eBay CEO Meg Whitman and Sr. VP, North American Business Jeff Jordan gave the keynote address at the third annual eBay conference taking place in New Orleans this week.

Whitman began by thanking members from New Orleans and the 715 employees that were attending the conference. She said over 10,000 people had registered for the event from more than 31 countries. She gave attendees some inkling of what they could expect over the next 2 days, including classes, labs, roundtables and a Wedding, which takes place on Saturday between two eBay users.

Whitman thanked the sponsors of the event and announced that the U.S. Postal Service is introducing shipping boxes with the eBay logo prominently displayed.

Whitman then introduced a series of videos showing employees and heads of various departments, including a night site supervisor on the operations team; the head of Trust & Safety (fraud); and Customer Service.

Whitman handed the stage to Jeff Jordan, Senior Vice President, North American Business. Jordan has been with eBay for 5 years and has 283 feedback, Whitman said in her introduction. He is an active eBay trader in the Books and Music categories and trades Pokemon for his children.

Jordan reviewed some of the initiatives eBay has undertaken in the last year. eBay now offers combined multiple item purchases; sports a new faster and more efficient search engine; and has a comparison shopping feature.

Jordan spoke about improvements made to eBay Stores and My eBay 2.0. He also introduced video clips of eBay employees.

Jordan spoke about the importance of providing buyers to the site, and said eBay spent 25% of revenue, $200 million, on sales and marketing efforts in the first 3 months of this year. He played three of the television commercials that kicked off last fall, and said there would be a new ad campaign launched in the fall, the likes of which had never been seen before.

Meg thanked Jeff and they hugged. Whitman then closed the session with some New Orleans music.