When you enter a battlefield, be it land, mind or disk, be aware (wink):
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
-Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
That's not to say you should have no plan though. Quite the contrary:
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
-Sun Tzu
I'm now watching mountains drift beneath the wing of my plane (sunglasses on). I'm leaving Las Vegas richer not poorer. You could say, I've just had quite an amazing Sitecore Experience (wink).
I've more recently released a video recap of the presentation I gave to the New England Sitecore User Group.
You've unlocked a door with a key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of clouds. A dimension of sites. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into, the Sitecore zone. (shocking music)
One of the nicest features that came along in the last few Sitecore versions was the rules engine. Along with that power was the ability to harness the conditional sublayout rendering to change the datasource or component design based on specific visitor information, otherwise known as personalization. There's all kinds of identifiable markers that are available to you about your end users such as location and search keywords. You can use this information as is to create rules, you can create "profiles" which categorize your users to help you reach your intended audience and you can use those "profiles" to build "Engagement Plans". I don't plan on going into detail about how to create these profiles or engagement plans since it's a near science unto itself but I did find a quick guide on personalization terms and an excellent articles on setting up personalization profiles and creating engagement plans.