what is happening in the photos.

I would love you to send me your stories of the Werewolf tournament so I can put them on this page. This was a historic event that will be talked about in the SEO world for decades to come. No shizzle.

Rand, schooling an early group in the night.

I think the werewolfs are choosing this guy to be killed. This is even funnier if you realize that the girl in the orange shirt is an attorney that is now working for Rand. 😉 She actually will not be suing anyone, but I believe will be writing a blog about webmaster legal issues.

The fact that the guy in the blue shirt now is sitting up, and the attorney is heads down, leads me to believe that they did something wrong. There was lots of this during the early part of learning the rules. By the end of the night, I still did not really understand what I was doing. ROFL

Somebody is getting woken up here.

Rand was moving around the room so fast, and was super animated. I love being around people like that.

This shirt alone is link bait. If I knew his site, I would have linked to it just because of the colors on the shirt. It is as if it is from an entirely different shirt universe than the other ones.

That is Rhea in the purple cut off on the edge of the photo.

This is just the funniest picture of them all. I can not tell you the names of any of the guys or even exactly what was being said, but I just love it.

I don’t know if this guy was a black hat, unlikely because there is only one out of the 16, or a reinclusion requester, or a revealer. This is what it looked like during the night, everyone head down, usually banging the table, and moaning.

I believe that is Taylor Pratt in the baseball cap on the left.

As the pubcon game wore on, the mood improved and everyone started to become a bit more jovial. These appear to be three black hats realizing they have the chance now to kill someone, or perhaps their fangs are still covered in blood after a recent kill.

I am not positive, but I think this picture catches Rand as he is pulling a recent kill by the black hats away from the table, just as everyone wakes up.

This is my table as it was just filling up.

There were black MnM’s on the tables. A nice party touch!

This was my nemesis. I think her name was Natasha? She was the first one to accuse me of being a black hat. She was visiting from Russia, and we had the time of our lives in a bitter battle.

This poor guy just got voted off early for no reason.

She also was very obviously photogenic.

This is Myron. He was very influential in the Alliance! To be discussed below.

Here is one of my San Diego bretheren Merrick Lozano, the one close to the camera.

This is what it feels like when someone accuses you of being a black hat, when you are really innocent. Oh the shame of it all. Wait a second, I actually was a black hat.

Here I am being accused again. Notice Natasha standing up in the left of the photo. We killed her off, but she would not die. This lead me to name her the Vampire.

Here I am being accused again. I was as slippery as teflon.

I was waiting all night for this, but I could not have gotten away with saying it. When accused of being a black hat, my brother here said, and I am paraphrasing,

“Don’t be like that! It is who I am, I was born this way!”

The second game begun, shown above.

The two dark haired guys at the head of the table, and including all the guys on the right side of the table, and me standing, formed THE ALLIANCE!. We bonded together like a bunch of meat heads and decided it didn’t matter whether one of us was a black hat or not, but that one by one we would kill off the other side.

This is a desperate plea by an innocent white hat that he is innocent. The ALLIANCE did not care. We killed him, innocent or not.

Here is a photo just before our moderator got sick of us, and took off.

This is a photo of the ALLIANCE as they stood on December 5th, 2007. Never before has a group formed with a more insignificant purpose, and stuck together better against such mildly strong obstacles, and accomplished a more insignificant reward. Men, I was proud to serve with you! Mario by the way almost F*&#@% the whole thing up, and we almost had to kill him.

This picture perfectly shows the power of the alliance just before the guillotine came down on the other players.

This is Mario having just barely survived with his life after mutinying against the ALLIANCE.

The ALLIANCE (minus Myron) right after we killed off the last of the other team. It turned out by sheer luck that we were all white hats after all, and that we had killed off the black hats. The celebration ensued.

Game three began with Natasha as our moderator.

I can’t even remember what moment it was, but this gentleman was claiming, how is it possible that I am the black hat two games in a row? he was.

This game was played by the veterans, and the previous winners.

Matt Cutts, the guy doing the pointing was one of the black hats. The woman with the red hair doing the pointing was the other black hat. The guy between them, Tony Adam, was a white hat, and either the reinclusion requester or the revealer. I believe he was the reinclusion requester.

Matt was saying over and over, I am not a black hat (lie) I know because I am Matt Cutts! (the revealer). Hering Matt Cutts swear that he was Matt Cutts and people not believing him…priceless.

