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.
The twice-yearly affiliate gathering was a raging success thanks to the hard work of co-founder Missy Ward and Shawn Collins (and their hard working team – Go A-Rod!!).
The sessions were informative and I got some really glowing feedback from my session on how to get media coverage. Thanks to my panelists, Andrew Wee, Jim Kukral, Anik Singal and Valerie Stevens. You guys did a great job.
But for me it’s really about the networking. And, man, there is no shortage of opportunities to meet interesting people. It’s hard to really explain. It’s something you just have to experience.
BTW: I met at least three people that were affiliate managers and their respective companies wouldn’t pay for their trips to the event, so they paid out of their own pocket and took some vacation or personal time off to be here. That really says something.
Finally, there was a lot of talk (again) about forming an industry trade association. While it’s a huge undertaking that I can’t handle (others have tried and found out just what a monumental task it is) I did volunteer to gather up suggestions, ideas and information about doing forming a trade group. If you have any ideas, send them my way (lisap@revenuetoday.com). I’m going to get them all together to creative a report to get the ball rolling. Who knows maybe we can get this off the ground.
6 Comments Add your own
1. Shawn Collins | February 28th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Hey Lisa -
If you can send me the names of the affiliate managers who had to pay out of pocket, I’d like to extend free passes to them for our Boston conference this coming August.
2. brendan smith | February 28th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Wow Affiliate managers paying there own way –not a great place for a company to cut costs!! Motive sent all of our affiliate managers, media buyers, most of our sales executives and other staff as well. We had around 15 people at this event, and it is well worth it. We run a publisher centric affiliate network, we can’t afford to miss out on an opportunity to meet our parterres face to face. Shawn, very cool gesture on the free passes, let me add this. If you are one of those affiliate managers who paid your own way to Vegas for this show – send me your resume I would love to talk with you.
3. Tom Elliott | February 28th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
15 people may have been too many - some of them were inquiring about jobs with AKMG… or maybe they were just working it to get a board.
Good looking out for those affiliate managers Shawn. Good Stuff…
4. Amy Rodriguez | February 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Thanks for the shout out! I seriously love my job:-)
5. brendan smith | March 4th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Tom, I don’t think a company has to send as many people as motive did, you can have a good show with just a few people at the booth and a few more working the floor. we sent so many this time around because we have a lot of current clients that we wanted to meet face to face to discuss the launch of version 2 of our CPA network. It was good to have cool booth neighbors like AKMG, keep up the good work.
6. andrew wee | March 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Hi Lisa,
It was a fun panel. I think we’re just scratching the surface when it comes to media coverage…
In my books, Missy, Shawn and A-Rod have gone the extra mile to create a familial environment at the summits…definitely worth flying across 8 timezones to attend!
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