Ad:Tech SF is officially over and I couldn’t be happier. Not that I didn’t enjoy my 20-plus hours days for four straight days this week, but frankly I’m not 27 any more (nor have I been for a while).

Thursday afternoon I was pretty wiped out and completely on overload about interacting with online marketing folks. That all changed when a fresh-faced online marketer approached my Affiliate Thing co-host Shawn Collins, while a bunch of us were hanging out in the Affiliate Summit booth celebrating Shawn’s birthday and the end of the conference.

This kid, who turns out to be all of 14 years old, is Harrison Gevirtz and he’s an affiliate marketer. Harrison was really excited to meet Shawn and told him that he’s a loyal listener of the Affiliate Thing podcast. Shawn was kind enough to introduce me to Harrison. Even though the birthday boy was clearly the main attraction for Harrison, we all posed for a photo.

Shawn and I thought Harrison was a cool kid and that it would be great to have him on the podcast. So, if Harrison can skip school or just one class (not that we are advocating that behavior), he’ll be our guest on next week’s show.

In the March/April issue of Revenue, Senior Writer Alex Wharton wrote an in-depth piece on where the next generation of online marketers are going to come from, I have a feeling that Harrison knows and that he’s not the only 14 year old interested in this stuff. Tune in to WebMasterRadio.FM on Wednesday at Noon EST to find out.

Ok, I’m going to wrap it up with a few random thoughts on Ad:Tech, as I need to start digging out after being away from the office:

*The Ad:Tech awards were held on Wednesday evening. I heard it was a great affair with Cirque du Soleil performing and then followed by a packed party at the pulsing club Mighty.

*My panel “Revenue Magazine’s Session: Leveraging Lifetime Customer Value into eCommerce Gains” went off without a hitch – just a spelling error (there is no “e” in gains). What can I say? I’m an editor. I always notice the spelling mistakes of others – but not my own. Anyway, I think the panelists were diverse and the discussion was informative and lively. If you missed it, Ad:Tech will have podcasts of all the sessions ready for download in a few weeks.

*The quality of schwag was much higher than in the past – a good indicator of the health of the marketplace. There were some good tchochkies including a glow-in-the-dark bouncing Google ball, iPod speakers from DoubleClick and retractable Ethernet cord from RedDot.

*As I made my way around the show floor I notice a lot of exhibitors serving beer. There may have been about a dozen (including Affiliate Summit). There were also a handful of companies serving wine. I don’t remember that much alcohol on the show floor in the past.

*The buzzword of the show was “Internet Aquarium”.

*The DoubleClick booth was jammed packed as you might guess since everyone was curious about the acquisition by Google. The crowd of people stood out even more as the DoubleClick booth was directly across the aisle from the Claria booth, which was virtually empty every time I went by and I made sure to go by frequently just to check.

Let me know your thoughts on Ad:Tech. lisap@revenuetoday.com