Danny Sullivan is leaving the Search Engine Strategies conference circuit according to Matt Cutts.
"Today, Danny Sullivan announced that he’s leaving the popular searchenginewatch.com site that he built and the Search Engine Strategies series of conferences that he ramped up. For the search industry, this is a nine on the Richter scale and has the potential to shake the whole industry for a few months. Danny has been covering the search industry for over a decade now, and the brands that he built in Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies are incredibly strong–although not as strong as the reputation that Danny built on a personal level. Anyone that’s had a chance to spend any time with Danny has a huge amount of respect for him. And no matter how you slice it, Danny counts as one of the “founding fathers” of the search industry.
Only time will tell how this will all shake out. My sense is that Danny will benefit from this–any company would be lucky to have Danny. I guess the one thing you can count on in the search industry is change. My spidey sense tells me that backchannels in search are probably lit up like Christmas trees talking about this."
I’m not surprised. According to Danny:
"My contracts with their owners Incisive Media are expiring, and we’ve not been able to agree on new ones."
If you look at how much Incisive Media is milking SES and expanding the conferences to include many new venues- there’s now a conference almost every month - meaning that Danny Sullivan would be hosting a conference year round, once a month. That’s too much. By now, the guy has been it too long anyway - and it’s time for a change - both for him, and maybe for the industry he helped build up. Maybe it’s just his time to move on to something else.
"Last year, Jupitermedia sold the site and the series to Incisive Media. I wasn’t unhappy with the sale and chose to let my contract be extended through the end of 2006 as part of it.
I was concerned about moving forward with Incisive, however. I’m far from the only reason behind the success of SEW and SES, but I’ve played a major role. I helped build both of those assets. Then I watched one company sell them to another without me having any formal capital stake in the sale. That left me wary of history repeating itself. I wasn’t going to help this new company grow the business out of the sheer kindness of my heart."
Sounds like Incisive Media, more or less, expected Sullivan would continue in his role as the face of Search Engine Strategies - but Danny wanted more - and Incisive did not want to pony up anything more (since these SES conferences are probably braking even anyway - the comments on the blogosphere all agree that was a stupid mistake for Incisive Media as Danny Sullivan is SES - lose him and you may lose much of the appeal of the conference).
The increase in the number of conferences was a clue - they were milking the brand.
Lets’ face it, there’s nothing much new discussed at Search Engine Strategies that requires a conference in so many major cities once a year - there’s no need to hold so many conferences - 3 or 4 a year are enough - The speakers who go to these conferences are burnt out……
The other thing I noticed when I’ve attened SES Conferences - it’s mostly for networking - but most of the same speakers show up at conference after conference after conference - in many cases, using the same presentations! The reason for the conference is to form a marketplace that facilitates buyer (new and current clients) and search providers together - it’s not longer about learning anything new. And when it’s San Jose Conference - its’ all about going to the GooglePlex.
"As for SES, I’ll still be chairing the SES Multimedia & Mobile Edition show this October in Los Angeles, then the SES Chicago show in December. After that, I’d say there’s another extremely slim chance that I might do SES events on a case-by-case basis (again so slim that I’m not expecting it will happen). At the moment, I’m not contracted for any thing beyond those named (I’m currently listed as chairing the SES NY 2007 event, and I’ve asked that I be removed from the site)."
Good move…..it’s time for Danny to move to the next level.
Ten years of this is enough for anyone. Can you name one well known conference held as often as Search Engine Strategies? How about Ad-Tech - that’s a much bigger conference even than SES - but would you want 10 AD-TECH’s a year? When is enough enough?
I know many people want to see Danny Sullivan stay around and do SES forever -but he must be burnt out by now. My advice is for Danny Sullivan to go write a book on Search, as you suggested you might want to do:
"I’m also thinking a lot about doing a book these days. I’d always wanted to do a book on search, indeed the exact type of history that John Battelle did a fantastic job with in The Search."
Others think Danny should go after the big $$$$$ (Web 2.0 dollars - so I’m told)…sure, why not?
