You know the slogan: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Not true if you’re dealing with more than 3,000 attendees of Affiliate Summit this past week. There are plenty of blogs (mine included), Tweets, Flickr pictures and hopefully some video to help you feel like you were there or relive the fun.

Keynote speaker Jason Calacanis kicked off the official part of Affiliate Summit’s program track on Monday. The controversial blogger and Internet entrepreneur stirred things up a bit by focusing on the part of affiliate marketing that has a reputation for perpetrating tactics perceived by the mainstream market as spamming or not providing any value. This seemed to rankle some in the audience, but also drew praise from those that felt the brutally honest outside look at the industry was much needed. He also praised affiliate marketers as a very smart group of folks and encouraged them to think even bigger when developing new sites. Check out Sam Harrelson’s live blogging of the keynote.

The Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas is huge. I can’t believe that yesterday’s Meet Market hall had more than 100 exhibitors – and that’s not even the exhibit hall floor, which doesn’t open until today. There are expected to be more than 2,700 attendees – a big portion of them affiliates not just merchants, network types and vendors.

If you stop by the Revenue Booth (#126) at Affiliate Summit, you have a chance to be interviewed by one of the writers at Revenue Magazine.

Like many of you I’m scrambling to wrap up all sorts of work projects before I head out to Affiliate Summit on Friday. I’m really looking forward to the conference and just hope that I will be able to complete all my work-related stuff and personal errands over the next two days. Hey, I can’t show up with split ends or less-than-perfectly-painted toes, can I?

Affiliate Summit officially kicks off on Sunday around noon with the Meet Market & vendor Showcase (it’s always one of my favorite times to network), but the informal networking and other events start as early as Friday evening. A number of folks are arriving on Friday night and there are already a bunch of groups gathering for various dinners and I’m guessing some gambling.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I hope you already got some gifts for your sweetie. If not, what the heck are you waiting for? So, once that very important task is out of the way you can move on to sharing your love and appreciation with others.

Here are some simple ideas for spreading the love. And each should take you only about 10 minutes. That’s not much time to make someone feel special.

Yesterday was my birthday and for weeks I was totally dreading it. Recently my personal life has been turned upside down. The thought of celebrating yet another year just didn’t feel right (or even possible) given that it’s been difficult to muster up a smile most days.

However, the day turned out to be a pretty good one because of my involvement with social media. Celebratory wishes, good vibes and of course “humor” about my advancing age poured in via Facebook, Twitter, IM, several forums I’m active in, and email – and in the form of video.

The last week has been a whirlwind of analysis about mergers and acquisitions in the interactive marketing space.

The biggest news was the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, which was announced at the end of last week. Here’s what some news (The Boston Globe, CNN, the New York Times) outlets are saying about Microhoo!

Since today is Sunday, I was reminded that once again the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association is going to be holding its second annual Gospel Brunch at Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. It’s at the House of Blues on the Sunday morning prior to the conference and if you’re arriving early it’s worth attending. I went last year and the event was very fun and uplifting – plus, there was some might good food.

The one-day LinkShare Summit is over and I came away from the event with some new ideas, a ton of business cards, a renewed positive outlook about the state of interactive marketing and a very nasty head cold.