#Fraggle Rock fans how we feeling?
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Wembley Fraggle with Trans Stims!
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#stim#stimblr#stimboard#trans stim#kandi stim#cookie stim#cloth stim#paint stim#pin stim#flag stim#wembley fraggle#fraggle rock#Wembley is canonically some flavour of Trans now#Fraggle Rock fans how we feeling?
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I've finally watched the Muppets 2011 with my dad, and it was a blast!! I love its sense of humor (seriously, that Muppet man joke had me CACKLING), and it's so heart-warming in its simplicity and having a good time despite the trials the Muppets went through... I feel like I can't wipe this smile off my face (ehe)
Do you have any other Muppet or puppet media you'd recommend? I thought I'd ask you since you're the resident puppet expert, and I've been wanting to get into more puppet-related stuff :P
OH YAYYYY I’m so glad you liked it!!
And I do have other Muppet/puppet media I would recommend, thank you so much for asking (and gosh I am incredibly flattered you consider me the resident puppet expert). This is going to be LONG (sorry about that in advance), so under the cut it goes!
First off, I’d recommend the sequel to Muppets 2011, Muppets Most Wanted! It’s about the Muppets going on a world tour after getting back together in the previous movie, only for a criminal mastermind named Constantine (who looks exactly like Kermit) to hijack the tour, sending the real Kermit to prison and pretending to be Kermit so he can hide from the law and use the tour as a chance to steal the Crown Jewels. It’s a really great comedy heist that’s also an INCREDIBLE musical, and it has the same humor and sense of heart that Muppets 2011 has. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I have incredibly fond memories of watching it with my sibling when we were younger, and I think you would really enjoy it.
I would also recommend the original Muppet Show! I haven’t finished watching it yet (I’m on season 4 of 5 at the moment) but it’s a really fun show that serves as a love letter to old vaudeville theater and is just consistently entertaining. There’s no overarching plot and you can pretty much watch any episode in any order, though I would suggest that if you’re interested in checking it out, you watch the Harry Belafonte episode first - it’s regarded by a lot of fans (including me) as being the best episode of the series, and gives a very good idea of what the rest of the show is like.
(Also I HIGHLY recommend you watch the pitch reel for The Muppet Show, which you can find on YouTube here. It’s not essential viewing by any means, but it’s very funny and gives a bit of context for what the field of entertainment was like at the time the show was pitched)
The original trilogy of Muppet films are also absolutely stellar. The Muppet Movie is the story of how the Muppets got together, The Great Muppet Caper is essentially an AU where Fozzie and Kermit are brothers working for a newspaper and trying to prove Miss Piggy innocent of a jewel robbery, and Muppets Take Manhattan is essentially an AU where the Muppets were all friends in college and are trying to put on a show in New York. The original trilogy films are really fun in my opinion because they play fast and loose with what’s real and what’s fake; Kermit admits at the beginning of The Muppet Movie that it’s only an approximate retelling of how the Muppets actually got together, and the other two movies in the trilogy are telling completely separate stories than the main Muppet timeline, with The Great Muppet Caper even having an entire song devoted to telling the audience that it’s just a movie and that it isn’t actually canon. They all have INCREDIBLE soundtracks, too, the songs from these movies are some of my favorite Muppet songs ever.
Fraggle Rock isn’t really considered a piece of Muppet media anymore, since when Disney bought the rights to the Muppets they didn’t bother buying it as well, but it was originally a Muppet production and all of the stuff I watched as a kid referred to it as a Muppet production, so I’m counting it as a Muppet production still lol. Fraggle Rock is an absolutely amazing show on all levels; the puppetry is great, the songs are all stellar, the characters are so well-written, and despite being a show aimed at kids it never talks down to its audience, handling serious issues like death and prejudice with the respect they deserve. It’s probably best to go into Fraggle Rock as blind as possible (unlike The Muppet Show, there is an overarching story, though you don’t really find out that there is one until towards the end of Season 1) so all I’ll say is that it’s probably one of my favorite Muppet productions ever and that the finale, without exaggeration, made me cry for 30 minutes straight. There’s also a Fraggle Rock reboot called Fraggle Rock: Back to The Rock, and while I personally don’t think it’s as good as the original series, it’s still REALLY amazing and you can tell that the team working on it really cares about the og series. If you do end up watching Fraggle Rock, I’d recommend the reboot as well!
Getting into a bit more obscure territory here, but Tales From Muppetland: The Frog Prince is very near and dear to my heart. It’s a Muppet retelling of the Frog Prince fairytale, with the twist that the princess has been cursed by the same witch that the frog prince has been cursed by! The relationship between Prince Robin and Princess Melora is really cute, and it’s clear that the two of them really care for each other. I love the changes that it makes to the original fairytale, too; I mentioned the twist of Melora also being cursed, which gives her and Robin the chance to bond and leads to a very sweet song about finding someone who understands who you are and what you’ve gone through, but the story is also altered so that Robin explains why he needs Melora to kiss him instead of hiding the fact that he’s a prince from her - she doesn’t believe him, but I’m glad they made that change regardless. The witch is also a really fun villain! She’s reused from a previous Muppet production (Tales of The Tinkerdee) that was meant to be a pilot for a planned show but was never picked up, and I’m really glad she got a chance to shine in something that was actually officially released.
Sam and Friends is the first ever Muppet series, debuting in 1955, and while most of it is unfortunately lost media there are a couple episodes you can find online! I really like Sam and Friends (I have a book all about the making of the show), and I would recommend it both as a way to look at how far television puppetry has come and as just a genuinely very entertaining show in its own right - plus, the episodes are only 5 minutes long, so you can get through all the available episodes pretty quickly. My personal favorite episode is “Powder Burn,” a parody of the show Gunsmoke.
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is probably one of my favorite Christmas specials ever, despite me only watching it for the first time this past December. It’s a very earnest and emotional story about a family (Emmet Otter and his mother Alice Otter) living in poverty after the death of Emmet’s father. Both Emmet and Alice want to be able to give each other a good Christmas present, so they both enter the local talent contest on Christmas Eve in order to win the cash prize without telling each other. The soundtrack is done by the same man who did the soundtrack for The Muppet Movie (Paul Williams), and is just GORGEOUS - it manages to be silly and heartfelt at the same time, and does some really interesting stuff with the instrumentals, like having a kazoo solo during one of the more somber songs which somehow actually works! Like Fraggle Rock, it it isn’t afraid of tackling serious issues like death and poverty, and like Fraggle Rock, it made me bawl like a baby.