Matt, desperately pleading that he is not the black hat.

Matt, and his evil cohort trying to convince others that this poor guy is a black hat. Do any webmasters out there who have been delisted have any sympathy at all for poor Matt?

Matt, trying to get a vote started against the guy next to him. It was just a little too little, too late.

I am a huge fan of Matt and his work, and it was so much fun to see him have so much fun.

So please comment below so I can name the people correctly, correct my bad quotes, and improve the whole post.

I would also love to hear your werewolf search spam stories from the event that I can add. Feel free to e-mail me (dk -at- purposeinc.com) your pubcon werewolf party stories and I will add them to this post.

Another great day at Pubcon. I woke up real late, had Dim Sum at Red 8 at the Wynn. If you are still in Vegas, go there tomorrow for breakfast, which I believe is from 11:00 to 3:00. Ask for the Dim Sum menu and order away. You will feel as if you are in Hong Kong. It is some of my favorite food. They only serve Dim Sum on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I will be there all three days.

I spent a great evening with Aaron Chronister of Mad Hat Media, who taught me a few things that I had not yet heard. A very, very intelligent individual who obviously has a very kind heart and was exceedingly helpful to me. He gave me a fantastic idea about how to capture leads on my site instead of just waiting for them to call using a simple form.

Rhea was also there, and has a great story that I hope to post here within a few days.

The place is full of Britts who are hear to see a huge fight that I have heard is between an undefeated American and an undefeated Britt. If you want to feel a bit safer around the Wynn with this pumped up crowd around, simply refer to them often and genuinely as mate, and as you walk off say either Cheers, or Cheers Mate! It helps to visualize Brad Pitt in the movie Snatch.

Here are a few more photos from the tournament. I would like very much to receive any stories you might have about your playing in the tournament. I am going to try to put together pages about as many players as I have time for, each player with a page.

If you write me a short story or stories about your experience playing it will be greatly appreciated. Anyone who sends me a story by Friday the 14th that gets used on this blog will win a T-shirt, although you will have to paypal over $10 for shipping and handling.

You do not have to have been a player. You can be a friend of a player, or even someone who just heard a rumor.

O.K. Here are some more photos.

Jeremy’s table preparing to play.

Getting ready to play.

How much more James Bond can you get?

Pam, clearly causing some distraction to the other players, even before the first hand is dealt. Make sure listen to her suggestions as to how to pack for Pubcon. I followed the tips exactly and it has worked well.

David from Red Fly’s table.

That is just a quick few more pics from the tournament. Please comment the names of any players you know, so I can begin to put together players pages.

By the way the answer to the question is, “Yes I will be doing this tournament again next year, and yes we will be taking sponsors. It was such a massive success that I have come up with all kinds of great ideas to make it more fun, more Vegas, more food and drinks, and better service along with a place for the guests and hangers on to be even more comfortable. Those sponsors who had faith in me for the first year will be given preference over any others, as loyalty is a rare and valuable commodity these days. I will yack more about this in the months to come.

So please send me some quick articles, a paragraph, story, or just plain gossip about any of the players and the tournament. I would also like to create a page on Dax and Stefan Juhl who both were the inspirations of the tournament, and who both of which did not even play! Although Dax did grace us with his presence. He arrived elegantly dressed, and was a gentleman as always.

Matt Cutts, who as you all know, I follow his advice to the letter, did not attend which disappointed me, but he did accept a t-shirt which thrilled me! I also gave one to Danny Sulivan, and Brett Tabke who also accepted the T-shirt.

And in all seriousness, thank you again to all of you, especially Brett, Matt, and Danny who without your help oddly enough this tournament would never have taken place! So thank you yet one more time for all of the awesome help you have given me.

dk

 

Sorry to those who did not make in the photo.

I’d like you to just stop and think how many people this group of people has the ability to communicate with every day. A lot of power, a lot responsibility, but at this moment a lot of fun, and one hell of a picture! I will get a full size version of this up later.

dk

I am blogging from the Wynn hotel restaurant at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas. What a night! The tournament lasted almost 6 hours, with the final showdown dropping chip by chip till the end.

Tons o’ pictures coming over the next week.

We even got a song from Tony Clifton, until the Poker Director took the mike away from him.

Greg from BOTW put a side game together with folks who didn’t make it to the final table.

