I am covering Impact of Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 conference and am very much looking forward to attending the day and, of course, meeting up with the esteemed UK SEO and Blogging community. Highlights of the event include how to manage your corporate brand through blogging, developing a social media strategy and a speed networking session where you get to chat for 3 minutes!
Watch this space….

Sessions had different tracks, from Social Media, to Organic Optimisation to Search Advertising and something for everyone as the offerings ranged from basic to advanced.
The evenings offered a range of entertainment: from evening dinner parties to the full on Vintage Tub and Bath extravaganza that saw us shuttled in Epiar party buses to the penthouse venue for champagne and cheese tasting before dinner and rockem sockem!

Organised by a Heritage Art Foundation and with references to former times before the country’s current leadership, the new year celebrations at the Grosvenor Hotel marked the first day of spring and, logically, the first day of the year. 1386 by the Persian calendar, the New Year was heralded to the sounds of the funky Arash who had come over from Sweden especially for the event.

The evening kicked off with a welcome photograph and drinks before we were summoned to dinner by the toast master. With television cameras recording and playing back instantaneously for the guests. The ballroom was sumptuously decorated with beautiful flower arrangements on each table and the piece de resistance of the festival table at one end of the room.

When presented with such a different culture, it is important to research and investigate customs in an effort to understand the people. I am sure that I will have missed many of them, but this is what I understand so far: Traditions for the new year include spring cleaning of the house, visiting friends and relations and the purchase of something new to wear for the celebrations. Like Spring in any area of the world, it is about rebirth and renewal and the Iranian nation seems to hold this very close to their hearts. Part of the traditions of Noruz (Norooz) are to have a Haft Seen - a table containing the seven items beginning with s - including items like grass and fish - all of which represent such basic and fundamentals as joy, love, fertility etc.
The official list is (possibly not in the right order, so please forgive me):
sabzeh - which is a grain such as wheat or barley that is grown in a dish and symbolises rebirth
sir - which is garlic, symbolising medicine and healing
samanu - which is a sweet that is made from wheat germ and symbolises wealth
senjed - a dried fruit which symbolises love
sib - apples symbolising beauty and health
somaq - berries which symbolise sunrise
serkeh - vinegar which symbolises wisdom and patience

The New Year Celebrations contained the traditional meal of fish and rice created by masterchefs especially brought in for the occasion. The culmination of the meal was the beautiful array of fresh fruits and sweets adorning tables on two sides of the ballroom plus, of course, the traditional mint tea.

The dancing began after a charity auction raised over £50K for Heritage Art projects and top European Persian singer, Arash,

graced the stage with his band to blast out a range of funky and his world cup football song to the delight of the audience.

Ladies looked fabulous and the gentlemen looked terribly stylish, too. Children also were welcomed to the event and the Gorsvenor Ballroom resounded to the happy voices and laughter of nearly 2000 people. A completely new experience for me and a fantastic night that I feel priviledged to be a part of and very honoured to be invited to, which showed the culture and elegance of the Persian nation within Britain#.

Marie & Becky, excited by the prospect of the visit to Tangiers!

We always knew that Tangiers was a port town and, as with any gateways to different countries or continents, we understood that it would not be a true reflection of the country at large. Look, for example, at the UK ports of Dover or Felixstowe. Although there are great things about each locality, Brits would certainly not want visitors to our nation to judge us upon their experience in those port towns. We understood that there would be an interest in any tourist who came ashore and there would be potential problems and difficulties. However, nothing really prepared us for the reality of our visit.

The journey from Algeciras to Tangiers was speedy and not unpleasant. Seeing the coastline of North Africa emerging was truly exciting.

Disembarking from the ferry, we always said we wouldn’t take the first guide but that we would be independent and try to make our own way and make our own choice. That agreed, we tried to walk through the gathering of men claiming to be official tour guides and make our way to the taxi rank. One particular guide wearing a badge approached Sally first and was brushed off very efficiently, Becky followed suit but the man persisted. Clad in a new, smart leather jacket, immaculate trousers and shoes the guide reinforced the dangers of 3 women travelling unaccompanied and how we needed the services of a man to stop others pestering us. I remained quiet and just listened to the guy whilst making smart progress over the 500 yards to the taxis. Leaving the guide still protesting, we hopped into the first taxi and asked the price to take us the short distance into the town. Despite it being only a ¼ mile, the driver informed us that it would be 30 Euros – about £20 or 40 dollars! We started negotiating down this exorbitant price but the driver wouldn’t budge. We did a quick straw poll and agreed that we would go back to the guide. As we got out of the taxi an uproar resounded from the taxi drivers who didn’t like the fact that we were not going to use their service. The taxi rank manager plus a group of drivers followed us, shouting at us loudly. Luckily the guide was still there and we accepted his rate and his service for the day. Abdul, as he turned out to be called, then promised to spend the day touring us around various parts of the city.

