I am at our Search Engine Strategies trade show at the New York Hilton. Today is a pre-conference day. The show continues Tuesday-Thursday (exhibits are on Tuesday and Wednesday).

Over 1000 paid attendance has been achieved and of course these numbers will grow over the coming days. Total attendance (including exhibitors and exhibit hall only attendees should swell our numbers to over 2500).

We have about 80 companies exhibiting starting tomorrow.

The attendees come from around the world --- I will have more on this in a few days.

It is exciting to meet with people from the old Internet World days. I just ran into Jeff Dearth. Jeff sold the first ad space for a Web site back in 1994 --- it was Lufthansa airlines. Jeff was then publisher of The New Republic magazine and started a new division devoted to selling magazine subscriptions online. He later worked for me at Mecklermedia and now is with DaSilva and Phillips in Washington, DC (deal makers in the media space).

Jeff and I were thinking today that the SES show is an adjunct of what Internet World was all about. Of course it is very vertical. And only vertical shows work these days. If this were 1996, paid search and search in general would have been one session during the IW show.

I will have more later today.