The winners in the money, were as follows.

(Names not spell checked due to it being 3:41 am)

9. David Lawlor who won $290

8. Scott Skinger walked away with $387

7. Ben Hun doubled his entry fee with $484

6. Merrick Lozano had a nice pot at $581

5. Ben Davenport threw $678 in his pocket.

4. Jon Roy walked out nicely with $774.

3. Rob Schmid proke into the thousands with a take hom eof $1355

At one point, and you will see this in the photos to come, Jeremy Schoemaker, had a pile of chips as tall as the Palms Hotel. In his own words he later said if he had just gone all in on every hand he very possibly could have won just on that.

In the end, Dan Perry chipped away at Jeremy’s pile until it dwindled and just evaporated into thin air. Dan told me that he had only played poker once before at his uncles house, but had watched it a fair bit on T.V. It was a nice way for him to break into the game.

In the end Jeremy Schoemaker took a nice second after a 5 and a half hour chug to the end, and walked away with a nice $1936 for his nights work.

The winner, who was a little less known than Mr. Shoe was Dan Perry who beaming ear to ear walked out to go pack and fly home with $3195 in his hand.

Just before he went out the door, he asked me to take a $500 chip from his winnings, and give the money to the wife of the fire fighter who died in the fires.

Ben just stopped by our table to say hello, and with that I would like to thank all of the players, the sponsors, and my buddy’s at the Venetian for one of the times of my life.

Left to Right, Jeremy #2, Me just stoked!, and Dan #1, our first ever Purposeinc, Pubcon, BOTW, Planet Chiropractic, SEOish, Chipotle, SEO Poker Tournament winner!

There is more to come, stay tuned!

dk

Tonight is the night. I am trying to get a little sleep after last night. I met some of the amazing new crop of SEO’s at their first Pubcon, here to take on the world!

The T-shirts have arrived and are ready for the entrants. We still have 20 seats left in the tournament as of 1:45 this afternoon.

Notices!

1. Sign up here now if you want to play. You can not sign up at the time of the tournament.

2. Go join the Venetian Players club now, as you can not play without having signed up there first. It is free, and only takes a few minutes.

3. Be there at 9:00 tonight.

4. Thank our sponsors who made it all possible,

PlanetChiropractic

SEOish (Who was up an amazingly large amount of money last night, so

a. ask him if he is still up, and

b. ask him to buy the drinks!

BOTW Try to list your sites with them, I did and they did! For a small fee you can be listed in one of the oldest and most respected names in the industry.

Chipotle Try one of their burritos. The reason they sponsored it is that I am one of their best customers!

Spectators are welcome if you are part of Pubcon, a friend of someone at Pubcon, or someone hot that one of our players wants standing behind them to make them look good at the tournament.

Have way, way, way too much fun tonight!

And if you haven’t met me, come up and say hello!

dk

Every hat I have ever owned off to Rand Fishkin for pulling off one of the absolute funnest things I have ever done in my entire life. This will truly be one of those events that literally for the rest of our lives people in the SEO will say either they were there, or were not. This made Pubcon the must do event of my year!

If you weren’t there, this blog will not make any sense, but you can still enter the Poker Tournament for Thursday night.

Here are a few of the photos from the event. I am so tired, that I will post the rest of them here over the next week. For now, I just prepared a few, and will post them here with a quick note on them.

 

First Rand had to school everyone on how to play. I failed this portion.

 

 

 

Matt Cutts rolled in late in style in the Google Limo, arriving in his usual fashion.

 

More early schooling by Rand about how to keep your head down.

I have  your card Matt Cutts!

 

The players learned the game and were off.

 

We each got a deck of the cards to keep. Very cool.

 

A black hat trying very unconvincingly to state his innocence.

 

For one game we formed an alliance, Survivor style, and picked off the other people one by one. Oddly enough none of us were the black hat.

 

This is a photo of Matt Cutts trying desperately to state that someone else was the Black Hat. A few moments later the truth came out, that Matt is a Black Hat.

Not too long after the last picture, Matt Cutts was doing that funny 90’s swinging head and body dance singing, “Black Hats Rule” “Black Hats Rule” “Black Hats Rule” This may or may not have been caught on video. Keep your eyes open to see if it appears.

There are tons more pics that I will post here in the next weekish.

