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I’m sorry for the delay in my recap, but I decided to spend some extra time in London and then Paris after the conference. My hubby gave me an extended hall pass and who am I to turn something as rare as that down?
From a Meeting Planner’s perspective, I have to say that this was the most difficult show to prepare for, out of the eight Affiliate Summits that we’ve put on so far. With obstacles such as time change, imperial versus metric, USD conversions to GBP and phraseology hiccups (sometimes quite embarrassing ones), it was definitely much more of a challenge than I ever expected.
Call me masochistic if you want, but as tricky as it all was, it was undeniably, 100% worth it and definitely one for the Affiliate Summit books.
The Buy.at/Affiliate Summit Pre-Party, kicked off the event (and apparently kicked a few of the attendee’s butts as well, as witnessed by the late morning arrivals for the show.). It was there that I witnessed the first of many special moments where the transfer of affiliate marketing knowledge and contact leveraging between a US affiliate to a UK merchant took place — “cross-pondization”, if you will.
It was a great moment for me as it solidified the philosophical ideas that Shawn and I had surrounding Affiliate Summit doing the show in the UK, in the first place.
In between Lager Tops and Lagers with Lime (my new-found loves), I had the opportunity to speak with many UK affiliates who were anxious to share their views on affiliate marketing issues, their favorite UK networks and the skinny on the US companies that they wanted to talk to during the next 24 hours. It was great to finally talk face-to-face to folks that have been my Facebook Friends for several months.
We arrived back at the Hilton Olympia (which has now been collectively renamed “Hellton” because of the horrific state that it’s in) at 4:00am. The 5:30am wake-up call was a definite rude awakening. But being the true affiliate marketer that I am, I pulled myself together and headed off to the show site. It was there that I finally ran into Jess Luthi, who has been our UK-support-woman-extraordinaire since Shawn and I decided to do the show. We did a quick brain-dump on each other and I had to run off to tie-up some loose ends.
The show kicked off with Affiliate Summit MC, David Hall of Affiliate Window who did a great job energizing the audience for our keynote, Linus Gregoriadis, who is Head of Research at E-consultancy. Linus delivered some powerful insights into affiliate marketing trends in the UK. The most interesting takeaway for me there was the fact that Linus could simply replace “UK” with “US” when it came to the issues challenging affiliates. In my opinion, opportunity seekers in the network and merchant categories would do well by leveraging those statistics to make modifications to their business models in order to capture a larger portion of the affiliate market share.
In typical Affiliate Summit fashion, I was unable to attend more than just a few minutes of a couple of sessions. It seems like something always comes up as soon as I put my bum in a seat to listen to any of the speakers.
There was a nice networking lunch, although I was not a big fan of the food. This was the first time that I deferred the menu selection to Shawn, since I have never tried any of the foods on the various menu offerings, being a vegetarian. Shawn takes full responsibility for the Shepherd’s Pie selection.
I had a great conversation with a couple of UK affiliates, one of which was most interested in Shawn and my latest venture, Weviews.tv. It was exciting to share our experiences and statistics on the use of video as it pertains to affiliate marketing.
The day wrapped up with our “Come Talk to Me Session” in which attendees had the opportunity to get up in front of the crowd to announce what they are looking to accomplish at the show. Kudos to David Hall for his prediction during the opening remarks. He was spot-on when he said that such a session would test the English “reserve”. While a few US affiliates, merchants and networks popped up to say a few words, not a single UK’er grabbed the mic. Mind you, as I looked around the room, I spotted many a folk who were not quite so shy during the pre-party the night before.
Over the next few days, I got to enjoy an amazing time in Paris and then headed back to London, where I visited some friends that I met on my honeymoon. The following days were spent sightseeing during the day and hanging out with the buy.at crew in the evening for some fantastic dinners, fun times on the town, and conversations about geeky affiliate marketing topics.
Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at ended my trip on an uplifting note when he shared with me how excited he was about the great opportunities that exist to leverage experience and expertise across multiple markets because of the borderless aspect of our business.
Kevin’s point summarizes what Affiliate Summit’s goal was for the London 2007 show. I guess our mission was accomplished.
Thank you everyone for making this show possible and we look forward to working with and seeing you all again soon.
Take care,
Missy
