Mike Grehan says...

Random musings about search marketing, flying around the planet, networking and people watching.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Why does Google have a supplemental index?

Well it has to take a dump somewhere!

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Another day... another country...

Time to get back on the road again. Life goes on and we must go on with it. So today I opened the curtains to find I was in... Warsaw, Poland.

Yes, me and my buddy Thomas Bindl are concluding our European tour after my short break. It's back to work and back to airport lounges, flight delays, language barriers and everything else that goes to make the life of an international search marketer... er... interesting!

I switched hotels on the second night and moved into the brand new Warsaw, Hilton. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I was upgraded to a junior sweet. Very nice. Panoramic views of the city lying in bed. But then I looked down from the 25th floor... and what did I see... Yes, another construction site! Try sleeping through that.

Had to sneak a peek at the King's palace.

And nip into the old town for a dinner of traditional Polish food. Meat, with meat, with another two layers of meat across the top and a little meat on the side...

It's good to back on the road!
Another day...

The day before my brother died, I was at the eMetrics Summit in London.

First chance I've had this year to hang with my great pal, Jim Sterne. Me and Jim tend to bump into each other a lot as we criss-cross our way around the planet. He really is one of the smartest guys in the industry. And one of the funniest, too.

eMetrics Summit is one of the best organized conferences I get to speak at. The venues are always excellent and the catering always top notch.

Strangely enough, Jim was in Ireland speaking at a conference at the same time as I was speaking at SearchMarketingWorld2007 I mentioned the church of search thing and told him I'd be writing into my speaking contract that I needed oil paintings and chandeliers at every gig.

He must have been paying attention. eMetrics Summit was up there in the chandeliers and oil paintings realm.


Well done Jim and matt for pulling together another great conference.

I bumped into David White from Weboptimiser who seems to have changed career to movie director. He was interviewing anything that moved... me included. I popped downstairs to join Jim for a coffee, and whoosh... there was David White. You can see my completely impromptu interview here:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6590703574167254588

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Paul Grehan - 29 January 1954 - 31 March 2007


Yesterday we put Paul to rest. My eulogy had the entire church laughing, as I talked about him and his completely zany sense of humour. And that's exactly how he would have wanted it. I managed to keep it together until the last minute or so, when a little tear broke through. But I didn't crack completely.

Thank you so much to the more than two hundred people who attended the church. Paul was a very popular guy.

I will miss him very much. We were so close growing up together and into our adult lives. I took the picture above last year at a family get together in my younger brother's house. Paul, Stephen and I loved to get together regularly (as often as we could) with our families and our mother.

However, my mother's favourite shot of Paul was another casual picture taken years ago on holiday in Majorca. My mother, stepfather and Paul were walking down the beach and just asked a passer by to take a shot of them.

Thanks, Paul for being a great brother, friend and quite simply, a great guy.

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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Tonight my brother died...

I tried to contact as many people as I could on the phone. But there are friends of mine and both my brothers I couldn't get in contact with.

Paul died playing a game of squash tonight. So unfair, with my lifestyle, it should have been me first, he was only 53.


I love you Paul. You were (like our father) a very great man and a great story teller. But, most of all, as my older brother, you were a great protector and my most loyal friend when we were growing up.

Isn't the internet a great way to tell people about the greatest things in life... and the worst.