In November 2024, for the first time I ever, I went to Matt Diggity’s annual SEO event in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Given my SEO background long before WPX became a thing, that was an overdue oversight on my part.
For the first time ever, I met Matt in person which was great, though we have talked quite a bit over the years:
Matt wanted to stress to attendees that his event is for anyone in digital business, not just SEOs.
That is entirely fair and his event is quite different from your normal 2-day type dealio.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Attendees are welcome to set up any meetup before, during or after the main event on any relevant topic they like and these will be listed on the Whova mobile app that is your guidebook for the whole event:
These private meetups started days before the main event and continued for a few days afterwards.
Attendees there treated the event more like a week-long celebration of our specific sub-tribe more than a hardcore ‘networking’ event.
I liked that a lot.
NETWORKING OR JUST CONNECTING?
Personally, I hate the word and general concept of ‘networking’ which has a grubby feeling of exploitation about it.
I don’t even have business cards and have never used them.
My all-time favorite icebreaking ‘networking/connecting’ question to somebody new?
“Outside of work, what do you do that brings you joy?”
That will get the conversation cooking in no time!
I think of meeting at events as connecting with like-minded people from around the world, possibly helping with any advice – on anything – that may be relevant for them and definitely not desperately trying to sell anything to anybody.
If hosting comes up in the talk, I recommend non-WPX options plenty if we’re not a good fit for that person.
If we are a good fit, they become aware of it and can consider WPX – WITHOUT the pushy, hard-sell tactics.
I also like to connect with people, regardless of their professional role, job title or company status.
For example, one night I was in the back of a Thai ‘Uber’ (called Grab or Bolt there) next to Nick Eubanks, just busy chatting about normal dig biz stuff on the ride with him and Chris Kirksey (more on Chris below).
Nick is VP at Owned Media, of SEMRush fame, and in the normal world, it would probably be pretty hard to get access to him.
It was like that everywhere in Chiang Mai
MY PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EVENT?
– Meeting WPX customer/groupie Felix Norton, who I want to adopt as my new son, once the family laws in South Africa change (he lives in SA, runs https://woww.co.za/):
– Sacha Fournier’s fantastic spin on digital PR, based on large scale data (https://journofinder.com/):
Sacha is also a happy long-term WPX customer, it turned out.
Met a lot of those there, surprisingly.
– Travis Jamison also gave a compelling talk on ‘how to stay rich’ rather than the usual ‘how to get rich’ and that was pretty cool, thanks Travis:
Travis owns Smash Digital, a bunch of other digital assets and is big into investing in smaller scale real world businesses – we actually masterminded for a day, along with James Dooley, a full-on UK SEO legend:
And yes, Travis ALSO turned out to be a WPX customer!
– I also loved the talk by Chris Kirksey, of direction.com, whose AI prompt work is several levels above anything else I’ve seen:
Good stuff, and no, Chris isn’t a WPX customer – not yet, dammit!
– and my award for the most positive, friendly person met at the event goes to Umar Faizan who also shared some delicious cookies:
SO WHO IS THIS EVENT RIGHT & WRONG FOR?
If you’re high up in a big company that’s pretty corporate, slow and bureaucratic, then this event isn’t a good fit for you.
There are plenty of live events catering to that corporate establishment crowd.
But if you’re an ambitious, creative, outsider entrepreneur type who is hungry to learn and execute, then you’ll be in heaven.
If you do come, make sure to allow for plenty of days there around the main event, to take in some of the smaller meetups and explore Chiang Mai area itself.
Me?
I loved it.
MY NEXT LIVE EVENTS?
In 2025, I will definitely be at Brighton SEO in April, the OMR festival in Hamburg, Germany in May and back at Chiang Mai in November 2025 (already got the ticket).
At the moment, I’m on the fence about going to the BrightonSEO event in San Diego as it’s a pretty long haul – but then so was Chiang Mai!
I love to talk to people – about our dog work at everydogmatters.org usually! – so don’t be shy about coming up to say hello if you’re going to any of those events in 2025.
And feel free to contact me via terry.kyle@wpx.net if you know an event that I should come to or would like me to speak at your event – I will answer personally!
