Man, do I know the pain he went through to make this decision. It’s very hard to watch something you really love and worked so hard to build continue without you, but when you are not an owner in some way, it’s harder still to understand why someone else is taking all the profits, and control, while you do all the work. I know Danny is a very reasonable guy, and the fact that he could not get the new owners of SEW to cut him in on the fruits of all his hard work means the folks running his ex-company are really not paying attention to where value is created in the media world these days.
Best of luck, Danny, I am certain you will do screamingly well in whatever you do next!
Not very clever move for SearchEngineWatch, as for most people, Danny is SEW. No doubt SEW forums and events will continue on, but without that authority that the main brand, Danny Sullivan, lent.
Does he have a non-compete? I think if he started his own conference he would do very well.
I met Danny only once at the SES NYC in 2005 and I read quite a few of his articles.
I am surprised about this departure and hope that SES and SEW do not become the “corporate faces” who’s main objective would be … cash in.
I wanted to write a detailed post on my blog but after seeing a huge wave of blog posts on this topic I thought … “what else can I say? I hate to repeat others”.
Danny is a popular guy and an industry giant. I am very interested in seeing what he’s going to do next. All I can do now is wish him all the best.
I thought it was time for Danny Sullivan to move on anyway….Incisive Media was milking SES by making a conference somewhere every month. The problem is – there’s not that much new information to have a new conference every month and I can’t think of any parallel conference that’s held so often.
While I’ve never really spoken to Danny, I have seen him around at the SES conferences I’ve attended and he’ll be hard to replace. Reminds me of Amanda Cordon and RocketBoom. Is anyone watching RocketBoom lately?