Rand, Thank you so much for one of the funnest things I have ever done. There was so much strategy, intrigue, hilarity, and down right stupidity that it was amazing!!! If I was major sponsor looking for publicity, I would pay Rand a million dollars to host more Werewolf tournaments.

Want More Games? Come play poker at the tournament Thursday night!

Player number 47 is Tony Clifton. I thought this was a joke. I did a little research, and A, he is in Vegas for the week as he is friends with Chris Kata of Spark. Tony also appears to still do some consulting for them.

He used to be a big performer in Vegas back in the day. He is quite a bit of living Vegas history, and I am thrilled he is coming to the tournament.

Whew! Today has been moving!

WARNING – You must join the Venetian Players Club by Thursday night.

They can do it in about 2 minutes. Go to the Players Club which is by the Sports Book in the Venetian any time between now and tomorrow night, but since there will be so many players please don’t wait till the last hour. 🙂

So far today I have met tons of great people for the first time, and we have gotten a bunch of new entries.

I even met one famous search marketer who said he was kicking himself now that he didn’t sponsor the tournament when he had the chance. 🙂

I want to talk more about our sponsors as I have a second, but here is the simple rundown.

We are busting our ass right now trying to get T-shirts done for the tournament. Since this was only planned over the last 3 weeks, they may or may not be done in time.

The sponsors have generously put up the dough for the T-shirts. They are not going to be cheap. If they come out the way they are supposed to, they will be collectors items that will be the must have in the SEO community for decades to come.

So super huge thanks to our sponsors, and I will keep pushing the process of getting the shirts produced and perfect by Thursday night!

I spoke to my buddy at the Venetian Poker room just now, and he is going to arrange for there to be a dealer there for the three hours teaching people how to play Texas Holdem at no charge. If you take advantage of these free lessons, please tip the dealer as they make their money mostly off of tips. You do not have to be a player to get the lessons, they are for all of the Pubcon crew and their guests.

Groupies! Spectators will be welcome for the event. Come and watch and cheer on your favorite SEO, SEM, PPC or whatever guy!

I realized a lot of people don’t know what I look like, so I am putting a photo of myself here so you can come up to me at Pubcon. Don’t be shy of me, I look like the Russian Olympic wrestling coach, but am actually quite friendly. (No offense to the Russians)

This was me doing chiropractic on San Diego fire fighters last month during our big fires.

 

If you want to learn Texas Holdem Poker, go to SEO POKER TABLE (dot) COM, but don’t link to it. It is free to practice there.

There still are tons of people I am running into, who don’t know about the tournament yet, so please let everyone your know, know!

And huge thanks to BOTW . They have been around for forever in the internet world. They actually review sites the way Matt Cutts has described a good directory should, and they don’t approve every site. They put up big bucks as sponsors, so we all owe them huge thanks. Go by their booth at Pubcon and say hello. Greg also did a ton of promotion to his friends about the tournament.

Huge thanks also to PlanetChiropractic.com

Mike the owner is a great guy and a great chiropractor. He practices in the Western Beach area of Los Angeles near Venice California. Not only do I know him from the SEO world, but I have sent him lots of patients when they move up to Los Angeles. He is very apreciated for his sponsorship.

Our third sponsor is SEOish, In my conversations with Pat, it really sounds like he is sponsoring the tournament simply to give back to an industry that has been really good to him. Like me, he has been befreinded by some very knowaldable people who have helped him to become very successfull in this area. He has done very well, and would now love to give a little back.

Our fourth sponsor is Chipotle. I personally consider them to have the finest burritos in the world, and have developed a close tie to the company. They provided me with hundreds of burritos to feed the firefighters when they were not receiving sufficient food due to supply lines not being fully put in yet. Iam great friends with Kevin Kupper who is the manager of one of their San Diego stores. They have provided me with free Burrito playing cards, that are worth one full on gargantuan burrito. Their is a Chipotle about one half block south of the Venetian. All players will get a free burrito card. It also looks like a playing card.

I am heading over to the conferance in a few minnutes. If you see me there, give me a hoot. I want to make as many friends as possible.

Much Love,

dk

 

 

 

Thanks to all those that sold out this Pubcon event in two weeks.

I was just able to release more seats.

I still think that most of the Pubcon attendees have not heard about the tournament yet.

If you have not heard the story yet,

Everyone is invited!

Spectators are welcome!

Read all about it here.