Conferences: expensive

Update: Andy has replied in the comments below. Although I stand by my criticism of the pricing model, the £100 gimmick does look a bit blackmaily the next morning. So apologies to him for that. It seemed a good idea at the time to avoid the accusation of not putting my money where my mouth is.

Original post: Andy Budd has written an impassioned defence of "big, expensive conferences" - describing criticisms as nonsense - which I'd like to take issue with.

Coincidentally, I'd already drafted a post about how I was never attending £500+ conferences again. This was after speaking at the free 'Brighton SEO' the same week I'd missed Content Strategy Forum 2011 - which costs £840 but work commitments had caused me to skip. Bye bye money.

First: the offer

But first, in the spirit of being constructive, I'd like to make Andy an offer.

UX London tickets are £1,200 (including VAT). Gulp.

Now I'm a one-man-band consultant - but I'll put up £100 if Clearleft Ltd (the organisers, of which Andy is CEO) will match that in proportion to our respective turnovers last year (I'm guessing theirs will be about 20 times mine but let's compare notes and see).

And let's use that money to subsidise someone - or a few people - who would otherwise never afford to go. They could be students or first-jobbers or those under 25 or the self-employed or the unemployed. (And, dear reader, if you're reading this and want to put some money up, so much the better. Do get in touch.)

But let's use the money to make sure that expensive conferences aren't the preserve of big agencies' employees and make sure that at least a couple of those with no one to pay for them aren't excluded.

Anyway, I hope he'll take me up on the offer.

Now, let's take issue with the cost

Andy explains how conferences are expensive to run - and I believe his budget. It's just that it involves spending nearly $160,000 on paying speakers, flying them over and putting them up in a hotel for a week.

Do we really need that many speakers from abroad?

Apparently we do as the high costs mean that "organisers try to mitigate some of these risks by picking big name speakers that we know will fill seats".

Call me naive but if there weren't so many big name speakers costing $160,000 wouldn't the costs be a bit lower? And hence the risks? And thus the prices? It's all a bit circular.

Andy rightfully points out that conferences are about more than the content. They're about meeting people - clients, contacts etc.

But what sort of people do you meet at a £1,200 conferences? Well, you don't meet many of the unemployed, graduates at small agencies or that many consultants. Why? Because the risk is the opposite of the organiser's - that you spend £1,200 and don't get a return on it.

Sure, you do meet some people in this position - I paid for myself to attend UX London when Don Norman spoke back in 2009. I thought it was great. If expensive.

But many people whose company can't afford to pay for them to go (or who don't have a company) are priced out of the market by costs of £1,200.

One of the comments (by someone else) under Andy's post says:

One point I would add, is the pricing a conference in some way sets the tone of it. UX London is full of UX professionals. A €99 or €129 per day conference tends to have a different crowd, different attitudes, different expectations and different ways of complaining about things.

If UX London was a €99 conference, I expect it’d full of people falling into the “f**k it, why not?” category. The relevance of delegates would be minimal for me, so I wouldn’t be interested in attending. At the saying goes, you can make a pizza so cheap that no one wants to eat it.

I mean, who would want to attend a conference that just anyone could afford to attend, eh?

In conclusion

I used to have a policy to go to one expensive set-piece conference a year, whatever the discipline - which I paid for out of my own money.

But this year I've concluded that I just can't see I get enough value from them - especially if you end up booking way in advance to get the early-bird prices and then can't go. Plus big name-speakers can be cool, but so can hearing other sorts of people at smaller conferences. And you meet people in the bar afterwards, regardless of what sort of conference it is.

Anyway, I hope Andy and Clearleft will think of a way to help those who can't afford - and shouldn't have to afford - £1,200. If my £100 can make that happen, I hope they'll accept it.

Photo credit.

The plural of +1 is +1s and not +1's

Observe that screenshot. It talks about a +1. And Google talks about "the +1 button". Yet its headline is "See +1's" and the example from the Google results is that someone "+1'd this".

No apostrophe is needed in these last two examples. The plural of +1 is +1s. And if I did a +1 then I +1ed. Or possibly as one ends in an e already, maybe I +1d.

At least the on-site +1 answers the question of just what it's for.

To infinite URLs - and beyond

Using rel = canonical properly

You use the rel=canonical command to tell Google that a given URL is actually a version of another URL - and that the search engine should treat the second version as if it was that main URL.

It's useful if you have multiple copies of a page in different directories, have lots of versions of the same page due to EG WordPress making 2 versions of every page, or allow anyone to rewrite your URLs so it looks like your insulting Pippa Middleton's sister.

Make a mistake with rel=canonical, however, and it can wipe your website off the face of the internet.

Using rel = canonical to make infinite URLs

The Express site's CMS is creating a duplicate version of every single page via the rel=canonical tag. And then a 3rd version, and then a 4th ... and it's never stopping until it gets to infinity.

