Rich Brooks

And I noticed a couple of my friends start to do it and theirs were selling out.

Meanwhile, we're not getting paid for these and my friends weren't getting paid.

But yet the companies or the organizations putting them on were charging at the door.

So I pulled my friends into my office and they said, what are we working for the man for?

Let's just do it ourselves.

How hard could putting on a live event be?

Amen, brother.

Yeah, it turns out there is a little bit of work there.

But the bottom line is it was a great experience.

We put on the event.

It was successful.

We ran it for three years.

It was called Social Media FTW.

What year was the first one?

Uh, 2009.

Okay.

2009.

So, I mean, this will be the seventh year of the event because after three years, like I said, the band broke up, uh, amicably, but we just went our separate ways.

And through a chance encounter with Chris Brogan, the day after the final social media FTW, I decided that I wanted to put on my own conference, wanted to expand it so that we could talk about search and mobile marketing.

Two things I thought weren't being talked about enough, but