The first ever Affiliate Convention took place last week at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO.  I came, I saw, I networked, I spoke, I left!  All of my pictures are up on Flickr and Facebook, and video is coming soon!  All in all, I’d say the conference was a success for both Paulson Management Group and for the event’s organizers.  PMG hosted a classy party downtown which turned out to be the only party without women in various states of undress!  We at PMG had a great time: Heather Paulson spoke on two panels, I spoke on a panel, and Tony Cohn and Clarissa Cutrell both moderated panels.  Overall it was a great time to be had.

Unfortunately, the only panels I was able to attend were the Super Affiliate Strategies panel and the Final Debate panel, both of which involved Heather speaking, so I was focused on taking lots of pictures and video and not taking notes to share here like I normally do.  But the plus side is that I’ll be sharing the video of some of Heather’s bits of knowledge soon.  The irony in this is that Affiliate Convention was definitely geared more towards the education of affiliates and less about trends in the industry.  With affiliates getting free entry, there was an overwhelming show that I’ve not seen at past Affiliate Summit’s I’ve attended.  Paulson Management Group was the only OPM in strong attendance, which was good for us that we stood out, but a little frustrating to explain 100 times that we weren’t a network of some kind (almost all of the other exhibitors were networks).

We avoided the opening night’s party being held at a gentleman’s club (in full operation), and instead spent the evening in Boulder, where PMG is based and Tony & I (both having flown out from California) were staying. The following day, the first day of Affiliate Convention offered a huge turn out of affiliates wandering the exhibit hall floor, which was a quite intimate setting with about 20-25 exhibitors divided between full booths and table tops.  We were always busy telling affiliates about the programs we manage that they’d be interested in, and it wasn’t just because we had plates of cookies!  We took turns in the booth, making sure we all got a chance to network, wander around to check out the conference, and took PLENTY of photos with various affiliates and other industry folks that stopped by to chat!

Later that night, as I mentioned before, PMG threw a great party at Alto Restaurant in the lower downtown (LoDo) area of Denver.  It was a fantastic venue that offered plenty of room for people to wander around and network.  Jazz filled the rooms at first, but once the in-house DJ showed up, we let him do his thing and the result was a strange yet awesome mix of newer hip hop, rock, and some 80’s songs thrown in.  We gave away a Flip Mino HD Video Camera to CPA network XY7 for all they did in helping Affiliate Convention happen.  Afterward we headed to the WebmasterRadio.fm Affiliate Bash just around the corner, where libations and good times were had.  The party had hired some wait staff ladies to be topless and painted with scenes of Colorado on their fronts and the logos of the sponsors on their backs.  It was definitely interesting to see the artists work freehand trying to recreate photos of scenery and the logos (and some men behaving questionably as the night wore on).

The second day was a bit slower in terms of the exhibit hall, but I know the session in which I was a speaker, Social Media Marketing, was standing room only!  I hear most of the other sessions were that way too.  Moderated by Dave Taylor, our panel featured myself, Wade Sisson of PartnerCentric, and David Snyder of Search & Social.  David trucked through despite a cold, and I forgot the last point I was going to make during the Q&A, but otherwise I think it was fantastic.  I heard some good feedback, and if you were there and have more feedback for me I’m all ears!  I’ve spoken before at the Social Media Marketing Summit back in October, but this was definitely more of an industry conference, so I was a tiny bit more nervous.  But it was excellent practice for my upcomming panel at Affiliate Summit East 2009 in August!

Heather spoke on the final panel, which was billed as a debate but ended up more like an “Ask the Experts” panel, which was cool too.  I busted out my Flip and took some video of her nuggets of information, which I’ll share soon.  After the event was done, some people headed over to a final party, but thanks to Dina and MarketLeverage, Tony and I headed over to Coors Field to check out a Colorado Rockies game!  So, yeah big thanks while I’m at it to MarketLeverage for being awesome and getting a sky box that had tons of food, a great view, and awesome company.  Another quick shout out to Tony & my new network BFF’s NDemand Affliates’ Mike & Robert for the ride back to Boulder and good times.

Saturday our team decided to sleep in and skip the Webmaster Pub Social and have a team BBQ.  Tony did a great job corralling the fire and the chicken drumsticks were awesome.  The flight home was uneventful and I’m glad to be back at sea level and ready to hit the ground running with all the new stuff I picked up from attending!

