Well, I think many people attending this session were expecting the topic to be heated, but l’m not sure they were expecting some of the venom that seemed to be in the room.  Speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t.  Originally there was only supposed to be one panelist fielding questions, but since 4 out of 5 working group leaders were in attendance, they were also recruited to speak.  So ultimately the panel consisted of:

• Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Alliance
• Sam Harrelson, Publisher, Cost Per News
• Brook Schaaf, Schaaf Consulting
• Brad Waller, VP Business Development, AdJungle.com
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust

Guns were slinging!  Unfortunately there’s not many bullet points to be had, but here you go.

Bullet Point Review!

• PMA is in germination phase - not a real entity yet.
• Why start now?
  • Misinformation & lack of representation.
  • Legislation.
  • Lack of transparency.
  • Maturity of industry.
• Formation process still underway.
  • Interviewed over 60 industry leaders, Formation Advisory Board voted in by 100 peers.
  • Working groups of 45 volunteers.
  • Working groups make recommendations on formation.
  • FAB 11 ratifies formation proposals (click here to see members).
• The working group committees are Scope/Objectives (headed by Sam Harrelson), Governance (Brook Schaaf), Fundraising (Peter Bordes), Membership (Durk Price), and Operations (Brad Waller).

Points (or other observations in this case) brought up during the Q&A

• Right off the bat the questions were hostile.  There’s animosity about the PMA using the NY Tax situation as a launching point for formation despite the fact that they can’t do anything to help.
  • Essentially there’s nothing the PMA can do since they’re NOT a fully formed organization, no matter how much they want to help.
• Rebecca acted as moderator and moved the conversation on after almost 20 minutes of hostile banter.
• The PMA blog as been quiet because the people in working groups have had their heads down working on things without much to report at this point.
• The term “Performance” has been used over “affiliate” because it is more inclusive of the larger base of members within the industry.  Inclusive of a lot more relationships than just the affiliate - merchant relation.
• The PMA has a very similar model as a chamber of commerce but the scope is still being set up.  They are looking at the chamber model in forming things.  Mostly they want to improve visibility & credibility.
• Rebecca was questioned as to why she didn’t attend the meetings in Albany that the NY affiliates had since she’s actually the only paid member.  It was decided that there was no reason because it would have been redundant and she can’t represent an organization that isn’t formed and doesn’t officially exist.
• They were asked why they divorced themselves from ABestWeb after the controversy, to which they responded that they didn’t divorce from it BUT once a particular few threads got ugly and became increasingly unprofessional they just stopped participating in those threads.
• There’s no conspiracy regarding Rebecca’s involvement - Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom generously donated her salary for a year and she’s just being paid to “corral cats” and help form the organization.  Her comment was that if she weren’t paid for this she’d have bailed long ago based on the assumptions about her involvement and what she’s had to deal with.
• An affiliate asked how they can be assured that the PMA won’t be overtaken by large company sponsorhips and forget the little affiliate?  The affiliate industry is it’s own little ecosystem and the heart of it is the average affiliate.  They’ve been very hypersensitive to the issue to ensure that affiliates are included.

It seems that there’s lots of confusion about the organization - or lack thereof - and hopefully the Q&A has taken things in the right direction.  Perhaps Q&A wasn’t the right moniker.  Maybe Suggestion Session or Feedback Forum might have worked better.  It was disappointing to see one of the most vocal critics of the PMA - ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr - leave the session half way through in apparently disgust.  I hope that future discussions going forward will be a bit more productive than the session in Boston.

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