Relieved at our lucky escape, we followed Abdul through the port and towards the town with Abdul and Sally walking together and myself with Becky. It was only as we were walking out that it struck us what we looked like. Several lorries and cars passed up, making comments and showing an unnecessary and uncalled for interest. With Abdul at the lead followed by 3 women, it must have seemed like a pimp with his ‘ladies’. Upon mentioning this to Becky, after the initial giggle, the unease started to set in. We kept our eyes down, heads down and tried to look incognito. Don’t make eye contact. On approaching the back end of a couple of lorries that were parked between the footpath we were using and the rest of the port, we really became very uncomfortable. The possibility of being grabbed and thrown into the back of a lorry and taken off for white slavery was a real possibility going through our minds. The path we were taking - the main path out of the port – was screened off by the huge juggernauts and no-one would be any the wiser as to what had happened to us.

Happily, the path cleared and we could see the exit of the port…

Upon exiting the port gates, we were relieved to see that we had come upon a large square or plaza which seemed to have a hotel housed in a beautiful building. That was it - Becky and I were staying there for the duration! We had been scared enough and felt pleased to get to safety. The architecture was truly lovely and we were quite happy to sit outside, enjoy the sun and have a taste of North African coffee!

But, alas, this was not meant to be. “You can’t come all this way and not go into the souk!” Feeling like naughty school children, we acquiesed - Sally was right. We just saw civilization and a chance to catch our breaths! Little did we realise what we had let ourselves in for…
We turned away from the inviting, clean welcoming hotel and ventured up the hill and into the depths of the old part of Tangiers. Intimidating isn’t the word for it. The streets became very narrow, very quickly and were very heavily dominated by young men, lining our route and turning to stare at us. I suppose this is to be expected but Becky and I felt extremely uncomfortable to the point of feeling quite threatened. Off and on, the men would call out to us in French or Spanish trying to get our attention and making solicitous remarks. We just huddled together, kept our heads down, didn’t make eye contact and pressed on. Squashed tightly together like conjoined twins because of sheer fear, for the first 45 minutes all we saw was the feet of Abdul and Sally who were walking ahead of us…

2 inches of snow!? Bring on Spain!”

Puerto Banus was fantastic! We loved the sunshine, the beaches out of season and the shops. Chilling by the marina and eating seafood along the front….the beautiful designer shops….delightful! Only having a handful of words at my disposal, Becky’s Spanish helped immensely when Alice (fluent!) wasn’t around.

The beach at Puerto Banus out of season…. still lovely!

After spending a few days doing business, we took time out and visited Orange Square and found a great restaurant in the old quarter of Malaga which was arranged like an arabic bedouin tent, complete with pipe and cushions.

Becky demonstrates how to use the pipe…

Marie tries but hygiene takes over…”do i have to smoke this thing? You never know who might have had their mouth around this - ew!”

Coupled with a very nice bottle of Tempranillo we had a great time catching up and, needless to say, we had fun with our surroundings, too. This started to cement an idea we had been bandying about for a few days….
Visiting a small, traditional mountain village one evening after work for tapas and wine was delightful, too. Time with Sally, Alice, Becky and Mike was amazing and fun and was had by all.

The next morning dawned along with preparations to hit North Africa for the day……

But first a little fun…

Where does SEOBiker come from?

Not an exciting tale, but I keep getting asked where the moniker SEOBiker comes from. In truth, the name kind of evolved slowly: I have been riding bikes for years, everything from custom bikes (like Harleys) to sports bikes to sports tourers, and it is seriously ‘my thing’ (except in the dead of the British winter as it is just too cold and too dangerous, with the UK population being half asleep at the wheels of their cars!). As not many ladies ride over here, I have long been referred to as a ‘biker babe’ (a biker babe is a girl who rides on the back of her man’s bike – and they knew it would irritate me as this is not the case! I am a biker not a biker babe) When I became heavily involved in the SEO world a few years ago, the SEO kind of attached itself and seobiker was born!