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On Tuesday I had the pleasure of co-hosting the Affiliate Thing podcast with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit.  Let me start by saying that I was unaware that it’s a live show since I always listen to it on iTunes or GeekCast.fm.  I listened to the recording last night that’s up over at GeekCast.fm and I have some criticism for myself.

First though, the experience.  Monday night I spent nearly an hour fussing with Skype.  The test call was choppy and I couldn’t understand all of what it was saying.  But all my settings seemed fine.  I determined at last that it had to be my internet connection, which has a tendency to be not so good in the evenings sometimes.  I must have called the test call in the neighborhood of 30 times.  I also called my husband’s cell phone to see if it was any better – nope.  He could hear me pretty well but I could barely hear him.  I finally give up and hope that it works in the morning or that there’s another option for me to call in or something if all else fails.

I can’t sleep (of course) because I’m nervous about the show.  I finally get to sleep and surprisingly have no trouble waking up early the next day for the show.  I’m on the West Coast and I usually work 10am to 7pm at PsPrint, so I had to get up around 8:30am to wake up enough to tape the show at 9am.  I fire up my home computer and get Skype up and running, calling the test call about 10 more times with only slightly better results than the night before.

I let Shawn know over the messenger portion of Skype that I’m having issues and he suggests we start anyway and if it’s too bad I can drop off.  Luckily when WebmasterRadio.fm called, it was much clearer.  Which begs the question – shouldn’t the test caller be the best quality possible?  I digress…

The call itself went great in the moment… there weren’t any points where I was sitting there silently banging my head.  I fumbled the intro to myself, which is ironic because that’s what was keeping me up the night before – how to whip in PsPrint AND this blog.  I figured that was the only part I could rehearse, and coming from a theatrical background I’m a fan of rehearsal.

Now, for my “notes to self”.

• Be more conscious of how close my mic is to my keyboard and how loud I’m typing.
• Do more research about what’s going on so I can suggest more topics instead of being a ‘yes’ woman.
• Don’t laugh – it doesn’t come across well over the phone/skype.
• Attempt to fix the skype thing because in the recording I do hear myself cut out sometimes.

I think, all in all, this was a good exercise for me in giving up control of my image and gives me some things to work on.  Please, go listen, and add on to my notes so I can work on my presence, public relations and such!  In advance, I truly appreciate it.

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This week has been full of win, and it’s only Tuesday!

All the Cool Kids (and me)

My humble little blog TrishaLyn.com has been featured on Alltop.com under the Marketing category. Alltop is a digital magazine rack, per se. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from 30+ sites on a single page, aggregating the information as a starting point. Alltop is a great way to expose yourself to blogs and websites relating to your interests that you may not have stumbled upon before. The interests range from women’s interests to sports, religion to geekery. In the marketing category my humble blog is mentioned amongst the likes of Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Michael Martine’s Remarkablogger, and Seth Godin’s blog. I’d say that lives up to the “all the cool kids (and me)” slogan!

Guest Co-Host of AffiliateThing on WebmasterRadio.fm

Regular host Shawn Collins of AffiliateTip.com and co-founder of Affiliate Summit invited me on to co-host the weekly Affiliate Thing podcast in lieu of regular co-host Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine who can’t make it tomorrow. I’m excited as I know this is a well-produced, professional podcast broadcast on WebmasterRadio.fm, so I can’t wait. I’ll be recording from the pleasure of my own home in the morning and can’t wait to chew the affiliate fat with Shawn. I will say that I’m glad I’m not the one who has to edit it! it’s all recorded over Skype, so it’ll be great quality I’m sure!

Featured Expert on EzineArticles.com

That’s right, yours truly is also now a featured expert author on article site EzineArticles.com. So far I’ve submitted my Top 10 Things That Improve Work Ethic article and plan on submitting many more. If you’d like to see any of my former blog posts as articles on Ezine, drop me a line and let me know!

So that’s it! I feel like all this work I’ve been doing is paying off, and let me tell you, it’s a terrific feeling! I’ll be sure to report back on how the recording of Affiliate Thing goes tomorrow!

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