An Update About Cardiff SEO Meet (Going Into 2022)
Posted on19/11/2021
Hi folks!
There was a gap of 658 days between events (the previous one was in Jan 2020), but on Thursday 18th November 2021 we hosted a small social… No speakers, no site review – just an excuse to catch up on a small scale and discuss future plans.
At that social, I gave a mini-speech and said a few words to the attendees, which I also wanted to publish as a post on here.
The long of short of it is… I don’t know if I want to run Cardiff SEO Meet anymore. In other words, Cardiff SEO Meet is on hiatus (quite possibly indefinitely).
I know what you’re thinking: but it was on hiatus! For nearly 2 years! And this isn’t even the first time the meetup’s been on hiatus (which literally lasted, like, a month)! Yes, all of that is correct.
But, truth be told… My priorities have shifted. And I’m not sure I want to run events anymore.
Now, I am an annoyingly indecisive person, and while I’m saying this now, I might backtrack and change my mind come January. ? But, I might not… and I don’t want to screw anyone around with people thinking I might run another event at some point. In other words, I’d rather say that I’m stopping events but then actually do some, rather than the opposite.
There’s a bigger reason I’m saying all this though…
It seems to be an unwritten ‘meetup law’ that if someone is running a meetup on a subject covering a geographical area, it’s got to be the only one of its kind. So people might want to start their own Cardiff-based (or South Wales-based) SEO meetup, but won’t do because I’m already running Cardiff SEO Meet.
So, with that in mind… If someone wants to run an SEO meetup locally (to replace mine): you have my blessing.
In fact, if you let me know about it, I’ll usher people towards it. I’ll tweet about it. I’ll let people know that your event is potentially replacing and filling the space of Cardiff SEO Meet. …As long as you’re a good person and you’re not doing anything I massively disagree with, such as hosting all-white-male panels – LOL (diversity of speakers is important to me).
One thing I won’t do however is hand the reins of Cardiff SEO Meet over to someone else. Sorry. It seems to be another unwritten meetup law that when someone stops running a meetup, someone else can simply take it over, and a new leadership team runs the show. I’m afraid I’ve seen too many meetups in the past that were run well by an individual or a group of people, and then another individual or group of people took it over and ran it into the ground – or (worse) didn’t even do anything with it. As far as I’m concerned, Cardiff SEO Meet is my brand. It’s my baby. And if someone else were to run Cardiff SEO Meet and not do it justice (in my eyes at least), that could reflect poorly on me – even though I’d no longer be involved with it. And besides, like I said: I may bring it back (although I probably won’t if someone else runs a Cardiff-based SEO meetup instead).
But like I said: even if I don’t ‘give’ you Cardiff SEO Meet, you’d have my blessing and my support if you wanted to create your own meetup.
So… That’s it I guess? At least for now. Or maybe forever. I dunno. I guess we’ll see.
As always, a big thank you to the sponsors – past and present – for supporting me. And a super big thank you to Peter of Marka, for creating this site (where I can publish silly little posts such as this one)! And, of course: a big thank you to all the attendees, whether you came to one event or lots of them.
Peace out, you lovely people. May your rankings be high and your core algorithm-related ranking shifts be low.
I would love to end on a profound note written in Welsh (note: I can’t write/speak Welsh – despite being Welsh), so here’s an emoji Welsh flag instead: ???????
