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Google, Yahoo & Confirming Their Busloads Of Speakers

It's probably a good time for me to mention why I keep saying Google and Yahoo aren't yet confirmed so often in my posts about individual sessions. Shouldn't they be, at this point?

Both of these companies are giants in the search space, so it makes sense to involve them in a wide range of sessions. It takes me some time to assemble a special list of openings I've set aside for them. For SES San Jose 2005, each company has been invited to participate in about 20 different sessions. It's one giant hunkin' email I send out to them.

That's a lot of sessions for each company to consider. Most of these are things they've done before, but it still takes time for them to churn through everything. Then it takes more time for them to reconfirm all the right people and arrange a bus to put them on.

OK, I'm joking about the bus part. But the process is moving along, and you'll see speakers from both companies begin to appear on the agenda in the coming week or so.

By the way, over at Google, it's Barry Schnitt who is doing the heavy lifting to assemble the Googlers who will be taking part in panels, helped as needed in particular by Nate Tyler.

At Yahoo, Aaron Ferstman ropes up the Yahooligans on the editorial side of things, while Dina Freeman assembles those from the service formerly known as Overture, Yahoo Search Marketing.

You won't see Barry, Nate, Aaron or Dina on any of the panels, but they play a huge role in making getting the people you do see from their companies there -- as do their counterparts at MSN, Ask Jeeves and AOL who have their own smaller groups of speakers they assemble for the show.

The next time you see a group of people surrounding a Yahoo, Google or other search engine speaker after a session ends, look a bit on the edge of the crowd and you may spot Dina, Nate, Aaron, Barry or their colleagues doing their jobs in getting their people to the right places. The clipboards they hold are a dead giveaway :)

PR folks can take a lot of flak, and I deal with plenty that make me want to shoot out that flak. But this group is golden, PR folks who make life easier. That's not suck up talk, just reality and thanks. And if you spot one of them, give them your thanks as well. Then hit them up for some swag!