In my last post I broke down the sessions I went to and what I took away from them: Affiliate Summit Sessions I Attended. In this post I will tell you about the sessions I wish I would have made it to. Luckily the videos of these sessions will be available shortly and I will be able to check them out. I didn’t plan on missing these but whenever I go to a conference there is always stuff that comes up (sleeping in, eating, meeting with people, conversations that take longer than expected, etc) that causes me to miss some of the sessions I wanted to go to.
Anyway here are the ones I wish I would have made it to and I am really looking forward to the videos:
Local Lead Generation – Heaven & Hell: Ad Hustler and Amanda Orson – I have met Ad Hustler a couple times and was briefly introduced to Amanda last year at Affiliate Summit and I have only heard good things about them from my friends. They both are very knowledgable in the local lead gen space and I was looking forward to learning a bit about it. Local lead generations has been something I have toyed with the past couple years but have never taken the next step and gone after any clients.
My wife works for a florist and I will be working on the website for the flower shop soon and I will need to do some local marketing and it is one of the areas where I need a lot of learning. I am really looking forward to seeing the videos and see how Ad Hustler and Amanda go about generating leads, what they do with them when they get them, and a lot of the basics.
Keynote by Drew Eric Whitman – I had a couple people recommend Whitman’s book Ca$hvertising to me and I bought it a while back but never read it. I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say but sleep got the better of me that morning so I will just have to wait for the video. I heard some great things about the keynote and some mediocre but I am still looking forward to seeing it.
The New SEO Toolset: Wil Reynolds – I heard Wil speak in New York and was very impressed with both his knowledge and his presentation. I was looking forward to this session more than pretty much any other and was sad to have missed it. Wil drops some serious knowledge whenever he is on stage so this will be a can’t miss video for anyone doing any sort of SEO work or looking to get more traffic for their site.
Inside the Minds of Affiliates: Greg Hoffman, Tricia Meyer, Kim Rowley, and Eric Nagel – I mostly wanted to go to this session because I am friends with pretty much everyone on the panel. I think their topic would have meshed well with my session on improving the affiliate/affiliate manager relationship so I wish I could have gone to see where they were coming from.
There are probably a few other videos I will check out like Profiting from Trendspotting and Why Affiliates Should Dominate Local Marketing as well. If you had a Gold, Platinum, or Diamond pass you will be able to watch the videos when they are released in a few weeks.
Are there any sessions you are sorry you missed? Any others I should be sure to check out on video when they are ready? Leave a comment and let me know.
There are so many that I wish that I had attended. Between meetings and my own sessions, I made it to ZERO panels! I did make both of the keynotes on Tuesday, but that was it. I'm going to have a lot to catch up on when the videos come out.
And I am glad we can still be friends despite our heavy philosophical differences. Actually, just that one thing about football. 😉
The New SEO Toolset with Wil Reynolds was worth the price of admission.
I wish I was at Wil's session, but apparently it was more important for me to be at the panel I was speaking with 🙂 I'll be sure to watch that video when released.
I can't wait for all the videos of ASW11 .. I missed most/all of the sessions due to timing issues!. BTW, good stuff here Joe and it is always great seeing you at conferences!!
Thanks for the compliment Joe.
The local lead space is wide open, has been for years and will continue to be for so long as people provide a valuable service to small businesses. You don't have to wait for the video of the session to view the slides (http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/local-lead-generation-heaven-hell) and both of our blogs (http://www.adhustler.com or http://www.amandaorson.com) or Chad Frederickson's (http://www.cdfnetworks.com) has tons of info about Local Lead Gen on it.
Wil Reynolds is an absolutely amazing speaker; hands down if I was pressed to pick one person to hire to speak ever for anything, Wil would be it. That he's also incredibly knowledgable about SEO doesn't hurt, either. 🙂
My first few Affiliate Summits I was able to get to a lot more of the sessions but did not know what I wanted to see as much. Now I'm in the odd position of knowing exactly what I want to see but having too many other things conflict with so little time.
Shawn and Missy do a great job of revealing the fallacies of relativity- Affiliate Summit is 3 days that feel like a very long hour; recovering from Affiliate Summit is 3 days that feel like a year.