Take a sample page like this one: http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-system

If you look at the HTML code, you can find:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-systemAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO">

The CMS has miscoded the canonical URL to include the first bit of the URL relating to the individual page (the AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO bit) twice.

If you visit that supposedly canonical URL, you see this, with the page-specific bit in there three times.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-systemAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO">

Go to that URL, and you find it there 4 times. Etc.

I got bored at http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-systemAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO

but this will never stop. Each time you visit the canonical URL, a new canonical URL is created.

All these URLs are working pages because the Express only looks at the number in the URL to decide what content to show. So http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-system is the same as http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/vote-YES is the same as http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/who-exactly-specced-this-CMS.

Dozens of URls for each Express story

Sometimes these duplicate canonical URLs aren't in Google's index (I guess as each one is cancelled out by the next one). Although you can find them. This search, for instance, has this URL showing up: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/242092/DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-DEBATE-Is-Britain-a-soft-touch-for-benefit-spongers-

Even worse, the first URL that appears for that search is the printable URL of the page with no adverts on!

One paragraph, 55 results ...

And as that search, with 55 results, reveals, the Express has a massive problem with duplicate content.

The Express then makes the problem even worse ...

This is a problem it makes worse via its use of Tynt to add URLs when you copy and paste content. So if you copy and paste the first sentence from this URL: http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-system, what you end up with is this:

"BY the time you read this you will have probably already voted No to AV in today’s referendum.

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-systemAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO#ixzz1LW2s00ge".

The Express uses Tynt to add the read more bit and the URL to what you've copied.

But, yes, the code they are adding contains the wrong URL with two versions of the page slug. Follow that link and copy a sentence and you end up with this:

"BY the time you read this you will have probably already voted No to AV in today’s referendum.

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/244786/AV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO-to-the-new-voting-systemAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NOAV-referendum-Why-we-must-vote-NO#ixzz1LW31La3e"

Yup, another new URL created by the system that's designed to channel links to the main story.

You can see this in action on this page on the Daily Mail where someone has copied the opening para from some other bat shit story, and the Tynt URL is to http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/244206/EU-wants-to-merge-uk-with-franceEU-wants-to-merge-uk-with-franceEU-wants-to-merge-uk-with-france#ixzz1LCIcD5jI.

This might explain why the Express can't rank in first place for a paragraph from its own story.

To sum up

The Express isn't appearing top of Google's results for searches using their own content and Google is serving up versions of its pages with no adverts on - all because Google can't work out which page is the correct one because the Express constantly points to yet another URL for every single page - even the made up ones.

My head hurts.

Image credit.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is one of those bodies, like the Press Complaints Commission, that needs to be sufficiently hard on the industry that funds it that no one thinks there's a need for stricter statutory regulation - but not so hard that, er, anyone thinks there's a widespread problem and demands stricter statutory regulation.

One way an industry regulator can paint a picture of everything being rosy is to downplay the extent to which there are complaints. So how will the ASA deal with its new remit regarding marketing claims made online? Well, from its "non complying digital advertisers" page, everything is good so far: "We currently do not hold any non-complying digital advertisers".

And from my experience of complaining about Nescafe's website under the new rules, it looks like the ASA will be brushing online complaints under the carpet - so its stats on how many there are will be meaningless.

Brushing my complaint under the carpet

You don't need more antioxidants

I've made a complaint that this Nescafe page makes these unsubstantiated health claims:

• Cell damage can be caused over time by an excess of free radicals in the body.
• To fight these free radicals we need to get more antioxidants into our diet.
• Coffee is a major contributor to your daily antioxidant intake … coffee has been shown to be one of the biggest contributors to overall antioxidant intake.

Here's the reply from the ASA (in italics) with my comments underneath:

Nestle Nespresso

Not a good start - I didn't complain about Nestle Nespresso. I complained about Nescafe Green Blend instant coffee.

Thank you for contacting the Advertising Standards Authority.

Cheers.

We have recently received a similar complaint to yours which is currently being investigated. The investigation is in relation to what we consider to be objective claims on a Nescafe poster which we have asked the advertiser to substantiate.

Is it that similar, though? How can I tell as you haven't confirmed what my complaint was or told me what the similar one is about. The only verifiable factual statement you've made relating to my complaint - the name of the product - you got wrong. I'm not sure I trust you on this similarity thing therefore.

The Investigations team has made substantial progress on this matter and, given that the claims concerned and the complaint are so similar to those that you mentioned and that it does not appear that your complaint raises any additional points, we shall not be adding your complaint to the current investigation.

If the other complaint was similar, I could live with mine being rolled up into it. But that's not what they're doing: "We shall not be adding your complaint to the current investigation".

Yes, they are throwing away my complaint - one of the first to be made under the ASA's new online advertising powers - even though it's "so similar" to one where they have taken steps to ask the advertiser to substantiate it.

