The performance that really made it for me – Bruce singing The Rising:

Sublime.

I don’t go off-topic on this blog too often, but this seemed worth recording somewhere. I’m sitting listening to the concert from the Lincoln Memorial, the concert to celebrate President Obama’s Inaugural.

From a few hours before the concert, Bruce and Pete warming up for their performance, accompanied by a gospel choir.

I was born in England, and now live in Israel. Although I lived in the US for many years, I never became a citizen (no reason particularly, I just didn’t) … yet I feel a profound sense of history being made. The thought that a black man could be elected President of the US was unfathomable in the Sixties, when I was born, and even in 2008 it seemed an unattainable summit.

Yet it happened. Millions of Americans put their hopes and trust in Barack Obama, and today the National Mall is swarmed with people listening to a celebration of an historic moment. The concert is coming to a close as I type this, and I just listened to Bruce Springsteen and the 89 year old Pete Seeger lead the crowd in a singalong of “This Land is Your Land. What an extraordinary day.

Got an email from Barry Schwartz yesterday letting me know that SMX Israel won’t be taking place this month as hoped. The plan is to postpone it till the summer … given the current economic outlook, coupled with what’s going on in Gaza, I understand the decision, frustrating though it is.

When I first started developing sites for myself — affiliate marketing sites, AdSense vehicles, etc. — I was still working full-time for a NY based company. Since my work there included PPC campaign development, search engine optimization, and other online marketing activities, I decided to use a pseudonym for my moonlighting work in order to keep these two lives separate.

Since I’m a big fan of the British author P.G. Wodehouse I chose the name of one of his minor characters, Tuppy Glossop, for my online alter ego. As a result, poor Tuppy is all over the Google result pages  for a variety of activities he would never have countenanced (or indeed, understood!)

Anyway, it’s been a few months now since I left that position and I’ve decided it’s time to move out from under Tuppy’s shadow. He’ll still be around, since I quite like writing as someone anonymous occasionally, but I’ll be using my real name much more from now on, particularly on this blog.

Just wanted to tidy up any potential confusion for new visitors here.

Way back at the dawn of time (well, last February to be precise) I was at the inaugural SphinnCon Israel event.

At the conclusion of the afternoon, we were teased with the possibility of a full-blown SMX Israel, targeted for early 2009 … but there’s been very little news about it since then. A friend’s question reminded me about it today, so a-Googling I went, and lo and behold I found this page:

Search Marketing Expo – SMX Israel: January 25-26, 2009

Could it be true? Any one in the loop who can confirm or deny this possibility?

If it’s really happening, this would make a lovely Chanukah gift for that special search marketer in your life!

Today I once again emerged from my shell and ventured into Jerusalem, this time for breakfast with Jeff Pulver and around 80 of his friends. I have to get accustomed to this idea of being with actual live people, but I think I could grow to like it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these events (I wasn’t until today) you’ll find this video interesting:

Jeff is a multi-faceted guy with an impressive resume and an engaging style. He’s been hosting these breakfasts for a year or so; this morning’s was the first in Jerusalem, although there have been a few in Tel Aviv. All in all he’s done 35 of them in 18 different cities.

I got to reconnect with some of the people I met at the Jerusalem Web Professionals meeting last week, which was nice … it’s much easier to go into these events knowing a few friendly faces. So, it was good to see Charlie Kalech, Kim Mayroze, Shimshon Young, and Debi Zylbermann again.

Some other attendees included Brian Blum of This Normal Life and his wife Jody Blum, a financial coach; Yehudit Singer, the editor of IsraTimes; Joel Katz of Religion & State in Israel; Robin Zalben from Spielberg Film Archive; and Bernie DeKoven, the Fun Maven.

The tools that Jeff describes in his video … The Personal Social Networking Toolkit, as he has dubbed it … is what makes this event stand out from others I’ve attended. For me at least the tag labels were awkward. Particularly when talking to women I was a little shy about applying labels to someone’s chest, so those were a bust. But the personal tag line is a marvelous conversational ice breaker, and there were some very creative ones to be seen. (I never did get the chance to ask Jody Blum about soup, but I found the tag line intriguing nonetheless!)

I had a great time at Jerusalem’s first Breakfast with Jeff Pulver, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the next one.