Linda is an SEO and ecommerce guru who writes for elasticpath’s getelastic blog on which articles such as Improving Search Results for Research-Online-Purchase-Offline Customers, Why eCommerce is a Lot Like iCanHasCheezburger, How to Find an Online Reputation Manager and Yes Virginia There Is a Santa Claus & He Searches for Free Shipping can be found.

Recently, Linda won Marketing Pilgrim’s 2008 Search Engine Marketing Scholarship for an article she wrote entitled, 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics.

Since Linda began writing getelastic in October 2007, she’s grown the blog to one of the most widely read in the space resulting in its being named one of 15 entrepreneur blogs worth reading by the Wall Street Journal.

Before landing the getelastic writing gig, and all the travel-to-conferences glamor that comes with it, Linda was Marketing Director for Vancouver-based Image X Media, an SEO, SEM, web design firm which has done work for CreativePro, FreshBrain and Arizona State University.

In 2000, Linda suffered a kickboxing injury which injured her calf muscles and landed her in a wheelchair. As one can imagine that fate isn’t an easy one to take but after spending five minutes with Linda, you very quickly realize the ability to walk is not the only thing that matters in life. Obviously Linda, as anyone in her condition would, wants to walk again and she’s working diligently towards that goal but she hasn’t let it over shadow her life or stop her from living a rewarding one.

I first met Linda at Blogword in Las Vegas in September 2008. I can’t remember the exact moment I met her (hey, it was Vegas) but I distinctly remember sitting with her at a bar in the Mirage after the TechSet party at the hotel’s Bare and just talking about life, relationships and this thing they call the internet. We even made our way into Jet, Vegas’ answer to a New York City nightclub.

The next two days were filled with the aforementioned pigeon chasing and the “guacamole event” along with cosmetics shopping (at Sephora), dinner (I think she ordered a Caesar salad…without the Caesar dressing. I could be wrong, though. It gets “foggy” in Vegas sometimes), chocolate scavenging (from exhibitor’s booths), more clubbing (I hate that word. It sounds so pretentiously…hipsteresque) at Planet Hollywood’s Prive with a group of people including elastic path’s Jason Billingsley and his wife, ring tone obsessing (hey, she likes them) and funny voices .

Linda is one of those really bright, fun, intelligent, positive-thinking people who will make you smile as soon as you meet her. So if you see her at some conference, stop and say hello. She’ll brighten your day.

This past weekend, I was up in Thetford, Vermont at Lake Morey for the annual Watershed Pubishing meeting which is quirkily referred to as Watershedapalooza. Watershed Publishing is a company that publishes, among other things, MarketingVOX, MediaBuyerPlanner and MarketingCharts and is part owner of Adrants.

All the usual stuff was covered: how to increase sales, how to improve editorial product, how to better publishing infrastructure, how to position ourselves in the marketplace.  But the best parts of the weekend occurred outside the conference room; on the lake in canoes in the middle of the night with fellow writers, in the bar where rabid Red Sox fans were cheering the team on until their ultimate 11th inning game 2 ALCS 9-8 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, observing the local cougars go to work on one of our web tech guys, humorously ambushing a writer and a sales guy regarding the merits of “imports” versus “domestics” when it comes to adoption, watching some old local dude perform impossible dance moves,  tasting maple syrup made by Watershed Publishing CEO Tig Tillinghast and observing the cheesines of local weddings taking place at the resort.

For a company with virtual offices and employees who go months without seeing wach other physically, the weekend provided an opportunity to appreciate the non-digital side of life. All the pictorial goodness is here.

Alisa Leonard-Hansen works in the New York office of Arizona-based digital marketing agency iCrossing, writes for the company blog and shares her own thoughts on social media (or that fact there’s no such thing) on her own blog, Socialized. There, she offers her outlook on social media or, according to her, “the current iteration of the web.”

Right now she’s working on a project for internet service provider EMBARQ which is running a YouTube video promotion highlighting the provider’s faster speeds. You can check out some of the more interesting video submissions here.

Alisa is a passionate, intelligent thinker who isn’t afraid to voice her opinion such as when she’s poking holes in buzzwords like web 2.0, trumpeting the benefits of the social graph or brainstorming the ideal social measurement tool.

Alisa, who loves dogs,  is prolific on Twitter and isn’t afraid to call out panelists at conferences she thinks are just passing unnecessary wind to the audience rather than imparting usable information.

Alisa is the kind of person you want working with you if you’re not interested in the “yes man” type. That’s not to say she’s the belligerent sort who’s impossible to work with which would be far from the truth but she will use her gifted intelligence to challenge what she believes needs challenging.

I’ve known Alisa for about year and can say she’s a wittylicious conversationalist and someone who truly “gets” what’s going on in marketing and advertising today.