If they adjudicate on the other claim and find it misleading, no mention will be made of my complaint about the online version of the claim. So the ASA won't have to add a large, international brand to their non-complying digital advertisers page.

As a result, once the investigation has been finalised we shall send you a copy of the adjudication, the findings of which will apply to all the advertiser’s marketing material. In the meantime, thank you for your patience.

OK, thanks.

A whitewash

Actually, not thanks. This looks like brushing things under the carpet.

The ASA Chairman, Lord Chris Smith, says "We have received over 4,500 complaints since 2008 about marketing communications on websites that we couldn't deal with, but from 1 March anyone who has a concern about a marketing communication online will be able to turn to the ASA.”

And having turned to it, maybe they'll be turned away?

Maybe I'm being stupid but can someone explain when a normal person would ever do this in the course of their usual web browsing / searching activity?

• You run a search. You click a result. It's not what you wanted so you go back. Well, you're not going to +1 it are you?
• You run a search. You click a result. It's interesting and what you wanted. You go and do something else. No +1ing has occurred.

Maybe it's like this:

• You run a search. You click a result. You read a few pages. Out of gratitude you remember to hit the back button or re-run the search and then click the +1 button next to the result.

Who is going to do that? Having a +1 feature on a website I can see - although it's yet another button for the page. Having +1 in the search results? Don't get it.

Update Paul Lomax and Joe Crowther suggested on Twitter that if you open pages from the results in tabs that you would then still have access to the results to use +1.

Update 2: There's a Google group with suggestions for integrating the button into the browser.

Maybe you could +1 this when you've liked it, tweeted it, buzzed it, Digged it, submitted it to Reddit, Stumbled it ....

Here, in 2011, are 15 sites I've not featured before, all of which try to prevent you linking to them (usually restricting the "right" to link to just the homepage or else requiring written consent). YOU'RE ALL IDIOTS. I have, of course, linked to them - click the company name to see the T&Cs. (Update The NUS have tweeted me to say they've revised their T&Cs. One down ... Update 2 The University of Nottingham have changed theirs too. Update 3 And the BMJ.)

Facepalm

Barclays Capital

Forget the banking crisis. The important thing is that "No third party is permitted to link any other web-site to this Site without obtaining our prior written consent."

BBC magazines

Oh, the BBC. How could you? "You are not permitted to create a link to any part of our Services other than the home page unless you have our prior written consent."

British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group

Right, I won't. Oh. "You must not deep link to any of our other websites or link to our home pages without our agreement in writing."

Eurostar

The wrong kind of lawyers, as well as snow. "Links to this website shall not be setup without the written consent of Eurostar Group Limited."

Lloyds TSB

Don't we own you? We'll do as we please. "If you would like to link to the Website, you may only do so on the basis that you link to, but do not replicate, the home page of the Website".

The Odeon

Accessible versions of their site? No. Stupid T&Cs? Yes. "You undertake not to: ... establish a link to this Website from any other website, intranet or extranet site, without our express prior written consent".

National Union of Students

Actually, I will. "You ... will not create and publish a hypertext link to any part of the Website".

Northern Rail

Ooh, controversial. "You may only link to this Web site with Our express written permission. We expressly reserve the right to withdraw Our consent at any time to a link which in Our sole opinion is inappropriate or controversial."

Ocado

Can I have the consent with my delivery tomorrow? "You may not create a link to this website from another website or document without Ocado Group plc's prior written consent."

Radission Edwardian Hotels

The right to disable links on other websites? They must have totally l33t skills. "Your linking of another web site to our web site is at your own risk. In addition, you agree not to link your web site or any other third party web site to our web site without our express prior written consent. We reserve the right to disable links from any third party sites to our website."

Ryanair

They probably charge you if you do. "You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair".

Shell

Lying about reserves? Yes. This - no. "You may not ... link to this web site; without our express written consent. If you wish to provide a hypertext or other link to this web site, please email the Webmaster with details of: the URL(s) of the web page(s) from which you are proposing to link to this web site; the URL(s) of the web page(s) on this web site to which you are proposing to link and we will consider your request. It is our decision as to whether we agree to your request and we do not have to do so."

Tottenham Hotspur

It's this attention to detail that will get you in the Champion's League. "You will not deep-link ... the Site or the Services without our prior written approval to be given or refused at our discretion."

United Parcel Service (UPS)

I tried to deliver my request for an agreement but they weren't in. "Linking to any page of the Website other than to http://www.ups.com through a plain text link is strictly prohibited in the absence of a separate linking agreement with UPS."

University of Nottingham

Academic freedom's a wonderful thing. "You may create a hypertext link to the homepage of our website at www.nottingham.ac.uk provided such link is not used in a misleading or defamatory context. You may not create links to any other page or file forming part of our website without our prior written permission."

