I took it light this time around at Affiliate Summit and only went to two events that weren’t hosted by the conference itself. Dominic and I spent the two days before the conference wandering Manhattan seeing some sights, so by the time the conference started we were not that interested in traipsing all over the city again. But we did make sure to go to the couple of smaller parties we were invited to. I’d have been asleep at the networking wheel had I not gone to any of the parties!  So here’s my take on the parties with some thanks and photos I took!

buy.at Party @ Empire Hotel

Big thanks to Ayako from buy.at for extending the invitation!  This party was on the rooftop bar at the Empire Hotel, which despite being 12 floors up was considerably shorter than most the surrounding buildings.  Only one part of the hotel bar was reserved for the party, so it was a relatively intimate affair.  We started by working the area and saying hello to old friends, and ended sitting with Heather Smith of Beautiful British Columbia and Murray Newlands of MurrayNewlands.com.  It was wonderful conversation and Dominic seemed to really feel comfortable with the jargon conversation and other assorted topics.

MarketLeverage & John Chow’s Dot Com Pizza @ Original Famous Ray’s Pizza

This was just what the doctor ordered!  I had a few culinary goals for my trip to New York: bagels, cheesecake, and pizza.  New York pizza is legendary, so I was excited to be invited to share some pizza with Dina and crew.  We got there a bit late but there was still plenty of great pizza!  I had my first real conversation with John Chow and Ted Murphy, both pleasant.  I felt bad because there wasn’t much room to sit with the main group by the time we got there to schmooze and converse, so Dominic and I ended up sitting back in the corner where the surplus pizzas were and didn’t have much chance to talk unless people came back and talked to us.

I thought it was especially funny that Dominic got an IZEA shirt from Heather earlier in the day in the Blogger’s Lounge, and decided to change out of his Blinkstar Media shirt to the Izea shirt before leaving.  We walked right up the stairs at Ray’s to see Ted Murphy, who of course commented on the IZEA shirt!  Good thing I’d taken some time earlier in the day to tell Dominic what IZEA is!  After hearing Ted and Dina and Heather talk about the last IZEAfest and the upcoming one, he really wanted to go!  Too bad we can’t afford to go to Florida and have fun with them!  Big thanks to Dina at MarketLeverage for the invite!

TechKaraoke @ the Hilton

This was unexpectedly fun, though I wish I had been able to get better photos!  Of course, the embarrassment factor of karaoke almost requires the lights to be dimmed, so the photos didn’t turn out.  I hear that I missed Chris Brogan singing a Jay-Z number, but I got down there just in time to see Ted Murphy, Shawn Collins, and Drew Bennett bust out some Milli Vanilli!  Throughout the evening I got to catch up with Connie Berg while listening to the vocal stylings of Todd Farmer, Jim Kukral, Missy Ward, and Brian Littleton amongst others.

I also never realized that you never truly appreciate how LONG some songs are until you hear them butchered at a karaoke event!  All in all though it was a good time and I hope Shawn & Missy bring back the TechKaraoke folks to do it again.  And this time bring the lights up for more embarrassing evidence!

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