Flickr photo sharing awards for SES London 2008

Search Engine Strategies London wrapped up last week and the 2,000 attendees have returned to work with a new understanding of how Google’s universal search is incorporating images as well as videos, news, maps, books, and websites into a single set of results. And, demonstrating that they aren’t the cobbler’s children, some of the speakers at SES London 2008 have shared their news photos, party pictures and professional event photography with the rest of us.

As I mentioned in my previous post, “Tag your Photobucket, Picasa and Flickr photos: SES London 2008,” I have selected the Best Photo of SES London 2008, the Best Photos of SES London, and Best Photography of SES London 2008.

The envelope, please.

And the winner of the Best Photo of a market trend at SES London 2008 is … Mel Carson, adCenter Community Manager, Europe, Microsoft adCenter. The winning entry can be found on Mel’s Biog in a post entitled, “SES London 2008 – A Few Pictures.” Mel captured the Orion Panel All-Star Analytics Team – Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Ian Thomas, and Steven Jackson – all on their mobile phones! Coincidence? I think not.

Mel wins one static text link to his blog: DigiTales & Other Stories.

As of this afternoon, there were 451 photos from sessions, panels, exhibits, the night life, and everything in between in the SES London 2008 Flickr pool. Now, you might think this would make it extremely difficult to select the winner of the next award. But, you would be wrong.

The envelope, please.

And the winner of the Best Photos of SES London 2008 posted to a photo sharing site is … Liana “Li” Evans, Director of Internet Marketing at KeyRelevance. With 300 photos, Li (aka storyspinn) was the top contributor to our group photo pool on Flickr.

Li wins one static text link to one of her blogs: Search Marketing Gurus.

The final award is for Best Photography of SES London 2008 by a professional photographer.

The envelope, please.

And the winner is … Edward Klaus of ProPictures. Now, I should disclose that SES London is a client and that I hired ProPictures to help document the event at the Business Design Centre in Islington. But, I hope there’s no debate over the quality of the 113 photos that they took at SES London 2008. Make your own judgment by looking at five of Edward’s photos below.

Still, it would be wrong to link to someone that I hired. It would appear to be a conflict of interest. So, instead, let me donate one static text link to The Scientist Photographers Group’s Annual Charity Project, which supports Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders.

Which raises an interesting question: Why doesn’t the search engine marketing industry have a similar charity projectt? If you’re going to SES New York next month, let me know what you think of this idea.

And don’t forget to bring your camera or cameraphone.

The Business Design Centre in Islington

Audience listening to the Orion Panel: All-Star Analytics Team

Left to right: Kevin Ryan, Fredrick Marckini and Mike Grehan at SES London 2008

Catching up with the office between sessions at Search Engine Strategies London

The Landing Page Testing & Tuning session at SES London 2008