September 2021. The month that we finally made a return to in-person conferences. It was strange, beautiful, tiring, and welcome. After doing it all online over the last 18 months, a two-day stint at BrightonSEO was diving in straight in the deep end.
Around half of our team members made it down to BrightonSEO for the September 2021 conference, with the other half due to watch the online edition instead later this month.
What was our experience like?
I decided to ask the BrightonSEO first-timers in our team for their thoughts on the event; here’s what they had to say:
Oliver Wells, SEO Project Manager:
“As a first time attendee at BrightonSEO I was blown away by both the experience and the knowledge on offer. Each talk was unique and insightful; I left with an even greater passion for search marketing and will 100% be back for 2022!”
Matilde Pinheiro de Melo, Senior SEO Analyst:
“Excellent experience at BrightonSEO – I’ve had the pleasure to attend super-interesting talks from the SEO experts. As a newbie, it was amazing to meet people (in-person!!) from the search industry and discuss many topics. ”
Yagmur Simsek, SEO Strategist:
“I left every session with new ideas and even insightful resources that could support me in my future projects and definitely be used in practice. The diversity of topics and speakers also motivated me to pitch for the next BrightonSEO event. It was a great pleasure to finally attend an in-person event after a long break, to exchange ideas with the participants and to meet with inspiring digital minds from the industry.”
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For those of us who had been before, it was still a new experience doing the event over the two-day format instead of the single-day event. And as a serial BrightonSEO speaker, it was a rare experience for me to actually just attend for a (welcome) change, being able to learn and socialise without the impending dread of getting on stage.
What did we learn?
The content was strong and varied as usual, with multiple topic tracks spread over the course of two days. There was everything from content strategy through to team wellbeing, meaning that talks were educational and inspirational; the perfect mix for the first in-person event after the worst of the global pandemic.
We’ve gone ahead and curated a list of other blog posts that have covered some sessions and takeaways in more depth. You’re welcome!
- BrightonSEO – Capsule’s 10 Key Takeaways
- 112 takeaways from BrightonSEO by Receptional
- Modo25 at BrightonSEO
- 15 Content, PR And Link-Building Takeaways From Brighton SEO by Koozai
- 10 Things We Took Away from BrightonSEO as Traditional PRs by SourcePR
Who did we meet?
After working with my colleagues online for so many months, it was almost hard to believe that some of us had never met in person before.
It was great to finally sit down around a table together and eat lunch, and to chat about our hobbies, stories and everything else that’s just a bit ‘forced’ on a video call. We also made sure to use our drinks vouchers at the end of each day.
But we were also there for networking with other industry friends, and to speak to (read: get merch from) the companies in the exhibition hall.
Over the course of the two days, we ended up speaking with hundreds of other fellow SEOs and marketers. As I mentioned at the opening of this blog post, it was both welcome and tiring. Personally, it took me a few days to recover from being catapulted back into society!
Despite the recovery period, we’ve all come back to work feeling invigorated to try new things and to keep learning. Our SEO team have already started working their way through a content marketing course, and we’re all scheduled to do some public speaking workshops in October.
We can’t wait for the next BrightonSEO – and who knows? Maybe you’ll even see some of our team on the stage!