In Las Vegas at Blogworld, a conference which explores blogging and its role in just about everything, I was lucky enough to have wandered over to the conference a day early where there was a sort of pre-conference occurring. At the conference, Wine Library’s Gary Vaynerchuk, who I’d seen once before in Boston, was giving a keynote about how, as a blogger, one can carve out a niche and work their way towards becoming the expert in that niche. It was very motivational talk, filled with Gary’s trademark excitement. It was informative and gave me more than a few ideas I could put in motion to improve my own situation.

Wherever I was - at the conference, at the Techset party, at the Affiliate Summit dinner, at the Prive party, at Mirage’s Revolution, in the exhibit hall, at a Planet Hollywood dinner, hanging by the Maker’s Mark bus during the exhibit hall party or during the insane last night during which 23 of us just sort of moved from one place to another in the MGM Grand - I just kept seeing and meeting more and more people I knew or came to know.

There was Hugh MacLeod, Lisa Bethany, Photrade’s Krista Neher and Andrew Paradies, Rubicon’s Nicole Jordan, Guy Kawasaki, Brian Solis, Stephanie Agresta, Marjorie Case, Shawn Collins, Missy Ward, Maria Thurrell, Laura Fitton, Dave Taylor, Lee Odden, Sarah Townsend,  Dave Alston, Toby Bloomberg, Jesse Stay, Chris Aarons, Annie Lynsen, Linda Bustos, Tessa Horehled, the Comcast Cares guy, Micah Baldwin, Jay Billingsley, Greg Swan, Scott Monty, Annie, Dorothee Royal-Hedinger, Chris Brogan and countless others whose names I sadly can’t remember or that have left my brain.

Walking through the casinos in Vegas is like entering some kind of trance state. Your mind just sort of floats out of your head and into a different place. I don’t know if it’s all the gambling action, the hotness that surrounds, the music, the lighting or the absolutely endless twists and turns inside each casino which keep one forever unsure of one’s bearings. The whole place is best categorized as Disney for grownups.

It was this feeling that overtook the last night I was there when 23 of us ventured over to the MGM Grand and visited no less than four bars - where a few Car Bombs were consumed - and a restaurant before we all stumbled out of the Grand, across the strip and over to some Irish bar before things got kind of hazy, detached from reality and, well, into Vegas tagline territory.

Out of the many people I met during Blogworld in Vegas, two had an indelible affect on me. On Friday night after the Techset party at Mirage’s Bare, I met Linda Bustos, an SEO and ecommerce guru who writes the getelastic blog for elasticpath. This woman is amazingly awesome. She chases pigeons across exhibit hall floors, gets really excited about ring tones, gives hilarious presentations, loves to eat, is incredibly focused and seriously has her shit together. I think I fell a little in love with her. Yea. I know I did.

Tessa Horehled is from Atlanta and I met her the last night (yes, that night) I was in Vegas. Currently, she’s taken it upon herself to become the go to person regarding the “gas crisis” in Atlanta. She’s a social media wiz and recently worked for Turner. She does the pic a day thing on Flickr and is one of those people who is seriously fun to just be around. You know the person who sort of leads the party? Tessa is that person. She was one of “the 23″ who had so much fun Sunday night at the MGM Grand. Sweet

When I returned from Vegas, I was home for less than seven hours before i turned around an headed to New York for Advertising Week. Again, many great visits with friends, aquaintences and soon to be new friends

On Tuesday, I went to the MIXX Conference at which I visited with Laredo Group’s Leslie Laredo. When the conference ended, it was time for the MIXX Awards. It was one of the better awards shows I have been to. The awards coincided with a dinner which, while there was some overtalking during the awards, the presentation went smoothly, quickly and better than some I’ve seen. I was lucky enough to have sat at a table with two Gold winners, TBWA/Media Arts Lab’s Joannah Bryan who won Super-Rich Media for the Apple Don’t give up campaign and a guy whose name I can’t remember (apologies) from JOGO Media who won In-Game Advertising for BMW’s M3 Challenge.

At the cocktail party before the Awards, I ran into Doron Wesley from Millward Brown and met gigya’s Jacqueline Gerber. I later ran into the two of them at the post-awards Adify party held at Jay Z’s 40/40 club. A great venue with lots of different spaces, the placed rocked but, unlike many clubs, also allowed for actual conversation without tearing a vocal cord.

It was this feature that allowed Jacqueline and I to sort of find a place to converse for a while about things not related to work such as marriage, love, kids and the importance of appreciating the good things in life. Sometimes it’s just about finding the right person at the right time that makes things right for life. She seems to have done that.

On Wednesday night, Adobe hosted it Battle of the Bands contest at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. It was well attended and there was some amazing talent on stage. Agencies participating were The Concept Farm, Eric Mower & Associates, Vidal Cendeno Advertising, Initiative, Grey, May & Co., Tribal DDB, Surge, Pyper Paul Kenney, TargetCast TCM, Starcom Chicago, Twon Sports International and McCann Erickson. McCann Erikson, with their eighties, big hair approach to things combined with hot stages dancers, won the night.

