I spoke at SES San Jose, last year, though I didn’t bother going this year, for a variety of reasons – had made a pitch early last year that Social Media Sessions at Search Engine Strategies were good, but could be a lot better.

At SES San Jose, last year, I created and moderated a panel on Social Media, and when we got done  one person sitting near the front said  – “finally … someone gave us something we can use”.  The same feeling was echoed by several of the 225 people in the room for a Wednesday afternoon session.

For  whatever reason, I didn’t get to replicate my panel in Chicago last year, or New York, earlier this year – though I’m told, from none other than Mike Grehan and Matt McGowan, I will be presenting at SES NY next spring (see the actual verbal offer in the video below – 1:47 seconds in for Matt McGowan and 3:20 seconds for Mike Grehan – this was from the SEMPO NY Goes Cruisin’ Boat Cruize 8-06-09 ) .

However, meanwhile – 10E20‘s Rebecca Kelley said Search Conferences Need Better Social Media Sessions about this week’s SES San Jose conference that just ended.   Here’s excepts from what she said:

“..My thoughts on the conference are mixed”

“…I love that search conferences are incorporating more social media tracks into their programming, but I think that the sessions need a bit more organization. SES’s social media tracks don’t feel as if they had any organization or quality control–I get the impression that there was little to no communication between the panelists prior to the conference to go over what everyone was going to talk about in order to avoid overlap and ensure that the flow of the session runs smoothly.

“….Overall, the social media tracks were a disappointment. I heard from a lot of people that Turning the Social Web into Real ROI was a disaster, and that the panelists ended up talking about the Facebook ad network the entire time instead of focusing on ROI as a whole. As I blogged earlier this week, I thought Igniting Viral Campaigns was a mixed bag, but what was really perplexing was the fact that the programmers put two social media sessions opposite each other, scheduling Igniting Viral Campaigns and Social Media for the Little Guy at the same time. When there’s a limited number of social media tracks, you don’t want to pit two against each other and risk splitting your audience who has a social media interest. It just seemed like poor programming to me.”

Managing Conversations and Reputations felt extremely general and basic, with more of an emphasis on “what is social media marketing” than actual takeaways and advice.

The takeaways being conveyed are about the same as last year – where the audience coming to conferences now are looking for value, many sessions, especially on Social Media, appear to be geared towards people that are just learning what Social Media is .. even when many of those same people are actively on Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed.

My solution was different than what was being suggested in this post – I’m more for looking for speakers who will contribute their own research (perhaps doing something very topical and local for the venue where the conference is taking place and the time of the year it’s taking place).

I also think that sessions ought to be unique – even if the content similar – too often the same stuff is presented, with little if any change, over and over – and I thought that same thing, last year – and recall writing about it.