Finally, I would recommend both the documentary Of Muppets and Men and the Jim Henson Hour episode “Secrets of The Muppets” (I sadly haven’t watched enough of The Jim Henson Hour to give a proper recommendation, but from the little I’ve seen it’s very good). Both of these tackle the behind the scenes of working on the Muppets, with Of Muppets and Men being about the making of The Muppet Show specifically and “Secrets of The Muppets” being a general overview of the stuff the Muppets had done up to that point. I completely understand if you don’t want to see the behind the scenes workings of the Muppets (my mom doesn’t like seeing that kind of thing either and I get why), but if you do want to see it I can’t recommend these two enough. They do an excellent job at introducing and highlighting the skills of the troupe of Muppet performers, detailing specific tricks of puppeteering, and showing how everything comes together.
There’s definitely more Muppet media I want to recommend, but if I did so we’d be here FOREVER, and I still haven’t gotten to the puppet media recommendations! This list does serve as a pretty good starting point though - if you like Frog Prince and Jug-Band Christmas you’ll probably like the rest of the Tales From Muppetland specials, if you like one of the original trilogy of Muppet movies you’ll probably like the others in the trilogy, if you like Sam and Friends you’ll probably like the Muppets’ appearances on shows like the Ed Sullivan Show or the Jimmy Dean show that they made during that period, etc. Most of this stuff is on YouTube or the Internet Archive, but if you’re looking for something specific and can’t find it, let me know and I’ll do my best to locate it 👍
AND NOW AFTER 50 MILLION PARAGRAPHS WE ARE ON TO THE PUPPET MEDIA IN GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS
I have to start this list off with my favorite movie of all time, The Dark Crystal. It’s a fantasy epic done entirely with puppets, and it is utterly gorgeous. All of the puppets are so detailed (I had the absolute blessing to see some of them when a local museum held a puppetry exhibit and the sheer amount of tiny details you can’t even SEE in the film are incredible), the world is so richly developed, the soundtrack is absolutely top-tier, and the amount of innovations in puppetry that this film causes are mind-blowing. There are traditional puppets, people in suits, radio-controlled puppets…the list goes on! I cannot recommend The Dark Crystal enough, it means so much to me and is probably the reason I’m so obsessed with puppets in the first place. It also has a prequel on Netflix called Age of Resistance - like the Fraggle Rock reboot, I don’t think it’s as good as the og, but it’s still absolutely stunning and the team working on it clearly cares about the world of the original film. Sadly, the prequel was cancelled after only one season :( I still recommend it if you like the film, but just go into it knowing that it’s gonna end on a cliffhanger.
The Little Shop of Horrors movie has an absolutely AMAZING puppet in the form of Audrey II, the film’s main antagonist. There are multiple Audrey II puppets, as the character grows throughout the entire film, and the biggest one required over 50 puppeteers to operate. There are no opticals or blue screens used for Audrey II (except for one scene at the very end of the film that they had to reshoot), and the effect is mind blowing. Little Shop is an absolutely incredible film overall, too, and thankfully doesn’t use Audrey II as a selling point or a gimmick - the puppet is incorporated very naturally into the film, and you appreciate the puppetry much more as a result.
I haven’t watched Labyrinth, but my sibling has and they really like it! From what I’ve seen of the puppetry, it’s really well done, and the movie seems very fun. Sorry I can’t give a better recommendation than that lol.
If we’re counting stop-motion animation as a form of puppetry (which I personally do considering the models are typically referred to as puppets), then I absolutely recommend checking out the work of LAIKA, which includes productions such as Coraline and Kubo and The Two Strings. I also highly recommend Wendell and Wild, made by former LAIKA supervising director Henry Selick, as well as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. All of these films are stunning, and they absolutely deserve the hype that surrounds them.
This one is a bit more preschool-centric, but when I was very little I was OBSESSED with Johnny and The Sprites, and having watched a bit of it again recently, I feel it still holds up somewhat for older audiences. It’s a show about a musician named Johnny who moves to a house in the woods in order to focus on his music only to find that the house is next to Grotto’s Grove, where a species of fairy-like beings called the Sprites live. The series is focused on Johnny teaching the Sprites about human stuff and the Sprites teaching Johnny about Sprite stuff in turn. It’s a very cute and charming show :3
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show about a man trapped in space with 4 robot companions and forced to watch bad movies as part of an evil science experiment. It’s very goofy and very immature at times, and 99% of the time you need a guide to understand the stuff they reference, but it’s great regardless, and despite being very simple the puppets are really well-designed. Unfortunately, one of the characters is named after the ethnic slur used against Romani people in the show’s original run; it wasn’t done out of any intentional malice and the creators changed her name when the show was revived and viewers expressed their concern, but if that sours your opinion on watching the original show I completely understand.
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a classic, and for good reason - both the original webseries and the tv show riff off of and play with the stereotypes of traditional children’s puppet shows, while still clearly respecting the art of puppetry and giving it their own unique spin. It’s definitely on the spookier/gorier side of things, so MASSIVE content warning if you want to check it out, but DHMIS is very good and I adore it.
And with that, this very very very VERY long list comes to an end. I definitely didn’t mention everything that I wanted to - there are some excellent pieces of puppet media, like Starkid’s Starship, that I just haven’t gotten around to watching and thus can’t properly recommend - but like with the Muppet section, I’d suggest using this as a starting point. There’s a TON of puppet media out there, and this is just scratching the surface!
I hope this list helps, and that you find something on here that you enjoy :D
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Riley’s Fraggle Rock Reviews!
Season One, Episode One- Beginnings
Beginnings are always hard, aren’t they? Even if you have a vision for what you want your project to be, it can be hard to get to that point from nothing. You have to start *somewhere*, while making sure everything makes sense for your audience and keeping them entertained and promising that “This will be great! Really!!”
...Admittedly, this is more for me than for Jim, Jerry, and the incredible team of performers, puppet builders, crew members, songwriters, and gorg wranglers who worked their baloobiuses off to get Fraggle Rock made (because *surely* the work of one woman typing reviews about a decades old show is harder than actually making the show was). I’m not sure how to start things here myself, so I feel a little better seeing the crew of Fraggle Rock is in the same spot that I am on this one... more or less.
