Working

It all started with a rainy Wednesday morning in Hong Kong. The time was early, the sleep very little, the body is still adjusting to the time change. It was a mere drizzle, but the skies looked omnious and you could just tell there was going to be more rain this morning. Like I said, it was early and I was on my own. I still made my way to what is becoming our breakfast hot spot, McDonalds, although on the way back I noticed a little bakery on the way and made a mental note to give it a try on Thursday morning for breakfast.

Back in my room I enjoyed my sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and this morning found the coffee to be tolerable, god I wish there was a Starbucks near our hotel. Time to go get Ray and Asif to start our adventure to find the offices of the Hong Kong Tourism Board for our day of SEO training. Guess where they want to go and get breakfast for themselves?

As we head outside the rain is coming down even harder and we find an umbrella vendor. Ray wants to haggle the price, but it is raining out and we are getting wet, I don't think we have a strong position to negotiate, so we each pay our $19.80 HKD for an umbrella and our on our way.
Another sausage, egg and cheese biscuit for me and this time the coffee actually taste kind of good, I think I am just giving in at this point with coffee.

Our trusted tour guide Asif has already mapped out our walk to the office, so after our fast food breakfast we are on our way. Walking past the bakery again I wish I would have stopped there instead of a second MickyDees breakfast. We continue on our journey in what is now a down pour. Asif is a good guide and has us headed in the right direction through the many street vendors and morning foot traffic. Wait, what is that I sense? Could it be? Yes it is, a Starbucks. The day is starting to look a little brighter. I get my large (venti) coffee and feel better about the day already.

We make it to the HKTB office building and are immediately identified by Julie Lam (our e-Crusade contact for the account) as the guys from AA|RF, not that is was that difficult to spot us in a sea of Chinese business men and women entering the building.

We get up stairs and meet our HKTB client and find out about 20 people will be attending the training. Ray gets a little nervous, not much, but this was more than we were expecting. The room isn't that big and is already quite warm, I hope somebody finds the air conditioning before this gets started. Some technical issues are encountered with the presentation, but they are quickly overcome.

9:30 and the room begins to fill up, introductions are made, business cards exchanged, small talk ensues. Angela (our HKTB client) brings the room to order and we are set to begin. Ray spends the next 4 hours talking SEO, specifically search engine market share, keyword research, linking and Web 2.0 tactics. The audience is engaged the entire time and ask some good questions, but I am more interested in the view out the window as I noticed the rain has stopped and the sun is beginning to come out. Is this because I was able to find a Starbucks and enjoy a decent cup of coffee? I think there was some sort of connection.

Time for lunch. The client wants to take us out for Chinese, imagine that, we came all the way to Hong Kong and on our 2nd day hear we are finally going to get some Chinese food. The lunch is good, the food delicious, and the conversation lively.

Back to the office for some more training, this time Asif is going to walk us through the technical aspects of SEO. There are considerably less people in the room for this session. We talk redirects, more redirects, Flash/AJAX and URL structures, Asif has the audience on the edge of their seats. I think more so they can dash out of the room at the first opportunity, than because they are wanting to listen to more explanations about why their current site is not good from a technical perspective for SEO. The audience does have some good questions to follow up to Asif's presentation though, so I believe they did find value in his words of wisdom on the Do's and Don'ts of technical SEO.

Our hosts thank us for a fine day of training, claim they learned a lot, appreciate that we travelled so far and long to meet with them and send us on our way asking that we spend as much as we can while we are in Hong Kong. They are the tourism board and this is their key metric for success, so we are not surprised by this request.

Now the sun is shining, the skies are clear, there is a smile on our faces for a job well done and we start our walk back to the hotel. It is an uneventful journey back to the hotel, so I won't bother you with the details except for the street vendors selling the last of their fresh fish which are looking at us as we walk on by.

All and all a good day for the team. A job well done by Ray and Asif. Sorry to ramble on for so long, but I am finding this blogging thing to be kind of fun.