Following the Battle of the Bands, I tagged along with the Barbarian Group to a little hip hop place in the Lower East Side for some drinking and dancing which lasted until 3AM. That agency knows how to party. One employee IM’d me she had “85 hangovers” in the morning. Sweet. All kinds of pictures here.

On Thursday, I attended Jon Bon Jovi’s panel about brands, music, celebrity and the importance of building a lasting brand. A few weeks prior to Advertising Week, Rosie Siman, who works for Steve Stout’s Translation tweeted me she’d be in New York for Advertising Week so we met after this panel and went to lunch with her co-worker Stacy Fuller. We had fun discussing music, celebrities and how the two can (or not) work together for a brand. All while eating amazing Gnocci. Two more amazing people I now know and never would have had I not gone to Advertising Week.

Thursday evening, still on a tear to meet up with everyone I possible could before the week was out, I went to the SoHo offices of Undercurrent where I met my optical double, Julia Roy and her co-worker Yianni Garcia. We went to some uptown bar where everyone looked like they were from the movie Wall Street. We sat there in out jeans and t-shirts surrounded by suited yuppies. It was weird but we had fun with it.

So after meeting with Julia and Yianni, I went to The Smith on 10nth or something to hook up with the Mischief crew, a rag tag bunch or New York advertising and marketing types from Fuel Industries, Oddcast and Interference Inc. that, along with Adrants, hosts monthly parties for the ad industry.

While there was serious discussion about what’s going on in the industry, the highlight of the evening was Eric Hauser’s fondling some phallic-shaped fruit juice container. Yes, we all work in advertising and we all like to goof around like high school kids from time to time. It’s good therapy.

Never made it to the Facebook Advertising Week closing party.

On Friday, I had lunch with iCrossing’s Alisa Leonard-Hanson, one of the smartest people I know in the world of social media. Though, if you talk to her, she’ll claim there really isn’t such a thing as social media, it’s just the current iteration of the web which kinda makes sense because, after all, everything about the web is social.

As we left, for some odd reason, we got to talking about booth babes at conferences and Alisa suggested I do a “behind the boobs” series that would dig into the real lives of the women who stand in front of exhibit hall booths for the sole purpose of using their hotness to attract visits from conference goers. Having talked to many of these women over the years, they are far from the bubble-headed bimbos some would assume them to be. Perhaps Alisa’s “behind the boobs” suggestion is a good one.

And then, and then, and then. Yes, this goes on and on and on, I know. The week was capped off with drinks with Catalano Lello & Silverstein Art Director Alice Anda, a good friend I’ve known for four years. We met at a Soho area bar and, well, just talked. We’ve known each other for a very long time but we joke we’ve probably spent less than 12 hours physically together. We made up for that in the the two hours we spent talking about relationships, the definition of relationships and the responsibility each person in a relationship owes the other. Yea, it was one of those conversations. Deep. Cathartic. Therapeutic. Then her boyfriend arrived.

We went to some Italian restaurant which was very good and, well, didn’t talk about much other than, well, after two martinis, it’s not easy to remember. So who knows what was said but you know how the dynamic changes when other people enter the scene? Well, that happened.

So. Vegas. New York. Advertising Week. Friends. New Friends. Adventures. It all happened. Sometimes it seems like a dream but I’m glad it wasn’t and I’m glad every second of it happened. Next? Another week in New York for ad:tech. I can only imagine what’s in store

From Gawker

Not that the picture indicates anything serious was in play what with everyone smiling but one has to wonder just what did the lovely Justine do to “almost” get arrested. That cop looks like he’s either star struck or Justine just showed him naked pictures of herself on her iPod.

And what the hell is that big blue bush/tree thing behind her??

Indeed it is except for the occasional freakish flasher they get from time to time.

I like Violet Blue. I know Violet Blue. She’s my friend. I like Boing Boing, though I haven’t read it for two years. I don’t know Xeni Jarden. She’s not my friend. Violet doesn’t know why they did it. I don’t know why they did it. I do know that Violet’s really nice and can’t imagine what she might have done, if anything, to cause Boing Boing to do what they did. We may never have all the answers but Violet’s video is definitely funny and definitely worth watching.

George and I went to dinner and I had the pleasure of bitching about the ad industry with a guy who’s done it for a long time and who has a lot to say about it and the people who work in it. Over a couple of cocktails, a bottle of wine and dinner, George and crapped on BDAs (Big Dumb Agencies), Julie Roehm, Huey Duey and Louie, fake ads, stupid award shows and the stupidity of the Super Poke.When I travel to San Francisco, or any city for that matter, to attend a conference, the only part of the city I see, sadly, is the inside of a hotel, conference center or nightclub. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but there’s a lot more a city has to offer which is why I was pleased to spend two days with Ariel, Jonathon and Violet in their neighborhoods, in their apartments and at area restaurants they thought were good as opposed to some guide book. We even watched the James Bond movie Goldfinger one night at Ariel’s place. How often does that happen when you travel to a conference?

So thank you Ariel, Violet and Jonathon for keeping me out of my hotel room and away from Market Street. I had a lot of fun and I miss you all already.