So! Without further ado, I want to welcome you to the review series! (If you’re looking for more information on the series, check the ‘about’ page.) If for some reason anybody reading this does not know anything about Fraggle Rock, I will be highlighting the names of all the major characters and groups in this episode. There are a lot of elements at play here, but I’m sure you’ll do just fine.
Now, I know what you’re here for- let’s start the episode! How does Beginnings begin?
We begin with a dark workshop. *The* workshop, actually, as we see old handyman Doc and his loyal dog Sprocket begin settling into this old, dusty room. I always assumed the workshop was the front room of the house, as we often see Doc bringing in groceries and talking to neighbors, but he explicitly says he is converting an “unused room” into his workshop. Did they always live here? My personal theory is that Doc inherited the house from an old friend or relative, who simply used some other entrance to the house, as I simply can’t believe Doc just had a whole room lying around for who knows how long. He doesn’t strike me as a man to make waste of a whole room like that. Besides, I find more whimsy in him settling in here just as things begin stirring in the world just below his feet.
Speaking of which, just about five feet down and ten feet to the viewer’s right is fraggle explorer Matt, who is lamenting the end of his journeys charting out the caves of Fraggle Rock.
(I can see where Gobo gets his sense of style from!)
His wish for more adventure is quickly granted when a magical force (Doc) penetrates the cave wall (moves a box out of the way), opening a portal to the mythic “Outer Space,” a legend to fragglekind. The exposition from Doc in this scene is kind of flat, but I quite enjoy Matt’s antics here. He quickly rushes home to prepare for this new adventure.
Here we meet Matt’s nephew Gobo, who suffers from protagonist syndrome but has a healthy dose of eccentricity to balance the mixture. Matt trusts Gobo with his papers as he begins to pack (along with one of my favorite bits of physical humor in the episode).
“I am leaving my books and maps with you for safe keeping!” he says as they thud on the cave floor. (Look at his arms— he’s rod handed. I wonder how many takes it took to get this shot perfect…)
Gobo pages his uncle’s (presumably now damaged) tomes and here comes our first song of the series, “Hip Hip Hooray!” Despite the name, I’m not quite fond of this sequence. I feel like it’s mostly here to showcase some of the new puppetry tricks still being toyed with for the series, but we will see just about all these tricks honed much better in later episodes (swimming fraggles, waldos, fraggles “balancing” things on their nose). Admittedly, I am quite a fan of the one fraggle just before the song balancing on one foot atop another’s head, but I’ll let you find that one for yourself ;) Otherwise, the song is boring and so is the staging. Anyways, let’s meet some more fraggles!
(I find it adorable that Wembley comes out following Boober in their very first shot onscreen together. Just something I appreciate!)
Enter gloomy Boober, silly Wembley, and daredevil Red. After an endearing slapstick sequence, the trio all find themselves tripping over one another in Gobo’s room. This scene doesn’t really forward the plot in any way besides establishing these three as characters, and I honestly don’t mind too much.
After the brief visit from his friends, Gobo sees his uncle off on his newest adventure in what is probably my favorite sequence of the episode, and our second musical number, “Follow Me”. Not only am I getting a wave of nostalgic pathos, but the interactions between uncle and nephew are very charming to watch. Gobo’s interactions with Matt in this song and the sequence that shortly follows are endearing because of how natural they feel. There’s genuine chemistry between these performers, having worked together on the Muppet Show and first few Muppet Movies, but beyond that the relationship between Matt and Gobo feels like a real family. They are by no means perfect, but there is clearly a lot of love for one another. It’s a shame that a lot of relationships highlighted in Season One fall to the wayside as the writers figure out their footing.
Matt tasks Gobo with receiving messages he will send back home as he explores Outer Space, and while Gobo says he could never, his uncle doesn’t quite hear that last part. Gobo, feeling a sense of obligation to his elder, sees no way out of it, and wishes Matt goodbye. “Think of me as Uncle Travelin’ Matt,” he replies, and a music cue tells the audience (and, seemingly, the fraggles onscreen) that this name will be important. With that, he’s gone out the door, and Doc is none the wiser. Sprocket, on the other hand, is freaking out at the discovery of these strange little creatures coming out of the mysterious hole in the wall.
We catch up with Gobo a little later, when the nurturing and dreamy Mokey asks him why he’s been so down. Gobo doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings, which Mokey interprets as needing space to process things. Gobo announces to nobody in particular that no, he needs *help*, and Wembley (unaware of his friends anguish?) eagerly calls Gobo to look at a musical construction made by the diminutive, formic Doozers. We get an instrumental sequence here as Doozers build a new bridge with tiny construction tools. (Sequences like these are quite common in the earliest episodes of Fraggle Rock, and while they often can be fun, they can really stop an episode in its tracks...)
By the time Wembley finishes his song, the Doozers have trapped him in with the new bridge they just assembled, as Gobo glumly comments. “It’s a good thing I’m hungry,” Wembley proclaims, as he begins devouring the highway before him.
(If you’re new here, no this isn’t just a Wembley thing. All fraggles do it.)
Wembley asks Gobo what’s wrong, and Gobo again cannot elaborate, so he heads out to go get some wisdom from Marjory the Trash Heap (Again, if you’re new here, she’s their oracle. And yes, she is a talking pile of compost.)
In order to get to her, however, he must cross the Gorg’s Garden, guarded by the titanic Junior Gorg. His blundering mammoth size proves no match for a fraggles’ speed, however, and he misses Gobo as the latter makes his way to the oracle in question.
Her heralds (sons?), the murine Philo and Gunge announce her presence and the pile of compost awakens. She declares that Gobo has “Troubles,” and breaks into the highest energy segment of the episode, our last new song, “I Seen Troubles”. I adore this sequence, especially with how much fun everybody seems to be having and how high energy it is. It’s a spectacular contrast to the rest of the episode, in the best possible way.
Gobo explains that he doesn’t know how to do what he promised his uncle, and that he feels alone and scared of the terrible monster (Sprocket) that he will have to contend with. “Alone? Then don’t be alone!” Bring some friends, Marjory says, friends help. Philo and Gunge declare that to be all, and Gobo goes back to recruit his friends to tag along and help him out. Boober finds the request terrifying, and Red doesn’t believe a word of it, but the group agrees to go.
