To Russia, With PowerPoints

Ok, so technically it’s not Russia, it’s the Ukraine, but nonetheless this is gonna be a big week for Internet Marketing Ninjas. Tomorrow afternoon Jim’s heading out with Melissa, our social media director, for Kharkov, Ukraine. And no, it’s not because of a wicked craving for borscht, they’re both presenting at Optimization 2011; the “All-Ukrainian Conference for search engine optimization and website promotion on the Internet”. While they are there they’ll be meeting a ton of new people including Representatives from Yandex and Google Ukraine.

Between the two of them they’ve covered a lot of international ground including the Philippines, Brazil, and Zimbabwe. But this trip will be the first time for both of them in the Ukraine.

Jim has been a popular presenter on link building and tools for a number of years. But this past year he’s spent almost as much time talking about the Panda Updates. With Panda 2.5 coming out only last week, it’s no surprise that he’ll be staying on trend and giving a Keynote speech talking in great detail about the causes and solutions for Panda penalties. This will be an extended and much more intricate Panda presentation than he’s ever done before. So if you’re not in Kharkov this week, be jealous.

For her part, Melissa will be covering Social Media and Ecommerce or as she likes to call it “Social Commerce”. It’s not easy for most ecommerce sites to really relate to people without that “buy my stuff” undertones. But it is possible when personality comes before product placement.

So we hope the Ukraine is ready for a Ninja invasion. Jim and Melissa are both always looking to trek to new international territory so if you have any exciting suggestions for conferences around the world, we’re all ears. And in the meantime we wish them both Удачі вам, міцного здоров’я та багато горілки. That’s Good luck, good health and lots of vodka in Ukrainian. Just don’t ask us how to pronounce it.