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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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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After running to the bank to take out money for bridge toll, heading west towards the big scary city, and rifling through my car & wallet for change for the meter while praying that the meter maids were taking a day off, I finally made it into the June Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition meeting, this time hosted graciously by Real Networks. As an aside, I like their building… older, brick, kinda funky and unique but still professional.

Last time I did a video because it was my first venture over there and I had a lot to say. I was happy to receive some kudos on it from BAAMC organizer Michael Brucker. We had some special guests at this meeting… Lisa Picarille from Revenue Magazine came over and Brook Schaaf from Schaaf Consulting flew up from LA just for this. Aren’t we special?

I was going to write a good long post about it, but it seems Lisa in her diligence as a journalist has beat me to it! So here’s her take at RevenueToday.com. She mentions a few other special guests that attended the meeting, but I didn’t see them (and yes… I’d recognize them!) so maybe they were on the phone listening in… I did arrive a touch late.

So, some notes not mentioned from my take. It was nice to finally meet Lisa in person, especially after subbing for her that once on Affiliate Thing. Very gracious…although I have to tell you, it’s totally surreal sitting in a room looking at a person speak that you listen to every week without an image in your head. Strange lol. She was surprised that I’d had time to come to the meeting given how busy I usually am, which prompted me to mentally review how busy I must sound on Twitter and this here blog without actually intending it!

Also said hi to Karen Garcia of GTO Management who came to the meeting directly from SFO – what a trooper! And had a nice conversation with a fellow affiliate manager who’s used PsPrint a lot in his former life of being an event promoter and loves us! Always great to hear!

Brook talked about the up-and-coming Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA), which got a lot of people in the room revved up. We also talked at length about the NY affiliate tax and how we wish the networks would get more involved. What’s definitely clear is that there’s a lot of confusion on how we’re effected as managers and the programs we represent. A vague law will only vaguely be enforced, NY!

Incidentally as a side note, the PMA launched their blog this week and today Rebecca Madigan posted their plan of attack.

We also talked a bit about some miscellaneous things like video widgets and the like. Since most of us in the room have our programs through Commission Junction, we collectively wish they’d buck up on offering some more interesting and innovative creative options, like widgets. One opinion was that video is pretty good for buzz, but general consumers never think to click on the video so it doesn’t convert as a sales tool. I think the jury is still out on video as a traceable seller like a banner ad.

That’s the meat & potatoes of it, really. Our next meeting should be sometime in August. And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I managed to escape parking-ticket free!

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