The sequence where they enter the tunnel to Outer Space has great scoring, and establishes a few running jokes, such as Wembley here bumping his head on a pipe. Everybody is subsequently stopped by a ‘Hideous, Round Thing’ (a red ball Sprocket lost down the hole) blocking up the doorway to Doc’s Workshop.
I hope this wasn’t bothering any of you before, but I just can’t help but be irritated by the fact the Hideous Round Thing is floating about six inches off the ground. Come on! Couldn’t they just have one of the Fraggle Five bend offscreen and pick it up? Couldn’t be bothered to do that?
Regardless, Gobo bravely ventures out of the Fraggle Hole and into Outer Space, past a sleeping Sprocket, only to find his uncle’s message when Doc comes in with the mail, various magazines and… a postcard for one Gobo Fraggle? Doc puts the errand card in the trash (...instead of checking with his neighbors? Perhaps more proof Doc just moved in.) and Gobo makes for the safety of Fraggle Rock. Only problem is the commotion woke up Sprocket, who now has Gobo by the collar of his cardigan, and everybody is freaking out. Mokey finally decides to throw the Hideous Round Thing at the monster to get it to let Gobo go.
This of course works, as dogs love their balls, and Gobo zips back into the tunnel with a “whoosh” sound- another running gag in the making. Red apologizes for not believing Gobo, and they head back home, singing a reprise of Hip Hip Hooray. That night, Gobo reads the message proclaiming his uncle is okay, and finally the young fraggle can rest easily.
(In actuality, Matt almost got hit by a car, ran into a fire hydrant, and mistook a bunch of children playing baseball for horrible warriors. He simply thought Gobo would find Outer Space too preposterous to put all that in his letter back home.)
We end the episode back on Doc and Sprocket, who have just finished setting up shop (literally). Sprocket barks down the hole at his new ‘friends’, and Doc declares that one of these days he’ll get around to boarding up that revolting crack in the wood paneling.
Final Rating- 6/10
Song Score- 3.5 radishes out of five “I Seen Troubles” and “Follow Me” are both spectacular songs, and I like them both in very opposite directions. I Seen Troubles provides a great energy boost to an otherwise meandering episode, and the fun everybody had during it is infectious. Follow Me is a wonderful lullaby for the soul, and one of the series’ classics for a reason (Oh yea, it’s coming back!). “Hip Hip Hooray,” however, brings the score down for its mediocrity, both times it comes about. It’s not horrible, but it’s weak as cardboard.
Story Score- 3 radishes out of five I admire the determination of the writing crew, getting every main character and group on screen with ample time to shine. However, the episode feels both very busy and very hollow at the same time, and the actual plot of the episode is kind of short compared to all the little side bits we run into (Gobo’s friends visiting his room, Wembley playing his song on the Doozer construction, etc.). None of these little bits really push the episode forwards either, but I do think all of this can be forgiven by a writing team that is still figuring themselves out.
Performance Score- 3.5 radishes out of 5 Everybody seems to be having fun! The quick establishing moments of Mokey, Wembley, Boober, and Red all do a good job giving the audience a nice feel for each character, and the physical comedy in this episode is very good, better than I remembered. The puppetry stunts are mostly standard for the series going forward, with many of them improving greatly beyond this episode, but there are a few novel ones as well, such as Matt dropping his books. Score is also a little low for this episode due to it being in what I like to call the “Glum Gobo” era, before Jerry really figured out the light inside Gobo’s character. Don’t worry, it’ll come with time.
That was Beginnings! It’s not perfect, but that doesn’t surprise me. The show is still getting its footing. This is by no means an episode I’d skip in future watchathons, but it’s not one I’ll go out of my way to see when I’m thinking about the Rock. Part of me fears I rated it so middle of the road because I don’t have much to review it on other than memories of other episodes, but I think it is still a fair rating. I apologize if this one was a little wordy too, there was a lot to cover!
Next episode up to bat is “Wembley and the Gorgs”. I’ll see you there!
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Hello! This is maybe a strange question, especially since we don't know each other, but you seem kind and reasonable.
How, exactly, does one realize they have Drarry brain rot? Say... Do you maybe hear a song you've loved since before you even cared about Drarry and you suddenly think of them? And then you immediately realize you know another song and the two songs together would be like like telling a Draco POV and another is the Harry POV?
Because... That may be my affliction. Alas! Me with the no storytelling talent.
So I figured you'd be nice enough to tell me if this is normal for daydreamer types or if it's time get off AO3 and Tumblr.
Hi there - this was an interesting ask. I think what stands out for me in particular is when you talk about 'brain rot' and 'affliction' and 'it's time to get off AO3 and Tumblr'.
What I'm hearing with those words is that you feel (or want to imply) that there is something inherently wrong with the behaviour you're describing.
So my answer to you is that Drarry brain rot doesn't exist, because it's perfectly valid for you to enjoy Drarry and to find inspiration in everyday things. Don't get off either AO3 or Tumblr, if anything, lean in! If Drarry fandom makes you feel good - why would you want to stop!?? Nothing rotten about that, especially if you are engaging with others in a positive way and not giving others a hard time if they enjoy things in a different way to you.
I know for me, I have always been a huge daydreamer in general and I've had fandom daydreams specifically since I was a little kid. Star Wars and Star Trek and Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story and The Chronicles of Narnia and Fraggle Rock - and that was just before I turned 10! I think what helped me was that my parents were also really big fans of sci-fi and fantasy, and went to Star Trek conventions in the '80s and my mum had an enormous collection of Star Trek novels (shoutout to @dduane for writing several of my personal faves) and she built a huge Romulan warbird model that sat on top of the TV, and they treated this like normal, not unusual or fringe behaviour. They never hid it or acted like it was embarassing. High five to my parents for being a couple of cool nerds.
I think the long history of pop culture fandom generally and the size of it, and the 'mainstreaming' of fandom over the past 15 years, demonstrates that it's very normal to enjoy pop culture, to be a fan, to be part of fandom, and to spend time thinking and daydreaming about it. It's as normal as people who are super into sports teams or fashion or cooking or home renovation. They might not be zoning out to songs and imagining Gordon Ramsey sensuously kissing Heston Blumenthal (but maybe they are, and thats okay), but they're probably having other kinds of daydreams about their thing, whatever it may be. Those things are not more valid or legitimate than being a Drarry fan.
In conclusion:
if you have been in fear that your enjoyment of Drarry has been too much, too preoccupying, and says something negative about you, then give that feeling a little kiss on the forehead and chuck it into the sea.
