Search Engine Watch Conference in NYC

I am trying to convince my boss to send me to the SearchEngineWatch Conference in NYC at the end of February but they are a little reluctant because of the $1,600 price tag.

It is a 4 day conference and a lot of big names giving talks including Fishkin.

Does anyone think this would be a valuable event to attend? My bosses say you never learn anything from these conferences anyways.

How much you will learn from the conference depends on how much you know. Nothing groundbreaking gets revealed at these conferences, but there is a lot of good info and strategy that gets passed around. I always get ideas which change the way I do things or give me something new to try.

Also, there is a lot of value in the out-of-session conversations you can have with other SEOs and with reps from the SEs. I learned a lot in one of the ad hok session some of us had with Matt Cutts at PubCon. Many here write such conversations off as "Google Public Relations" but i find it of great value.

I have been to several of these conferences in NYC and San Jose. I does cost a big buck. While I am there I write down lots of ideas and when I come home I usually have an "attack list". A few months later I can look at the attack list and tally up how much I know that those ideas have yielded. It is always worth more than the price of the meeting and expenses.

One idea can yield the cost of the registration fee per month - and there you have fantastic ROI.

I used to work at a government agency and the director said... "The most valuable asset of an organization is the accumulated knowledge of its professional staff". Tell that to your boss.

Finally, at these meetings I have met many of the people who post in the forums and now we are good friends. I can email them with a question or call them by phone - and that advice can be invaluable.

Believe me I really want to go and know that I will get my monies worth but it's convincing my bosses that it's worth their money to pay for me which is the harder sell.

I know this will benefit both me and my company tremendously but since I don't want to take a week off work and drop $1700 to attend, unfortunately it is in their hands!

Time for me to use some of my rusty sales skills on my bosses

Anyone coming to the one in Tokyo?
I'll be part of an exhibition there...