WebProNews

Matt Cutts of Google's Search Quality Team made a post on the Google Webmaster Blog indicating that a goal of his this year is to make Google more transparent and to communicate more.

"That led me to a personal goal for 2009: if I give a substantial conference presentation (not just a question and answer session), I'd like to digitize the talk so that people who couldn't attend the conference can still watch the presentation." This should make many webmasters happy, particularly those who hang on Matt's every word.

Cutts starts by offering this 20-minute video recapping his "Preventing Virtual Blight" presentation from the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that took place in November. This "director's cut" was filmed a little bit later at the Googleplex:

Well, that's not the same as attending a conference right? You don't have his slides to look at and help you learn visually. Oh wait a minute, he provided those too:

A lot of people are going to be greatly appreciative if Cutts does this with all his presentations. Perhaps he will inspire other presenters to follow suit, making more great conference info available for free from the comfort of one's own computer (or phone). I don't know how thrilled conference sponsors will be if this becomes a popular trend, but these things are always liveblogged, reported on, Tweeted about, etc. anyway. This way, you know you're getting the entire presentation as it was intended.