Paging through the latest issue of Search Marketing Standard, I landed on the colorful two-page layout devoted entirely to the search marketing conference lineup for 2007. I’ve decided that somewhere along the line, someone decided that all SEO/M’s are millionaires with marvy travel budgets who live in small isolated parts of the world like the USA and UK.

Reading down the nice colorful blocks of type and dates, I realized that there is a conference that I’d love to attend every month. I enjoy covering sessions. I revel in watching all the important star power getting tanked in the bars. Someday it could me on the cover of SEOMoz Rolling Stone.

What I can’t figure out is how anyone in the industry gets any real work done. Many companies send the same people to every conference to present a talk or be on panels. Or, they rotate by letting the spouses decide because truly, somebody must be getting an earful about never being home.

Just in case anyone gives an SEO a hard time about their profession being dinky and part of the “Why don’t you get a real job?” category, you can proudly note the glaring fact that there is a marketing conference of some niche or angle featured in a big city somewhere in the world several times a month, except in the case of Australia, South America, Africa and most of the other side of the planet.

Speaking of South America, the only possible nearly naughty fun place for any of these conferences is Las Vegas. One wonders why there are never any held in areas with beaches, sand, thongs, outdoor tiki bars and cheap hotels. I would so go get another credit card, wouldn’t you?

This year marks the exploding trend for niche conferences on verticals like travel, local search, affiliate marketing, PPC, and social media. Other enticing ideas consist of an event where you get to tour China, or gather in smaller groups where you can talk to and flirt with the presenters. Not that I do that. But if I remembered to do that, I would, because the opportunities for flirting are growing.

The touring High Rankings conferences are going to London in October. SMX will be in Stockholm later in October. October also is the hot month for a conference in Colorado, New York, and China. Okay, I just checked and three of these are SMX, so if you are a speaker for them, write a reminder card of your kids’s names now, so you’ll have it handy when you finally get home.

Conference schedules remind me of candles on a birthday cake. There’s one for every year you survived, plus one to make a wish with. That’s the one you hope pays off in the long run. Practically speaking, there’s also the law of economy, where you actually pick one or two to travel to. Yes, there’s always the risk you’ll miss the conference with the party bus and pole dancer. Life isn’t always fair.

To get to as many of these events as possible, I had the crazy idea that we could experiment with parallel realities and our other selves could attend some, while we attend others. In fact, one of our selves could stay home and earn a living. How cool is that?

I like the smaller conferences and am usually happy to wait for one of them to hit close to home. It’s odd how many parts of the world aren’t on the list though. Washington, DC is one. Australia. (Poor Australia. To their credit, they did have one of their own not long ago, but nothing is on the docket for this year yet.) Kansas. Idaho. Hawaii. Japan. Alaska. Italy. Surely there are marketers in these areas.

Finally, as if the schedule isn’t already hectic enough for anyone who is a speaker in demand, December takes the prize for making SES and Pubcon duke it out for the first week of the month. That’s right. Two big conferences, both popular and only one of them has the Blue Man Group theater nearby.

Seemed like a no-brainer to me.

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