Pop quiz for travel fans: What was the second-busiest travel week for Americans last year? The answer, according to the travel experts at Orbitz, was the first week in August. In fact, August in general is a busy travel month. You have families looking to cram in their last vacation trip before the summer’s end, students looking to get situated before the Fall semester, and some pretty interesting trade shows.

While Team Monetate isn’t a “family” in the traditional use of the word, and we’re not going on a vacation, we will be traveling both East and West this August (and hopefully having some fun along the way).

From August 8 to 11 we will be in Boston attending eTail East, a major conference for online retailers. David Brussin, Monetate’s founder and CEO, will be delivering the Chairperson’s Opening Remarks at 8:30 Wednesday morning, August 10 (you can bet we’ll be rising and shining early for that one). Attendees at eTail can also hear presentations from several Monetate clients. Two C-level experts from Brookstone are on the agenda: Bill Wood, VP and CIO, and Ron Roire, President and CEO, will both be giving talks. You can also catch Katie Grisko, web strategy manager of PETCO. Katie owns the mobile strategy within PETCO and she will be sharing lessons learned from PETCO’s mobile efforts, including their mobile app.

Five days later, from August 16 to 18, we’ll be across the country in San Francisco for SES, the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo. On Wednesday, August 17, Nathan Richter, Monetate’s Strategic Services Director, will give a talk about landing page optimization. There are lots of other interesting topics on the agenda, so check the schedule and plan ahead.

If you’re attending either of these conferences, come and say hi to us. We’d also love to have some longer chats about the topics covered at the conference, or about how Monetate can help increase conversion rates and improve other key metrics on your website. To book time for a chat at either event just email Marc Hatton (that’s mhatton at monetate dot com).

We look forward to seeing you, but wherever August travel plans take you: Have a safe trip!