Picture credit. And if you liked this post, maybe you need to hire me as an London-based SEO consultant. You could also make use of my UK SEO blog search engine.

• Display Twitter on your LinkedIn profile
• Share Twitter messages with your LinkedIn contacts or groups
• Share LinkedIn jobs, news, and more on Twitter

This is what happens in practice:

Having anal at the top of my homepage didn't look good

Yes, anyone who was a professional contact of mine on LinkedIn who receives email updates got an update about my tweet that said "I have deleted my last blog post as having anal at the top of my homepage didn't look good."

The reason for that tweet is that I was exploring (for work reasons, honestly) how Google Instant treated rude words (answer: illogically). Tweets I sent that day included:

• The good thing about Google Instant is that I can discuss how it blocks funbags and jubblies from showing instant results.
• Google Instant allows stinky hitler but not dirty sanchez.
• The vagina monologues don't get a Google Instant result. But coon does. ching chong is OK, but ching chong chinaman not. Any logic to this?
• Yes - it's on a par with "soapy tit wank" in google's eyes RT @edpmary @malcolmcoles Does Google still abhor the word "clitoris"?

Blog posts that resulted from this included:

• Google puts the anal into analytics - about how when you type analytics, Google Instant doesn't fire up results when you get as far as typing anal.
• Google Instant filters put gay and lesbian on a par with rape, racism and paedophilia- which tried to make a serious point about the messages Google was sending out with its differing treatment of language - with its filters allowing paki jokes and kiddie fiddler searches but censoring ones about lesbians and funbags.
• Instant's filters misfiring on video search pointed out the filters on video search were hopeless.

Anyway, in the context of these blog posts, and on Twitter itself (once I explained what I was doing), the tweets made sense. Sent to people in a LinkedIn email update with no context, they must have looked completely unprofessional. And possibly like I was really a 13-year old. Or a pornographer.

So: unhook your Tweets from your LinkedIn profile.

Oh, and to make matters worse - that screenshot above? It's from an email my mum received.

The site hosting the tweets

Individual published tweets

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

Update: They took it down. There's just a big white space ... Update 2: It's back - but there are so many updates (it's the number one trending topic in London on Twitter) thatonly a fraction get few (or else they are moderating 99% out - some tax ones still getting through).

Poking around the Vodafone site, it appears to be using the http://webpurify.com/ profanity filter to protect the feed. They probably thought this was all they needed when they went home for the weekend.

Profanity filter ...

But while it automatically chops out tweets that are profane, this hasn't worked to keep out the tax messages.

Americans use a preposterous mm/dd/yy format (going from the month to something more specific (the date) and then back to something less specific (the year)). In Britain, we use dd/mm/yy.

Use a date as part of a search at Google, and it tries to be helpful. So if you search for, say, 11 November 2010, it'll include results  with 11/11/2010 in them.

But as these examples show, if you search for something like 5 September, it returns pages with 09/05 in them (the US format for 5 September, which is actually the 9th May here in the UK), and not those with 05/09 in them (the UK format for 5th September).

Here's a search for the phrase "Scrum V 2010/2011 9 May 2010". Google makes bold any words in its results that are part of your search phrase. You can see the first result is a program with 05/09 in bold - but 05/09 is 9th May only in the USA. In the UK it's the 5th September, which is when that program was actually broadcast.

Google search for 9 May 2010

Here's the issue in reverse. The search is for "World Service Programmes - The Forum, 5 September 2010". The words in bold are "World Service Programmes - The Forum, 09/05/2010". But 09/05 is the 5th September only in the US. In the UK, it's the 9th May.

Google search for 5 September 2010

Even worse, the bottom result has 5 Sep 2010 in bold in the meta description - but 05/09/2010 in the title is not in bold as Google thinks that means the 9th May.

Fix, please.

KLM surprise site

Here's a tweet that they published from me.

My mild tweet

Here's one about a penis:

Penis tweet

Others included:

• The sound of flthy jets roaring over Thamesmead and Beckton? That's a #klmsurprise
• I do love your ability to bring tourists and marijuana closer together #klmsurprise #hashtaggeddit
• Service so crap you feel like an inmate and not a passenger #klmsurprise
• Seating so cramped you get off your flight without your feet #klmsurprise
• The best #klmsurprise is the discovery that train travel is actually the sanest way to get around Europe.
• Could we all be falling for a cunning ploy to get #klmsurprise trending? And then the twitterfall will magically disappear
• apparently KLM is being hijacked by "moronic trolls" due to their #KLMsurprise fuck up. so far it's all seemed fairly tame to me
• I haven't had a #klmsurprise since the devaluing changes to the Flying Blue program. Reflecting what the customers wanted of course...
• #klmsurprise travelling to Unrestricted Hashtags, you are delaying the flight, immediate boarding please at social media strategy