Hello, SEOmoz readers. My name is Jane and I work here. You may remember me from posts that were written about two weeks ago. I've been pretty quiet recently (the Moz Points are suffering) because I've been at the first SMX show in Australia. Rand already wrote about the show, but I thought I'd provide a bit of "overheard" fun as well.

At the moment, we are waiting at Auckland airport.  At the moment, I'm resuming a post I began whilst waiting at Auckland airport. We were in Auckland for a few days, staying with my family. It rained. Constantly. In between torrential downpours, we managed to visit a few New Zealand landmarks, drive a rental car on the other (i.e. left) side of the road on Waiheke Island and meet with the great team from Netconcepts:


A brief list of funny "Overheard" moments:

"Oh no!" - Mystery Guest
"What is it?" - Jane
"There's a little red line that goes all the way around the world!" - Mystery Guest, on the plane, upon seeing how far we have to fly to get from San Francisco to Sydney.

"What would I need to get a date with this woman?" - Monte Huebsch, during Landing Page Basics
"A prayer!" - Audience

"I twittered all night long. I twittered a bit too hard. I'm twittering love for you." - Danny Sullivan

"I never want to think of Danny Sullivan in that way. To me, he's like a Ken doll below the waist." - Mystery Guest

"Is that a tie or did a monkey die on your shirt?" - Rand, abusing the "text in a question" feature during Q&A for Viral Marketing and Linkbait

"I want to see the Ciarán/ Liza Minelli monster." - Me
"I lost it." - Mystery Guest

"Techcrunch sounds like a cereal robots eat." - Ciarán Norris


"Gee, good thing I looked at the itinerary. I'm moderating all day and I didn't know it!"

"My entire life has been spent getting into and out of trouble. I'm never doing anything but."

"That's not like you, mate."
- all Michael Motherwell

During the Essentials of Social Media Marketing panel:

"You've been to a farm?" - Customs guy in New Zealand
"No." - Me, not realising I'd indicated that I had done just that on my customs form.
"It says here that you did." - Customs guy
"Well, no. But I guess the whole of Australia is one big farm." - Me
"In you go." - Customs guy

Photography student Matt Hawke, outside Luna Park: "You two are dressed perfectly for the photography project I'm doing. Would you mind walking down those steps by the North Sydney pool for me?"
Me (in my head): "So long as it's not for the Ugly People Wearing Stupid Clothes project."

New definitions: "To Monte": to do something inappropriate. "To Jacqui": to punch the person who did the inappropriate something.

"Wikitoria? Is that like a Victoria that everyone can edit?" - Rand, displaying unintentional cultural insensitivity and profound geekiness in Auckland


"I knew you guys were almost here because Danny twittered your entire taxi ride." - Ciarán (although Danny spelled my Twitter name incorrectly :) )

"This office space is incredible." - Rand, in Parnell, Auckland
"Yeah, but the commute would be a bitch." - Mystery Guest

"Oh, shit." - Me, upon seeing sixteen cyclists ahead of me on Waiheke Island as I struggle to drive on the left again.
"You passed levels one and two so they've upped the difficulty." - Mystery Guest, comparing my driving to a video game.


"The weather in Seattle is... well, I'd stay here." - Pilot of Alaska flight 513 from Los Angeles

As Rand (and a good number of other people) wrote, SMX Sydney was fantastic. A big congratulations are due to Barry Smyth, Lisa Davis and the rest of their team. They did a super job in putting together not just a good SMX, but a unique conference that future shows will have to work hard to live up to.

Let me leave you with one final piece of cheesiness: don't tell me this doesn't belong on iStockPhoto :)