SMX West starts today and I’m jazzed to see what comes out of their first show of the year.  While I’m not attending the conference it doesn’t mean I’ll be shut out of all the good that comes out of the show.

• SMX Now - I’ll be watching @SMX and the hash tag #SMX on twitter as well as their blog to hear the goings on.
• Blogs - I’ll also be checking Google blogs via my custom RSS feed.
• Slideshare - I’ll be stalking slideshare for the next few weeks to view attendees’ recaps and presenters’ decks that get posted after the conference is over.  BTW, I prefer using Google to search slideshare than slideshare itself – it gives me a lot more control (e.g., I can exclude Samsung in my search because it’s not relevant).  Here’s my search for all of last year’s SMX decks on slideshare.  Don’t let the complexity of my search scare you – if you don’t know Google’s shorthand you can build it using their advanced search.

We can’t all be everywhere all the time.  Keeping up with evolving technology just takes a little planning and a  little knowledge of how to use the tools we have.

BTW, I wrote a detailed post on tracking conferences last year.  It covers some of what I reviewed today as well as facebook, Google alerts, Delicious and more.