I attended the A4U Expo last Thursday and Friday and I have to say it was excellent. I had never been out to the Excel centre before, I was a little concerned that it was located so far out of town, however the Platinum Suite was great, very modern and well kept compared to Earl's Court or Olympia, also it was great to have plenty of hotels right across the square, it made getting home from the A4U Awards very easy. There were no registration queues (OK I was a little late, so everyone else was inside), the Wifi worked throughout all the rooms, and there were lots of refreshments and lunches. The lunches were a bag style, I was a little surprised as I am used to a sit down buffet at these affairs, however I quite liked the lunches, it was very easy to move around, inside or outside, as well if you had a large group it easy to find an area to accommodate everyone, just pick up your bag and away you go. I found the sessions to be very good, I found the Extreme SEO, very good and entertaining, Jason Duke from Strangelogic is great, and is making a real push to move "link authority" to "link umpf", I hope I have the correct spelling. There were a couple of web 2.0 sessions on widgets and social media as well as a couple sessions involving Affiliate marketing presented by the networks. I have to say hats off to James Little of Altogether Network, he did a very good job of standing up for the smaller networks. If I have to make any suggestions it would two things, the first, Room number 7 was too small, many of the sessions in the room filled up and left people standing or unable to attend, make it better next time. Second is the scheduling, the conference guide seemed to be a bit confusing with many different schedules, next round have one master schedule. All in all, I am very impressed and will definitely be back next year.
