In April I was again delighted to be invited to the wonderful and exclusive EGR Power Affiliates event in Marbella, but there was just one snag – I also wanted to attend BrightonSEO and it was the same week. There was nothing for it – I was going to have to attempt to do both.
First, Spain! I put in a couple of hours at my desk in the morning then jumped on the train to Gatwick for an afternoon flight. I normally take the excellent bus service from Malaga to Marbella for this event, but on this occasion I booked a shuttle transfer which I thought would be quicker and more convenient as I would be dropped off at the hotel rather than at Marbella bus station.
The shuttle was indeed more convenient, but perhaps not quicker as they needed to collect passengers (and their luggage) from several different flights and that meant I had to hang around for quite a while at the airport. As I only had a carry-on (and that’s a whole story in itself as I had to cram in clothing and footwear for two different climates) I could probably have stepped off the plane, taken the next bus to Marbella and arrived at the hotel earlier than I ended up doing.
The EGR event includes one complimentary night at the wonderful Puente Romano resort, and most delegates fly in the day before and stay at a different hotel for one night. The hotel I’ve used for the last three years is the Senator Marbella which is reasonably priced (by Marbella standards), comfortable and a pleasant stroll along the Golden Mile away from Puente Romano. I arrived in time for a late, light supper and drink at the bar.
Cue a little excitement as I discovered when I tried to charge my phone overnight that I had forgotten to bring a Euro adaptor. If this ever happens to you in Spain, a petrol station is the best place to pick up a USB wall charger; I discovered this after trying two supermarkets and a pharmacy to no avail.
It was now time to head over to EGR Power Affiliates, a gentle amble along the seafront.
The event itself was as amazing as ever. The amount of inside information you can pick up at the talks and roundtables is outstanding. I can’t tell you about it, of course, because Chatham House Rules.
I CAN tell you that the evening drinks and dinner were every bit as splendid as I’ve come to expect in my multiple years of attending this event.
I met up with old industry contacts and new at dinner
Then it was back to the beach bar for a few more drinks and more networking.
One of the best things about the Puente Romano is the breakfast buffet. I would even go so far as to say it’s the best in the world. In previous years I’ve taken lots of time over it but this time, I needed to be in Brighton before 6pm so I had booked an earlier than usual flight (but not too early – it would be no use arriving in time for talks but dozing off in them due to lack of sleep). I wasn’t going to miss that breakfast, though, so I was up bright and early, packed and checked out meaning that the only thing I needed to do once I’d finished eating was walk to the airport transfer pick up point.
The journey back to the UK was uneventful and thanks to only having carry-on luggage (plus duty free, by now) I was swiftly on a train from Gatwick to Brighton, not even needing to stop to buy a ticket. If you buy on the day using the Trainline app, there’s no processing fee and any railcard discounts you have are automatically applied, so that’s what I did as I passed through the airport.
It all went off without a hitch and I arrived in Brighton in time to walk to the conference centre, collect my lanyard (I’d pre-printed my badge) and catch Brighton SEO’s last session of the day, including a very interesting talk about increasing overall online visibility rather than just search visibility (something which turned out to be a recurrent theme in the next day’s talks too).
Dinner was at a fascinating restaurant called thewitchEZ. They do photo restoration and other creative stuff as well as food and the decor was quite something! The food was pretty good as well – I had an excellent Wienerschnitzel.
We stayed at Drake’s Hotel, a lovely boutique hotel with bags of character that was a pleasant walk along the seafront from the conference centre. I would certainly stay there again on a leisure trip but I think when travelling for work, next time I would prefer somewhere with a lift and a buffet breakfast. Well specifically, a self service bean-to-cup coffee machine where I could max out the caffeine with extra shots; breakfast was table service and the coffee just wasn’t strong enough for me at this point in my odyssey.
The talks I attended on the second day of Brighton SEO were heavily focused on AI answer engines, other use cases for AI and that old favourite, search intent. The talk on AI and automation was a real eye-opener. (If you can’t make out the writing on the slide, look at the alt text).
And who would have thought that a talk at Brighton SEO would reference something I used to bring up in nearly every essay I wrote as an Philosophy undergraduate more than 30 years ago?
Perhaps the most impressive talk of all was the keynote in which Lily Ray demonstrated (pretty much in real time) how to get the attention of LLMs (if you’re already famous, that is).
After attending talks in every time slot of day 2, my colleague Harrison Score and I celebrated with a free drink.
With both conferences done and dusted, all I needed to do now was collect my luggage from the hotel and catch a train home. Under normal circumstances, I’d walk up the hill to the station. But this time, I’d already done way over 10,000 steps for the day and just wanted to get home, so I caved and called an Uber so I could get an earlier train and be home in time for a late supper.
Would I do two conferences in two countries over three days with three nights in different hotels again? Perhaps not by choice, but if they are the same week again next year, hell yes! Especially as my ticket to Brighton SEO included catch-up of all the talks I was interested in from the first day.
Bingo Fairy 