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Afterword
The nigritude ultramarine contest, to the players, was
about several things: knowledge and skill, self-promotion, making new contacts
and alliances, and the desire to compete and win.
The contest was a man-made event, a complete artifice. It existed for members
of an industry to compete with each other, to gain fame and thus business, and
to study all the moves they could for knowledge.
Knowledge was the lodestone for many. Search engine work only seems to be formulaic
and rote - in practice it wriggles like a snake. SEO displays itself to the world
as a list of DOs and DON'Ts - you can read them in forums and ebooks, in journalistic
pieces, and even in posts to weblogs that affect to disdain the field.
But SEO people know that you can only apply all that theory to the template of
a project in the beginning, and the real learning will come in the quiet observations
you make to yourself as the game progresses, a wordless kind of "training
your hands" in a skill that evaporates the minute you take it for granted.
Which is to say, in plain words, that many people were in the contest simply for
the doing of it, for the chance to venture boldly and risk failure without having
a client or an affiliate website at stake. This was a priceless learning opportunity
for those humble enough to see it as such, and a chance to be the top gun too,
for those confident enough to see it that way.
It was a convention in the making, a reason to reach out and make new connections,
which is very much the way SEO works now, in a maturing industry.
What happened in the contest more than anything was the sprouting of many authentic
new friendships between people who don't usually get to talk much about their
work in ordinary conversation. Alliances formed, memberships and subscriptions
increased, potentials were detected, latencies bloomed. Most players will remember
the nigritude ultramarine contest of 2004 for the human warmth that flowed through
and all around and about it.
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