Video: Chris Elwell, CEO behind Search Engine Land and SMX, talks business — and that time Sergey Brin skated on stage

We spoke about how everything got started, how it was working with Danny Sullivan over the years and how he manages everything under this company.

Chat with SearchBot

I thought it would be fun to sit down with the man who has helped form this industry. Chris Elwell made it financially feasible to run SEO and SEM events in our space. In 1999, he had the vision, along with Danny Sullivan (who will be the keynote at SMX Advanced in June) to try to put together a conference with like-minded search engine marketers, even before the space had a real name. Guess which tiny company had a table at that first event?

Chris Elwell has a rich history in the publishing world, and he is the CEO of Third Door Media, the company behind Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conferences as well as our sister sites, Marketing Land and MarTech Today and the MarTech Conference.

I sat down with Chris to talk about how everything got started, how it was working with Danny Sullivan over the years and how he manages everything under this company. We also talked about new content concentrations at SMX, such as the two-day digital commerce marketing track happening at SMX West this month.

Here is the video interview:

I started this vlog series recently, and if you want to sign up to be interviewed, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.