I spent a few days this week in NYC at my first Linkshare Symposium. Being an old Be Free guy, I have to say it was a little strange but that was really only in my mind. Linkshare is not the company it used to be with most of the leadership team gone. Of course everybody there was great, whether they knew me from the old days or not.
As far as conferences go, Affiliate Summit is the industry no-brainer. If you don’t go to anything else, you must attend Affiliate Summit. But that doesn’t replace the smaller network-specific events like Linkshare’s Symposium, CJU, Shareasale’s ThinkTank, and the others. Some of these are invitation-only, but even so, I find them all worthwhile. Getting face-time with the network employees and merchants in a network-specific frame of mind is extremely valuable.
The Symposium
Linkshare took a new approach this time with a format of nothing but a few presentations and networking sessions. The two keynotes were James Surowiecki, author of Wisdom of Crowds and E. Kinney Zalesne co-author of Microtrends. Many people have read Wisdom of Crowds and while some said his presentation was mostly from the book, I found it very interesting. After that presentation, that book moved up on my reading list, only to be superceded by the second keynote’s book Microtrends. Both presentations were different enough from the typical Affiliate Marketing exhaust-breathing to be both interesting and entertaining, but extremely pertinent to what we all do. The third presentation was Jupiter researcher Patti Freeman Edwards presenting her recent study on the different types of online shoppers in the Social Media / Web 2.0 world. Tons of interesting data, but I think some of us felt crushed by the sheer volume.
The Lost New Linkshare Feature
While it was nice to not listen to network marketing spiel I was a bit surprised that there was really no Linkshare promotion or product information to speak of. Well, in fact there was some. If you listened carefully, Arun Bordoloi announced briefly that Linkshare will be launching real-time reporting at the end of July. It was so anti-climactic that he almost fell asleep as he was talking about it. But seriously, this is big news. Of course it requires that each Linkshare merchant re-implement tracking but I’m assured that it’s a very simple change. I think merchants will need lots of encouragement to make this switch. Keep a close eye on this.
Golden Links
The special treat of the conference was the Golden Link Awards dinner the evening before at the Park Plaza hotel, a formal affair that was top-class the whole way. I was a finalist for the “Most Vocal Affiliate Advocate” award and once again came up empty. The very deserving Lisa Picarille took the award on behalf of Revenue Magazine. It’s really too bad that the Magazine was the named nominee for that award as it’s really Lisa who is the advocate voice there.
The personal support I got from many folks who expressed disappointment in my loss more than made up for it. If there was an applause meter as they announced the nominees, I’d say I won the popular vote in Al Gore fashion. I don’t say that in any way to take away from Lisa, but just that I very much appreciate the support. I am glad Lisa won. I even told her several days ago that it would be worth losing to hear her say, “Sorry Jangro” up on the podium. She did say that, and while I thought it was hilarious, I got a lot of shocked looks and people saying, “what was with that?”
People and the Parties
Of course, what would an Affiliate Marketing event be without the dinners, late nights, and parties? And what’s an Affiliate event in NYC without finishing up at Red Rock West in the Meat Packing District? (think Coyote Ugly.) I’m still paying for that one, but it was too much fun for words. I didn’t have a camera with me, so I’m relying on others to post them. In addition to hanging out with all my industry friends, I always walk away with new ones from each conference.
Finally, thanks to Adam Weiss of Linkshare who was a sort of a sponsor and singlehandedly responsible for my finally getting to a Linkshare Symposium.
Linkshare’s event has definitely moved onto my must-attend list.