You might not think you have a storytelling talent, or you might not have the confidence to put yourself out there, but your ask was quite whimsical, why not give it a try? Or if you've been super inspired by those two songs and you don't feel ready or able to have a crack at it on your own, maybe you can join forces with someone else to make it happen, or use it as a prompt in a fest (like @hd-wireless) and give it life in another way.
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The Great Con-Junction
For a place like the world-famous Elstree Studios in London, history is made on the regular. Movies like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "Hot Fuzz," and even "Star Wars" have all been captured to celluloid moving at twenty-four frames per second. However, it was a lesser-known, though no less ambitious film that had eager fans lining up around the block on a mild February morning nearly forty years later. The film I speak of is none other than Jim Henson's 1982 cult-classic "The Dark Crystal." Myself and at least 200 other attendees were gathered for the first official Dark Crystal convention, celebrating both the film and the Netflix series. Taking place at the very studio where the movie was filmed, Thames Con's "The Great Con-Junction," was also the biggest reunion of the original cast and crew since the film's release. Once again, history was being made at Elstree Studios.
Upon learning of the convention I was filled with both desire and regret. Desire to go, and regret that I most likely wouldn’t be able. I live in Glasgow which is 6.5 hours away from London by car, and I don’t drive. On top of that, I hadn’t any money saved for such an occasion. But through the generosity of several friends, my mother, and my boyfriend willing to drive me there, the impossible was suddenly very tangible. With only twenty days until the convention, I was one of the lucky few able to attend this momentous affair.
It may seem odd that such a niche convention could draw someone from as far away as Glasgow, and in some cases the US and Australia. But if you’ve ever been to a Star Trek or My Little Pony convention, you may have some idea as to the sort of passion we’re dealing with. For many, Dark Crystal isn’t merely a great creative property, it’s life-changing. As a child, Jim Henson’s work left an indelible mark upon my soul. Projects like "Fraggle Rock," "Storyteller," and "The Flintstones," inspired creativity in me and filled me with the desire to one day work for the Jim Henson Company. Sadly, years of adulting did their best to dull that flame to a mere ember. However, after last year’s premiere of "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance," that ember grew into a roiling fire.
For the past month, I’ve been a ball of excited energy leading up to the convention. I’ve immersed myself in all things Jim Henson. Whether it be rewatching the Netflix series for the umpteenth time, revisiting Labyrinth, or reading JM Lee’s YA Dark Crystal novels, it’s been all I could do not to crack up. In the final week leading up to the event, I directed this nervous excitement into creating a cosplay as the Crystal of Truth, wrapped in black chains and metal claws. When the day finally arrived and I found myself waiting in line with other excited fans decked out in purple, or cosplaying as Deet or Rian, I knew I was with my people. The air was abuzz with excitement as we were slowly ushered into the building.
The event hall at Elstree was decorated with posters of scenes from the movie along with mood lighting. Part of the ticket cost afforded each attendee a beautiful signed print by Brian Froud. A bar at the entrance was selling official Dark Crystal merch including the ThinkGeek Fizzgig puppet only available in the states. Right away I had blown most of my budget, but my new furry friend would agree I made the right choice! I’d been there not two minutes, and already my arms were full of swag. I took this opportunity to get my Fizzgig and a book signed by both Brian and Wendy Froud, who were very generously autographing people’s items for free.
Usually, conventions leave a bad taste in my mouth as they seem like supremely capitalist ventures. And while there were plenty of things to buy, the Frouds’ generosity set the real tone of the event. Not only were they generous with their autographs, but they were also incredibly generous with their time. It seemed as though every person that talked to them was given an opportunity to gush and share their personal stories. As I told them both how much their work meant to me, they were treating it as though it were the first time they had heard it that day. Brian even took the time to doodle a little Fizzgig and Skeksis for me alongside his whimsical signature. The impression they left me with is that they were both very genuine and down to earth people, and meeting them is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
One of the things Mr Froud shared with me was that in his experience, people’s reaction to the Dark Crystal is usually always something creative. People go off and make fan art, cosplays, puppets, or even their own artistic endeavours. You could see proof of this all around the room that day. I met a brilliant artist from Seattle named Nori (@noriretherford), who in exchange for doodles from attendees was giving beautiful prints of her fan art. I drew my best skekTek from memory and have the cutest depiction of Seladon, Tavra, and Brea playing as children to show for it. There were cosplays with humbling levels of detail and even the occasional puppets of people’s original characters. All around you, creativity was swirling, and people were passionately sharing their enthusiasm with one another.
These initial couple of hours were dedicated to meet and greets with the cast, crew, and fellow attendees. Everyone seemed just as interested to listen as they were to share. One attendee remarked to me how she had never before felt more encouraged to speak to strangers than she had at the convention. Even my boyfriend, who is generally shy, was coming out of his shell and joining in the conversations. I was also pleased that the convention was managed well enough that I didn’t spend my entire day waiting in line to meet someone while he was relegated to watching my things. I was actually able to share this experience with him as opposed to relaying it through dreamfasting later. This made meeting the guests less of a thing to check off a list, and more of an experience.
My only real qualm with the structure of the convention was the Skeksis tea which was offered as part of the ticket price. Since I was unaware that the guests would be available all day, I was a bit late to lunch meaning the banquet was completely picked over by the time we had gotten there. No amount of cute creative table displays or impressively crafted Nebrie cake could obscure the fact that we were forced to find our lunch at the McDonalds across the road. Furthermore, I was unaware that the lunch was buffet style, which meant that if someone wanted to be as gluttonous as skekAyuk, it would leave the rest of us hungry. We were not alone in this, as several others were left to look upon the empty tables with dismay. That being said, for a first-time convention, it’s impressive that so little went awry.
For me, the biggest highlight of the day was getting to actually see the Gelfling puppets along with their respective puppeteers. Both Beccy Henderson and Neil Sterenberg had Deet and Rian with them. I’m not ashamed to admit that I hugged Deet. Being able to see the detail of the puppets and feel the various textures employed by the brilliant fabricators at the Jim Henson Creature Workshop was mindblowing. Not to mention that both Beccy and Neil were just as generous with their time as the Frouds. Though I would have to say the most exciting puppet I met that day has to go to Hup, as Victor Yerrid was actually puppeteering him and speaking directly to attendees in Podling. Hearing Hup say my name and talk to me was overwhelmingly exciting! That man is a brilliant puppeteer.
