The 2008 Miva Merchant conference in San Diego was unbelievable. There was a totally different vibe than the last conference where the evil Miva empire was tearing up the Miva Merchant community.

I’m thinking of starting up my user conferences in Texas again. If you want to come, comment on this post.

Miva Merchant 5.5 was the subject of the conference with the new features being discussed like:

• New Seo features - Did they consult with me? Many of the module developers who have created the best seo modules for Miva Merchant consult with me, but Miva Merchant did not. So we shall see how good they are. In the past, Miva Merchant has bombed in this department.
• One Page Checkout - I did it the first day I had Miva Merchant 5 and do things that other developers claim can’t be done. But having it built-in will be nice. But it will feed the notion that a one page checkout is a panacea for abandonement which it is not.
• Improved Shipping Modules - finally!
• Complete CSS Support - well see…
• and a bunch of other stuff…

Here is new ceo Russell Carroll and I.

This is VP Rick Wilson pretending to be tall.

Here I am bringing Rick back to reality.

Old friends stopped by like former ceo Joe Austin and VP of Marketing Derek Finley of Tilana Systems Corporation below.

I was also able to hang out and have breakfast with former customer and forever friend Chris Gripp of Sign Warehouse.

Same thing for Todd Theodossin of My Paper Shop.

Always great to see Scott Zelienski of Sebenza Miva Merchant modules.

Same goes for Mike Brock and Bret Sutherland of Viking Coders Miva Merchant modules.

Nice to see a fellow texan Rick Fischer of Wolfpaw Miva Hosting.

Wes Clayton of ShipWorks is always cool.

Current customer Mike from Style Rocket was attending again with his eyes closed.

I have been talking with John of JumpUsa.com for quite awhile. It was good to meet him and Chris face to face.

Always nice to see Bill Weiland of Emporium Plus Miva Merchant modules.

PJ of Webnet Miva Merchant Hosting was here again.

Nice to finally meet Andreas Toman and Ray Yates of PCI Net. Andreas and I share quite a few mutual clients.

Joe Margiotta came again.

Michael from GreenAndMore.com was really cool and told me about how much information he got out of my site.

David Hubbard of Hostasaurus hosting was there and needed a reminder about installing Domain Keys on my server.

Chuck and David Lasker of Doubleplus New Media Marketing and Merchant Answers were there.

Always great to see James Harell and now Leslie Nord of EmediaSales.

Now that the warm fuzzies about the 2008 Miva Merchant conference are out of the way.

Lets get to the controversy and drama!!!

It follows me wherever I go these days.

During the networking dinner on Thursday night, I get approached about allegedly talking trash about someone in particular. I have never met this person or remember having any personal interaction online or offline. I suggest that maybe they got lumped in with all the rest I talk trash about in the Miva Merchant community. There are a ton of people particularly on the Miva Merchant forum that are so full of it when it comes to giving sound advice especially about search engine optimization and marketing. It would be a full time job to correct all the nonsense on that forum.

Anyways, I am not asked to speak again on search engine optimization after speaking three years in a row to standing room only crowds and being the only breakout session to be held in the main ballroom because the smaller rooms could not contain the number of people wanting to hear me teach/speak. Those are just the facts as stated by an actual Miva Merchant employee.

So there are two back to back seo/sem sessions with three panelists.

It is mostly Q & A and offsite techniques. Its pretty good overall but not really about optimizing an actual miva merchant store. I didn’t agree with a lot of things because I know for a fact that some things said are just not true. I also probably have much more experience of optimizing actual Miva Merchant stores which makes a difference. But there was a lot of good info as well. Quite a few people are complaining after the first session. One person called them clowns, but I don’t agree with that. They were knowledgeable on seo. During the second session, an attendee decides to speak up with his unhappiness. It is our good friend Bill Gray.

I have to say that Bill Gray of UK Office Supplies has balls. Out of everyone that was complaining outside or in whispers, he was the only one to speak up.

He basically said the panelists were doing more pitching of their services than providing actual actionable advice. Bill also decides to bring me into the discussion and states that I gave invaluable information when I spoke. It was quite an uncomfortable situation. The panelists tried to regroup and show live sites and what they did for them. First up was not even a miva merchant site which did not help matters.

Bill complained directly to the Miva Merchant higher ups as well. A lot more attendees complained to me, and I was like “I can’t do anything about it. Tell Miva Merchant. I’m happy to speak again.”

Jeff Burson came up to me shaking his head and explaining that he wanted to say how much he missed my sessions compared to the sessions now. Here is a video testimonial from him.

One person that I can’t even mention because they might lose their job told me that I should have been teaching the classes. Again I’m like “Tell Miva Merchant!!!!”

Here are my humble suggestions for next year.

• less keynotes
• more educational sessions
• less pitching
• separate class on ppc
• class devoted to actually optimizing a miva merchant store by the best person available
• social media / offsite techniques session
• email marketing session
• longer conference

I’m looking forward to next year. Hope to see you there

ttys,
jason

P.S. Here are some videos from the Miva Merchant conference and elsewhere in Miva Merchant land.