The connections I made and conversations I had while at the parties will be more valuable than any networking I do in the next 12 months.

I can understand if you have pre scheduled meetings, but I’d have to argue that walking the floor be more valuable for affiliates.

Re: the business meetings - I do client services meetings daily, but am curious to know what goes on in those types of meetings at AS. Could you give us a purely hypothetical example of one of these meetings you might set up at Affiliate Summit, what type of person you’re meeting, what you’re shooting for, etc.? Were these all with:

- merchants you’re cutting deals with (e.g if there is something else besides negotiating a pay bump or something else you mentioned in the ’scaling an offer post’)?
- Partnerships w/ other affliates (I was warned those usually don’t turn out that well)?
- Something else?

Any example would be cool even if you are extremely vague.

Too bad we didn’t cross paths this year for that bev but there is always next. Was my first ASW and I’ll definitely be back. Made some good connections including simply meeting some affiliate mangers face-to-face and squaring away some support and questions about strength of a few contracting markets.

Also made some decisions about types of offers I’ve been dabbling in but are a waste of my time since it’s company and customers I really didn’t want to keep anyway. And of course 1st time in Vegas was quiet pleasant. I’m not a gambling-kind-of-guy (casinos, not business) so I really underestimated how much fun I was going to have. Weather was awesome, too.

I went to the conference with a list of who I needed to meet.

The parties were a necessary evil in order to get around the people I went to get around. I made some great contacts that will be priceless to my business in the coming months.

I was disappointed, though, that we didn’t make a connection this trip, but will look forward to next time.

Eric