Throughout the day there were also several panels with guests from both the TV show and the movie. It was fascinating to listen to each of them tell their stories. Whether it be anecdotes about Jim Henson or tales about trying to navigate hot costumes under studio lights, it was a treasure trove of information. Listening to these stories was a constant reminder of the sheer amount of history present in the room. Each one of these guests had their own incredible careers, and here they all were, ready to share their fantastic stories. Yet despite this being an intimate gathering of a small group of creatives reuniting after 38+ years, it never once felt like it was all about them. You didn’t feel like an interloper or an evesdropper. We were all part of this wonderful experience together.
It was puppeteer Louise Gold’s remarks to the crowd about this that really put into words what we were all thinking. Through stifled tears, she remarked that she had initially come to see all of her old friends, but had found herself equally enriched by meeting the fans. Seeing all of us come together and sharing our stories was as inspiring to her as it was for us. Hearing her impassioned words moved quite a few of us to tears, myself included. She was easily one of my favourite people I met yesterday, and not just because she was so wonderfully extra. Her words spoke the same truth as Brian Froud's- what has resulted from this fandom is something creative. The Dark Crystal hasn’t simply entertained, it has changed lives.
Of course, like any good convention, it wasn’t just the guests in the spotlight. The cosplay contest allowed for an opportunity for the fans to strut their stuff. Much like the ticket giveaway the organisers had done, they couldn’t decide on just one winner. There was so much goodwill and positivity flowing that honourable mentions were given prizes as well, and with good reason. There were so many incredible costumes that I doubt I could have picked the best of the lot. There were Gelflings, Skeksis, a Hup, and even an urRu! My favourite of the lot was a mother-daughter duo who went as Brea and Kira respectively. But that may just have to do with the fact that I’m a big Brea fan and her costume was incredible!
Were I to think of any one word to explain how I feel about being able to attend this convention it would be grateful. I left feeling rejuvinated. My boyfriend even commented that I was “glowing.” I wish everyone in the fandom could have the same experience. I’ve seen so many passionate fans online in the last day wishing they could have gone, and I very easily could have been one of them. It’s proof to me that this fandom has more to it than just a few people toiling away in their basements. There is a real desire for these types of events. It’s not hard to imagine people declaring their Gelfling clan like Harry Potter fans might declare themselves Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws. (I’m totally a Vapran.) If you look online, you can see people’s OCs of both Gelfling and Skeksis. Even I’ve considered putting together my own Gelfling Gathering here in Glasgow. I’m hopeful that this is a sign of things to come, and that we won’t have to wait a thousand trine for the next Great Con-Junction.
#the great con-junction#the great conjunction#the dark crystal#thamescon#london#brian froud#wendy froud#louise gold#beccy henderson#neil sterenberg#victor yerrid#skeksis#gelfling#hup#poddling#the dark crytsal: age of resistance#fizzgig#elstree studios
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My Heart and Head Hurt.
So Very, Very Much
I am Asexual. I like cuddling, kissing, loving touches, I even love to make inappropriate sex jokes. Okay, I can make some pretty lewd sex jokes but that’s what happens when like 90% of your friends for the past ten years identify as pansexual. I just don’t feel sexual attraction and I am mostly repulsed by sex (ehhh it’s too much to explain).
At the first of the year, I moved to Texas from Michigan. Leaving behind all my friends, which with the internet isn’t terrible... but also my friends are shit at peopling on the Internet. Not angry or blame, they all have depression and anxiety. I get it. Just saying it’s hard to pretty much completely lose that connection with my friends. My friends are also the type where we would all pile into my bed and watch videos while cuddling with each other and my dogs. They spent so much time caring for me after my surgeries.
Being handicapped, and still learning how to live with it (it’s a relatively recent thing and takes relearning how to live life in a way that works for your limitations) I live with my parents. They are great but... they have their own mental health issues that really fucked me up as I grew up. It means that I don’t feel like I can open up or talk to them about anything because of what happened back then. I love them and I know they would do anything for me, but it’s just this thing I have. Heck, I have trouble opening up to my therapist for a long time. My therapist, who I also had to leave in Michigan. And Texas Medicaid? Kind of non-existent. Plus, I’m too old for my parents to be taking care of me, you know western standards and all, so I can’t have insurance through them.
Basically, I ran out of some of my medicine months ago, which means I live in near constant pain too. I can’t go see a therapist, because I can’t afford it. I haven’t run out of my depression medication yet, so there is that.
Since my accident (I will do another post on that later, because that will take a while), I haven’t been able to work. The accident was in December 2011, since 2013, I have had ten surgeries. I started back to school because it doesn’t seem like I’ll ever be up for any type of manual labor. But it also means I feel useless because physically I’m limited and mentally I am so fucked up I can’t do what I can handle doing. I graduated with my Bachelor (really proud of) but Texas has some different requirements that will add a lot of time towards getting my Masters, because Michigan didn’t have those requirements. This means I am going to enroll in an accredited online program, hopefully. Have to get accepted, fingers crossed.
To summarize, for ten months I have been isolated in a different state, dealing with body trying to adjust to different weather and medicine changes. Self isolation isn’t helping but the other problem is when I do reach out, there isn’t someone there...
Background info done, now to what’s troubling me:
My best friend and girlfriend is also Asexual. We’ve been together for almost eight years, but it’s always been long distance (we’re Ace, it doesn’t bug us too much) and I have gone to visit her. We started “talking” through Role Play and until recently, whenever there was lulls in life when a lot wasn’t happening, we could lean back on the Role Play to stay connected. There wasn’t a day when we didn’t talk to each other, even during the hospital visits we both went through, we stayed connected in some small way. And we talked about everything and anything. Our fandoms didn’t always match up, but it was fun listening and learning... I thought...
She was dealing with a lot of stuff, and for a few years was out of work, probably why she had so much time and energy for me. It was really bad for her for a while, where she even verbally attacked me on a few occasions. I know it wasn’t her but her mental illness, so I forgive her for it. But it was bad.
She was raised super Christian (DONT celebrate Halloween because it’s evil type Christian), and she has always been Christian even if she yelled at God a lot in her low days. Yeah, the good Christian girl is dating the Goth Pagan Celtic Witch... whatever you will call me. I’ve been Pagan for about 2/3rds of my life by now, so it’s not like she didn’t know she I was one. She’s never tried to shame or convert me.
