Last night I attended LinkShare’s Golden Link Awards, It was a classy and swanky evening filled with great guests, good food and a few chuckles (courtesy of host Mario Cantone, a stand up comedian who’s been on Broadway and also a regular on Sex and the City).

The venue – the Cipriani – was stunning and packed with affiliates and merchants in their full glam. So much for the notion that affiliates are all sitting home in their pajamas. These folks were in black tie and looking good. LinkShare really knows how to do it up right.

I’ll provide a full list of winners later today, but the final award of the night was my favorite. Shawn Collins took home the award for Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Affiliate. Shawn’s competition was stiff – the wonderfully insightful David Lewis of 77 Blue and super affiliate/prolific message board poster Michael Coley of AmazingBargains.com. What a diverse and awesome group. It was great to see LinkShare embrace and recognize a group of nominees that have not always given glowing reviews to the company. The new inclusive attitude of LinkShare was refreshing.

I was pleased to see Shawn win for a lot of reasons – he’s done really great things for the industry with his conference; his blog is funny and spot on; he’s not afraid to tackle any issue; he loves the Pogues; and honestly, he’s just a nice guy who truly loves affiliate marketing. In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I was a judge for the awards.

Now, I’m off to the LinkShare Symposium event at Chelsea Piers for a day of education information and networking. I’m particularly looking forward to hearing the keynote speaker Alan Webber talk about Brazil, traveling to Austria and the joys of now being based in Santa Fe. Oh sorry. That was last night’s fascinating dinner conversation. Thanks Alan.

lisap@revenuetoday.com