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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I’ve been asking this question of myself for a long while tonight, after reading about the contest that John Chow is having, sponsored by tiny url service XR.com.  In his contest, he’s giving the winner $6000 – $5000 will be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice and $1000 will be given to the winner directly to do with as they wish.

XR.com is a great service that allows you to shorten a URL and create a custom extension.  For example, if I wanted to shorten the URL of this post I can enter it in at XR.com and create http://xr.com/donate5000.  The beauty of signing up for a free account with XR is that you can keep track of all these redirected tiny URLS so you can use them repeatedly.  That URL went from 62 characters to 17!  It’s perfect when you’re not allowed a lot of characters to work with, like on Twitter.

The $1000 isn’t that easy either.  My gut immediately says that I want to buy Guitar Hero World Tour & use the rest of the money for the Bahamian cruise I’m taking with friends in February.  But then there are bills that could be paid off.  Hand-me-down furniture that could be replaced.  But since I’ve already committed to this trip, I believe I’ll use it for the cruise bills.  That way I don’t have to put too much on my credit card.

Back to the donation to charity.  A few worthy causes come to mind immediately – The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fund, American Diabetes Association, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Make a Wish, the list goes on.  These are charities that I believe in and believe that they could do a lot of good things with $5000.  But, maybe I should stick with something closer to home?  Make my community a better place, eh? So I did some Googlin’ for local charities, and I wasn’t overly impressed by anything.  It also occurred to me that deciding to donate to charity based on a quick read of a mission statement isn’t very responsible.

So I’ve decided to donate the money as a way to give back to a non-profit organization that did so much for me in my youth – The San Francisco Bay Girl Scout Council. Specifically, I will donate the money to a fund that helped me continue my membership for 12 years, go to summer camp in the sierras of California, and attend many other trips and activities that provided vast opportunities for me to learn new things and grow into a confident young woman.

The Opportunity Fund provides financial assistance that helps girls go to camp, covers their Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. membership, and allows them to participate in Girl Scout activities regardless of their families’ financial resources.

I can’t think of a better way to give back to an organization that gave me so much.  This donation will give young girls the opportunities to expand their horizons, built their internal strength, and learn how to be better citizens in this global community.

That’s what I’d do… so I’m hoping that I win so I can fulfill that desire to give back.

Who would you donate $5000 to?

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Super Affiliates:

• The best affiliates in a program based on performance and earnings, usually the top 1%, who generate the majority of revenue for a program.

I’ve also used this term to refer to an affiliate who is well known across multiple programs to run a super successful affiliate site participating in many programs.  Such well known super affiliates include John Chow, Zac Johnson, Connie Berg, Mike Allen, and Amit Mehta.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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