My Bachelor is in Religious Studies, I know how good a religion can be for someone’s mental health if they are religious. I would talk to her about rekindling her faith. Finding a church she could at least go sit and listen to, so she could reconnect. She did! And it’s been amazing for her mental health. She has held a steady job for a while, actually is the poster child for the program that helped her move foreword and get her life back in order. I am so very proud of her and I do love her so much.
I just think... she’s outgrown me. The only fandom she talks about anymore is... Christianity. She doesn’t talk about LoZ anymore. She doesn’t talk about Tolkien. She doesn’t watch anime or cartoons anymore. She has no interest in Role Playing, as I said a big part of staying connected.
She talks about work, her cats, crocheting, and her religion. The thing is, I can’t fault her for any of it if it’s what’s best for her. She deserves happiness and stability. But...even when I’m back in school and when I get a job I don’t think I could leave the world of fantasy and fiction behind.
I grew up going to Ren Faires, my dad wearing tights. My first boyfriend I met at Ren Faire, while he was in tights. Labryinth and The Last Unicorn are still my favorite movies of all time! I collect Dragons of all sorts. I’ve watched the whole series of Fraggle Rock a few times, because it’s just wholesome and sweet.
My parents are Trekkies, my mom has had some of her fanfiction a published in old Starlog Zines. We watch fantasy, fiction, actions, cartoons... my mom has always loved the world of books, especially fantasy. She collects unicorns, so many unicorns. When I got into Anime, so did my mom. Kenshin is still her favorite, although to be fair she loved Ultron and Speed Racer when they first came to the states (she says Speed Racer was her first ever crush).
My brothers love the same thing, my oldest brother still fans for Jason David Frank. My other brother, well, he named his cat Pandea after WoW, we have his LotR sword collection, all his movie memorabilia...
We’re nerds and dorks and not afraid to be so.
Since the move the only thing making me happy has been my animals (Gods and Goddesses the fluffy bastards are clingers and just want to love you and be loved which is something I need) and fantasy. I’ve watched several animes I just want to gush about, but if you don’t have someone who is watching it too... you don’t want to ruin it. I want to just talk someone’s ear off about Steven Universe or Miraculous the Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Hell, even Ducktales and Tangled. Do you know how AMAZING they have made Ducktales?! I watched the original series when I was younger but...! And all the inside jokes!!!!
The books! I probably read about thirty or forty in one month when I went on a book binge. They were all trashy romance novels, and admittedly the sex scenes were... meh... I’m Asexual, what do you expect?! Okay... some Aces like sex and stuff. It’s not that important to me. What is, is the connection two people have to each other. The love. And trashy romance novels aren’t the best at giving that... but it’s something.
Oh and the Webcomics. I have always, always loved Webcomics. I used to have the folders on my old computer organized down to the day of the week the comics updated because I so many, that I had to organize them just to get the right updates! Right now Lore Olympics. OMG Lore Olympics. Be still my heart! I am reading several on WEBTOON. I have a few I follow through DeviantArt; Erma is so frikken cute! Daughter of the Lilies, ahhhhhh so amazing and the artwork!!! Pincushion! Constructs will always have a place in my heart!
I just got into the Good Omens fandom, because I’m a Whovian and Tennant is defiantly one of my most favorite of Doctors. He was just so beautiful in it. And when I took my Shakespeare course my teacher had us watch Hamelt and ohhhhh Tennant. Ohhhh you really can’t tell if Hamlet has gone crazy or it’s an act (which he claims it is!!). Sir Patrick Stewart was also just... oh!!! I entered Good Omens because my Instagram was all Ineffable Husbands (I think because of my Doctor Who love). Finally, finally i watched it.
That was like three weeks ago I got into Good Omens and I still am completely in love. The tenderness, the loving looks. I have to read the book! And the script book! (Depression, yay!). I need to listen to the radio adaptation and revisit Queen (I was raised on rock’n’roll. And I mean, David Bowie has probably been the only Rock Star I ever went heart-eyes for... also kinda sad he wasn’t mentioned in Good Omens because he did work with Queen and let’s face it, Bowie was so gender-nonconforming!). I just want to ramble and babble on and on about the series with someone. About all the hidden bits and pieces and theories and things in my head!!!
But... I don’t have anyone. My girlfriend sort of shuts down when I talk about any of the fandoms I like. She will just skip those parts of the conversation and comment on the animal videos I send her or something else. She will talk about work or God. Again, I’m know Religion and people. If there is something I know best is you can’t dictate what someone else’s beliefs are. So while I know the Bible and Christian theory, when she talks about it and tells me stories I can only “nod” and “smile” because if a persons religion isn’t harming themselves or others, and it’s helping them, I don’t think it would be right to argue theory and philosophy with them over what is mostly fairytale stories in a book. I’m not saying their isn’t a Christian God, or many Gods, or things in the Bible didn’t happen, but not all of it is factual nor was it ever meant to be seen as strictly factual. I try to show I am at least paying attention to what she says.
At the same time, with the state I have been in, I probably haven’t given her what she needs when she is telling me about stuff.
Fantasy and fiction has been the only thing keeping me afloat. Religion and work has been helping her. I just can’t see a world without the magic of make-believe but that’s not where she is anymore.
So... I’ve been thinking for a bit now maybe we’re no longer what we need for each other in our lives. Not that we don’t love each other, and not that we can’t still be friends... but maybe it’s time we adventure out? We were what we needed from each other for years... maybe we just aren’t that anymore.
#asexual#relationship#introvert problems#relationship problems#i need a hug#need advice#help#need friends#am lonely#grsm#lgbtq#lgbtpeople#lgbtqa#asexual relationship
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Filled in this questionnaire for a Tumblr friend (if you do the same, reply or dm so I can read yours)
1.Kissed a girl?
excuse you, think this gaysian has been living under a rock?
2.Kissed a boy?
sure have. sadly, a shameful amount. I was sexually confused as a teen, okay.
3.Had sex in public?
sure have! bathrooms, change rooms, high tops at restaurants, parks, cabs, on the island in Toronto — whoa, my twenties were fun, eh?
4.What’s your religion?
I am without one. I believe in myself?
5.What does your URL mean?
it’s my name spelled out phonetically.
6.Reason you joined tumblr?
cousin signed me up because she thought I’d love it back in 2010 — and love it, I did.
