I’ve been to a lot of web industry events, so I’ve become pretty picky on what actually makes a good one. It’s essentially nailing the combination of event content, organization, location, social events, and the quality of the people there.

While maybe not an A+ in every category, the Right Media Open that occurred last week in Half Moon Bay was the best event I’ve ever attended.

There is bias in my opinion since I work for Right Media and played a part in planning and executing the event, but this is also my blog and my opinion, so let’s just roll with it. I had an advantage in enjoying it since I knew the majority of the attendees and was interested in the content, but I can objectively judge the location, reaction of the attendees, the activities, and general mood of the event. And those were all off the charts.

Half Moon Bay is supposedly cloudy and rainy for much of the year, but we had 75 degree weather to go along with the amazing views and quality of the Ritz. There was golf, Segway tours, tennis, fitness, poker, drinking, comedy, and somewhere mixed along the way we had numerous speakers and panel discussions about advertising exchanges.

The highlights for the majority of the world may have been the Jerry Yang Keynote, or the Competitor Faceoff, but I probably was most amused watching my fellow coworkers crack jokes while running their panel discussions.

Special thanks to Jeanette O’Donoghue, Lauren Axelrod, and Meredith McTernan for putting the event together, and to the rest of the Right Media team for making it all happen. Also a huge thanks to all the great attendees who are pioneers in the online advertising space.

Oh, and they also had really large pumpkins.