Where do I start? The Affiliate Summit is over! Oh, you want more info? Okay let me give you the quick run down.

Before the Summit officially kicked off there was the Affiliate Dinner, which roasted FlamingoWorld.com’s head bird, Connie Berg. It featured truly hilarious videos from the Brother’s Schaaf (Brook and Forrest) and one from Missy Ward that had people rolling in the aisles. If you know Connie and missed the special issue of Revenue dedicated solely to Connie, email me and I’ll send it to you. Or maybe I can get the Web folks here to post the PDFs.

On Sunday, the Christian Affiliate Marketers Association (CAMA) cruise took a two hour spin around the harbor – a great brunch, good fellowship and speculator views of Boston. Thanks to Wade Tonkin, along with Karen and Joel Garcia for the good time.

The Meet Market was six hours of eager faces and great information. That event has become a must-attend and the capacity crowd proved it. Revenue had a table for the time. I hope all of you that came by to ask about how to subscribe the magazine followed the link on the cards I gave you and signed up for your free subscription.

I had to miss the session on NY Tax Laws while I manned our meet market table. The discussion included Melanie Seery, founder of NY AffiliateVoice, who has passionately led the charge on the issue. I heard it was an informative session and was sorry to have missed it.

As always, the parties and late night networking (and piano playing) are always among the highlights at the show. And The ShareASale Night Under the Stars party is usually the best party hands down. The SAS folks lived up to the hype throwing a swanky affair on the Odyssey yacht. And although the boat was docked, it was still a rockin’ good time. I always leave SAS CEO’s Brian Littleton’s parties with a smile on my face and good memories (thanks to Sarah and Carolyn), but this time around I got a little more than I bargained for. I woke up the next day with a swollen eye and unable to speak (no wise cracks here) from an apparent allergic reaction to the flower arrangements on the boat. It was not the best way to start the day since I was moderating a panel that morning at 10:30.

For me, Cory Booker’s keynote was one of the highlights of the show. I found myself welling up a little during his speech. I tried to pass off the tears as related to my swollen eye, but it wasn’t. He was uplifting and inspiring. The speech was not directly related to online marketing but conveyed messages of passion, doing the right thing, and pursing your dreams against the odds. It’s very likely that down the road, Booker will be a presidential candidate and those of us that heard him speak at Affiliate Summit will feel lucky to have seen him early in his public service career in such and intimate setting.

My panel on creating killer content followed the keynote (and was up against Affiliate Summit fan favorite speaker Wil Reynolds), but thankfully my more than capable panelists Kim Rowley and Angel Djambazov did all the heavy lifting since I couldn’t really talk above a whisper without straining my voice. They were fantastic.

Later that day, I attended the session for the Performance Marketing Alliance, a trade association in the process of forming. The PMA, which held meetings on Saturday (disclosure: I’m on the PMA’s formation advisory board and participate on the Scope working group), was supposed to reveal what the group was about. However, since its mission and nearly everything else about the group are stilling being ironed out, there were few concrete details to share with session attendees.

The LinkShare event Monday night at Tia’s was the perfect place to network before heading the Partner Fusion event in the atrium.

Day three of the show continued to be jam-packed with great sessions. A copywriting panel, moderated by Lisa Riolo, was, for me, the best session of the show. At the end of the day, there was also a session about ethics, hosted by ABestWeb.com’s Haiko de Poel, Jr. It brought together a group of panelist that I normally wouldn’t expect to see on the same stage. It was definitely interesting and worth attending.

A don’t even have the words to express how overwhelmed I was attending the Red Sox vs. Rangers game at Fenway with a group of 20 other AffSum folks. Thanks Missy and Shawn.

I want to give a big thank you to Teresa Caldwell for spearheading the mentor program. The person I worked with, Carol Bousquet, was outgoing and friendly and really didn’t need any mentoring. She is a consummate networker. All the other mentees (and yes, I will stop using that word soon) were also amazing. I want to give a shout out to Patrick Pete, Michael Buchele, Kit Cassingham, David Green and the rest of the mentees. Next year, I expect them to be big cheeses of schmoozing and I hope they’ll let me hang out with them.

More thanks to Mark Wielgus, who wrangled all the bloggers with aplomb in the blog lounge and made sure everyone had fun playing with the Wii. Affiliate Summit official photographer, Tris Hussey, is not only an amazing picture snapper, he was one of the other ex-Bostonians that laughed at all my lame Boston jokes - especially when my Boston accent came back after a few drinks.

However, I am not thanking those that attended the GeekCast Live taping (Trish Fawver, Connie Berg, Tris Hussey, Brad Waller, Todd Crawford, Todd farmer, Scott Jangro, Missy Ward and others - along with my co-hosts Shawn Collins, Sam Harrelson and Jim Kukral). Titling that train wreck of a podcast “Hot Mess” hardly did justice to how truly unlistenable it was. My ears are still bleeding. I have a plan for our next GeekCast Live and I think the beer tender need not be involved. Although anytime I have the chance to hang with TrishaLyn and Jangro it’s a good time.

Last but not least, a huge thank you to Missy and Shawn (along with Amy Rodriguez and company). They always put on a seamlessly run show that is fun and educational. All that, plus Shawn and Missy make themselves accessible (and more than graciously) to everyone who approaches them. They are unbelievable hosts and event producers.

Finally I want to thank Frank, the bartender from the Great Affiliate Road Rally, and my new friend Susan from Southie. Both were eager to let me know that the Arby’s in Neponset Circle was closed.

Check out more from the Affiliate Summit East 08

Shawn’s Blog

Shawn’s photos

Tris Hussey’s photos

If you have photos from ASE08 let me know and I’ll add a link.