7.Do you have any nicknames?
gaysian, klow, crowy, clover, chole, the chole, DJ chole, etc.
8.Do you like bubble bath?
not especially. it makes my eczema flare up (insert sad face here)
9.Kissed in the rain?
pfffft who hasn’t tried to reenact that notebook scene.
10.Dyed your hair?
a few times when i was an angsty teenager.
11.Soup or salad?
sandwich?
12.Vegetable or meat?
I am an omnivore but like to have a lil meat with most meals.
13.Go out drinking?
not nearly as much as I used to.
14.Smoke cigarettes?
so I traded in my one semi-serious heterosexual relationship in at 24 for cigarettes and haven’t been able to kick the habit since.
15.Smoke weed?
almost er’ry day
16.Do any hard drugs?
not regularly
17.Have you had sex today?
like, it’s wednesday at 2:47pm and all I’ve done today is walk my dog, fuel myself with cups and cups of coffee and like work at my desk.
18.Have you ever fallen asleep in someones arms?
like, accidentally. and whenever I’ve woken up from these sleep situations my neck always hurts. always. my arms fall asleep. my back gets awkwardly tight. like, no gracias señor. sleep on your own side.
19.The relationship between you and the person you last texted?
serena and i were talking about grammar errors — and fraggle love. we’ve best best buds for going on 12 years.
20.Has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes?
it’s a line and I’ve for sure heard it.
21.Skipped doing homework to play a video game?
back in university, I didn’t study for my exams and played guitar hero instead. on expert. and destroyed anyone who challenged me. so, like, worth it? (also, still got my degree and work in my field now — so — winning.)
22.Tried to commit suicide?
there were some dark times. have you ever spent 72 hours in a crisis stabilization unit? it was a bad time in my life. who wants coffee?
23.The last time you felt broken?
more like this year has felt very uncertain and my heart feels numb and my brain feels fried but i’m not one to feel too broken. just gently destroyed.
24.Had to lie to EVERYONE about how you felt?
every day I come to work with a good attitude and pretend I’m loving life. do you know anyone who loves their life every day? but I’ll do anything to keep morale up.
25.Do you have a Boyfriend/Girlfriend?
Do you have a flawless, perfect beagle with a golden ratio face?
26.Do you have Long hair OR short hair?
sooooo I kind of just haven’t cut it and the longest bits touch my bum...
27.First thing you notice to a guy/girl?
e n e r g y
28.Do you sing in the shower?
I kind of just sing everywhere? not necessarily well. in fact, probably terribly. I sing terribly everywhere.
29.Do you dance in the car?
regularly.
30.Where were you yesterday?
the office #DigitalEditorLife and book club (love my clever friends)
31.Ever used a bow and arrow?
sure have. just call me choleness everdeen.
32.Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer?
did headshots in the spring.
33.Do you think musicals are cheesy?
excuse you, I live for andrew lloyd webber. also, I can shamefully admit I was a big fan of glee.
34. Is Christmas stressful?
...but it’s significantly less magical as a grown up with no babies?
35.Favorite type of fruit pie?
coconut cream or apple?
36.Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?
I wanted to be a writer. I also wanted to be an actress, I considered being a lawyer (ally mcbeal), thought about being a therapist (I thought it’d be a fun way to get people to tell me their secrets) — then I realized people accidentally do that when you’re a journalist so...here I am
37. Do you believe in ghosts?
obviously. and aliens. they believe in ghosts so hard in china that they build ghost doors in temples and art galleries and shit. for real. google it.
38.Ever have a Deja-vu feeling?
often. hey! I was just saying how these are my favourite cause it makes me feel like I’m on track with things (like I was supposed to be here)
39.Take a vitamin daily?
no, but I’m into taking my vitamin ds whenever I remember. welcome to canada — the SAD is real here.
40.Wear slippers?
sometimes. and I shuffle like my late nin-nin in them too.
41.Wear a bath robe?
sometimes. like, I have a couple. and sometimes I wear them. but it’s not like a thing.
42.What do you wear to bed?
fresh pair of panties and i’m like, niiiiiiight.
43.Do you want to get married?
I sure do want my big fat chinese lesbian wedding. heck yeah, I do.
44.Can you curl your tongue?
I am an excellent lesbian.
Relationship preference:
45.How many relationships have you had?
let’s count some of those boyfriends beards when I was younger
a few affairs
many girlfriends
many lovers
a few serious partners
a painful number of mistakes (lol)
I have lots of friends and family and they make up for the terrible romantic relationships I struggle with maintaining
46.How can I win your heart?
it’s there or it isn’t. if we feel it, we’ll feel it. i don't believe in forcing anything.
47.what makes a great relationship?
loyalty, respect, trust, solid communication, honesty (reasonably so), mutual goals and like, same dietary goals (read: a love for cheeseburgers)
48.Shy OR open?
I gravitate towards introverts as I am super open.
50.Religious OR non-religious?
like, I want to say I don’t care — but I guess I have no intention on raising my offspring with a religion (so, if they want to like splash my child with some water — maybe — but if they want to enrol them in sunday school...like, hard to say...)
51.Caring OR non-restricting of you?
like, care. but don’t be a controlling dick — trust me. then, i’ll be like same. and we’d be cool.
52.Straight edge OR non-straight edge?
like, I don’t want to go out of my way and find a heroine addict (we’ve all seen how GIA ends) and anyone too pure would find me filthy so I’m really hoping for a middle-of-the-road unicorn.
53.Piercings OR no piercings?
I don’t care? but maybe like less facial piercings? a single nose ring — nbd — but like bringing home someone with many holes in their face may make family dinners a tad awkward. my family is pretty conservative
54.Tattoos OR no tattoos?
into tattoos. all the tattoos. love tattoos.
55.Quiet stay-at-home type OR party type?
order in a healthy balance? heavier on the netflix and chill side?
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MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 18 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/mozcon-2019-the-initial-agenda/
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 18 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We’ve got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you’ll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we’ve already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a “digital PR newsroom” in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google’s quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how “fraggles” are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword’s Aren’t Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn’t enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now “king” in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don’t Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn’t just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from Blogger https://ift.tt/2TGyyaq
via IFTTT
0 notes
Text
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from Blogger https://ift.tt/2U0onlT
via SW Unlimited
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MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
Register for MozCon
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Grab your MozCon ticket now!
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
via Blogger http://bit.ly/2UgfG6v
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