I had a great time at my first social media conference, SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA. I enjoyed getting to meet some of the top players in the search & social media marketing industry, such as:

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia, serial entrepreneur and Twitter kingpin Jason Calacanis, and #1 Digg user MrBabyMan.

I also met a ton of amazingly nice,  highly-talented marketing mavens:

Toronto SEO Jeff Quip, Utah SEO Jordan Kasteler, action sports publisher Cameron Olthius, Guillame Bourchard of Montreal SEO company NVI, social media consultant Brent Csutoras, social media strategist Reem Abeidoh, Shinsuke Usami and Kazumasa Harumoto of Japanese shopping site EC Navi, social media agency president Rob Key, New York social media consultant Chris Winfield, Chiropractic SEO Michael Dorausch, small business SEO Matt McGee, Michael Gray, Kid Disco, Scott Clark who gave permission to use the photo above, Jane Copland from SEOmoz, Lisa Barone, Nick Dynice, Abhilash Patel of Rank Lab Interactive, and social media rock star Neil Patel.

It was cool to meet so many people experienced at running and scaling a SEO / social media business and talking to them about how they did it. They led me to believe that I can do the same.

And thanks to the generous people who bought me dinner and drinks every single night.

I'll see you on the flipside -- from behind the podium -- one of these days!