First and foremost I would like to sincerely thank the organizers of the Affiliate Convention for coming to Denver. I realize that traditionally conferences are supposed to be held in places like San Francisco and New York, but Denver has a wonderful convention center, great weather, fine amenities, and fun people… all the makings of a good show! I truly hope they will return next year and draw a larger crowd, encouraging other conferences to come here as well.

The convention started with a keynote presentation that I missed – but it gave me a nearly empty exhibit hall floor to roam alone and speak to vendors without interruption. I first spoke with the folks at Clickbooth who were friendly and enjoyable – I’m looking forward to working with them in the near future. Next to them were the good folks from Hydra. Of course I had to stop by and see our friends at Affiliate.com who were recovering from their Wednesday night bash. I also had a chance to talk with the gals from Paulson Management Group who really seem to be hitting the industry with force.

After speaking with a few others I went to my first session of the day on “Best Programs, Best Offers.” I had to laugh when Charles Mui of Magnet Marketing got up and told us about the benefits of not working with a network and going straight to advertisers, followed by Shai Pritz from Unique Leads harping on the benefits of working with a network. I guess that is the beauty of panel discussions – you get to hear all points of view. Although I didn’t make it to the Affiliate Marketing 101 session, I heard great things about the presentation from Jeannine Crooks and Evan Weber. No matter how experienced you are, I think a refresher course in the basics can never hurt, especially when it comes from such talent like Jeannine!

That night we attended the Super Affiliate Happy Hour event put on by the Paulson Management Group, followed by dinner at Rioja, then on to the Affiliate Bash. The Bash was well attended and all the usual suspects from ROI Rocket, Convertis Marketing, GetAds and more were there. If you haven’t seen the photos of the models with painted-on bras, feel free to check them out on Flickr because I won’t be posting them here . I have one friendly reminder to a certain attendee in a black shirt with white sunglasses and white shoes – if you really want to do actual business with people at conferences, don’t get totally wasted at the after party!

The next day I attended the Social Media session with industry icons like Dave Taylor and Dave Snyder who gave us several tools to check out like EasyTweets, Tweetlater, Raven SEO Tools, kl.am, Popurls and more. The following presentation on PPC Strategies was really a lesson on the Yahoo! Ad Network – while a few speakers were listed on the agenda, only the speaker from Yahoo! was there. He still gave a great presentation; I’m just not sure what happened there. We hung around for part of the Final Debate before heading over to Wynkoop Brewery for a co-sponsored event from Neverblue, WebMaster Radio, and the always fun AdBrew crew.

Overall, it was a fantastic conference and I look forward to another great show next year. Please come back to Denver!

Photo Credits: Brad Crooks