I’m down here in lovely Santa Barbara for Commission Junction University, and day one is in the can.  The weather has been nice…although living in California I’m generally used to this weather, but being in the Southern end of the state there’s a distinctly different feel that I can’t quite put my finger on.  But I enjoy it.

I flew from Oakland to Los Angeles on a puddle jumper, and from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on a pack of gum.  Between flights and layovers and cab rides, I arrived at my motel at 12:15am.  The room is your average motel fare: 70’s floral bedspread, translucent yellow cords on the lamps, inmate furniture.  The room also has a mini fridge, microwave, nicely sized TV, free wifi, and a surprisingly comfortable bed & pillows – not too shabby for $77/night.  This makes me glad I’m staying at a real hotel for Blog World Expo this coming weekend.

Because of the high cost of cab fare ($25+), once I got the conference hotel I didn’t want to leave until the end of the day.  I ran into Lisa Picarille and Wade Tonkin almost immediately in passing after I registered and headed to the first session, which I’ll cover later.  Jeremy Palmer from Quit Your Day Job lead the first “course” as CJU calls them, and Olivier Chaine from Magnify 360 led the second.  On a personal note, I read his name in the program and knew the pronunciation would be something like “o-live-e-ay shayne” and was confused when the emcee pronounced it very phonetically (olive-er chain).  I was disappointed in CJ when Olivier pronounced his own name at the end of his session much like I’d imagined it was properly pronounced…if you’re going to introduce someone, learn how to pronounce their name.

I digress.  Both courses were informative and well done, and I’ll be posting a bullet point review of both later on.  After the courses were done I took a quick break and then headed out to the CJU Expo, a small area of tables nicely held outside under umbrellas that more closely resembled the Meet Market at Affiliate Summit than your typical trade show.  It was mostly merchants and different CJU programs with tables, with the exception of an OPM (Schaaf Consulting), a couple affiliates (SurfMyAds.com), and a table for the Performance Marketing Alliance.

It’s a good thing I saw that PMA table, because  it made it easy to run into some familiar faces in the form of Connie Berg & Brad Waller.  Also was able to say hello to Michael Brucker from RingCentral at their table, one of the organizers of the BAAMC whose quarterly meetings I attend.  (By the way if you’re an affiliate manager with a company in the SF Bay area interested in getting involved and possibly hosting about 20-25 ppl for lunch some day, let Michael know).

After the expo it was zoo time with the welcoming event being held down the street at the Santa Barbara Zoo.  As much as I wanted to go, my phone was practically dead for some reason and my stomach was a bit upset, so I opted to head back to my motel.  Tomorrow is a day full of sessions that look pretty good, and a keynote from Guy Kawasaki…who I think may literally be giving me the nifty orange Alltop shirt off his back afterwards.  More about that if/when it happens

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I apologize, dear reader, as this blog has been on auto pilot lately.  A lot has been going on in my world, both personal and professional, and it’s still taking a lot of time and energy to get sorted out.

The good news is, I’ll be back at the helm soon.  I’m heading down to CJU tonight and then Blog World Expo next weekend, so I’m sure I’ll be super jazzed to come back to this blog in full force.  Lots of travel in my future, which makes me slightly even more stressed considering I’m not the biggest fan of flying really, and I haven’t packed anything yet.  Luckily, I have been traveling so much in the last year that I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping travel sized stuff always packed in my toiletries bag instead of packing the stuff I use normally.  Travel size for the win!

CJU will be my first network event, and I’m excited.  I was looking at the agenda last week in putting together my schedule, and I really appreciate that there aren’t really that many choices to choose from during the few break out sessions.  I assume that most of the sessions are just put on my Commission Junction staff considering there’s no names attached to the sessions like other shows.  The keynote will be given by Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple guy now working on AllTop.com.  I’ve been following Guy on Twitter for sometime now, so seeing him speak in person will be nice.  I know a few folks who’ll be there, so it should be a good time.  My one regret is that I didn’t book soon enough to get into the conference hotel, Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort.  I’ve heard great things, but booked too late so I’m staying nearby.  Maybe next year!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I checked out the agenda for Blog World Expo and there’s about 7-10 sessions per time block to choose from!  It’s hard, because my interests vary and I know some good people on panels that I want to check out.  Savvy internet marketers talking about monetization that I don’t mention nearly enough, Michael Buechele and Tim Jones.  And of course there’s the usual suspects that I love – Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, etc.  I’m not done scheduling for that since I have some tough choices to make in terms of which sessions to attend.  I also noticed that one of my favorite musicians, Mike Shinoda, is going to be participating in one of the keynotes.  I have no clue WHY lol, but I may have to throw my last Linkin Park CD into my bag in hopes of an encounter!

So, that is what’s on my plate for now.  I only have part of a day in between CJU and BlogWorldExpo, so hopefully I’ll get the notes from my CJ sessions up for you to learn from before I’m off again!  In the meantime, I hope you’re not overinundated with the daily definitions and happy to take a break

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