Why Affiliate Summit Sessions Suck

Posted on 21. Jan, 2010 by Logan in Conferences

Last night I got back from Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Vegas, and if you weren’t there, you missed an awesome event. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward did another great job at organizing the best affiliate event of the year. While other people are writing a recap of their week in Vegas, I want to focus this post on the sessions instead of just rehashing my week.

Before the event I looked over the schedule of sessions and was honestly a little disappointed. Very few of them sounded interesting to me, so I only ended up going to two of them, which was honestly more than I should have gone to. Talking to other people, most had similiar impressions in the sessions I didn’t attend.

The two I attended was “Killer Facebook Advertising Tactics” and “CPA Affiliate Marketing Opportunities in Europe”. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t completely worthless, but there is one major flaw in the session format that annoys me that I’ll get to in a minute.

The Facebook session I went to just to see what they were going to talk about. There was actually a really good panel of speakers which included Shoemoney, Alex Schultz, David Klein, Markus Frind, and Mark Colacioppo and moderated by Jim Kukral. David Klein(dk) gave a short presentation which he had to rush through that was basically a case study of a Facebook campaign. Had the entire hour been spent with him talking through the case study, the session would have been much better and informative. Instead, questions were opened up which is the part of most sessions that I can’t stand.

Questions to that panel wouldn’t be a bad thing if people asked good questions, but that is never the case. It didn’t matter how hard Jim Kukral tried to get people to stop asking questions to Alex Schultz of Facebook on what they are going to do in the future, and when they are getting this or that feature, people kept asking the same type of questions that should have been saved to ask the Facebook team that was there. Jim was trying his hardest to make it a solid session, but the questions kept firing that weren’t relevant to what the session should have been about. With such a quality panel that was up there, it was disappointing to see person after person wasting everyones time asking questions that need to be asked elsewhere.

The other session I went to was CPA Affiliate Marketing Opportunities in Europe. While they did have a little more prepared in advance than the first panel, the content was still a little light. Biggest take away is there are 2.5 times the amount of people in Europe as there are in the states. This session started to go downhill for me once the questions opened up. People just don’t seem to know the time or place to ask questions. There was also a person who gave like a 5 minute speech about customer service and never asked a question. All I could think of is why are you wasting my time?

Here’s my advice to make the sessions not suck:

Get a bigger variety of sessions (does there really need to be multiple social media sessions?) with more interesting topics.
Pre-screen questions. Get the questions ahead of time. People can then ask their questions to the panel after the session is over so time isn’t being wasted.

Overall Affiliate Summit was definitely worth my time, and I’ll be writing more posts to come (with a more positive tone).

What are your thoughts on the sessions?

19 Responses to “Why Affiliate Summit Sessions Suck”

Tricia Meyer

21. Jan, 2010

Unfortunately, I did not get to attend the number of sessions that I wanted to because of other meetings. However, I am anxious to see the videos. I thought that there were a number of sessions that I wanted to see, but maybe it is just because of the verticals that I am in? I always love to hear Wil Reynolds speak on SEO and needed to hear more about the FTC updates. I’d also like to see Peter Shankman’s video because his tips energize me.

We had some really great questions asked in my Blog Monetization panel, along with a lot after the panel was over. I did notice that some people left when the “content” was over though. I suspect it was because they have had the same experience as you mentioned during the Q&A periods.

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Yeah, I heard the Wil Reynolds session was good. That was one I wanted to check out but had a meeting at that time. Will definitely check it out on video.

[Reply]
Amanda Reply:
March 19th, 2010 at 3:53 am
I can vouch for the Wil Reynolds session. And Wil is an extraordinarily good guy- if you ever have the opportunity to chat him up or see one of his sessions at a conference, do so.

[Reply]
wil reynolds Reply:
July 9th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for the love guys, I plan on bringin some real good stuff in august! Hope to see you at ASE!
Jim Kukral

21. Jan, 2010

I was trying, thanks for noticing. Next time I’ll make it clear ahead of time, no questions about how to game Facebook.

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:40 pm
You did a great job Jim. I don’t think there was any more you could have done.

[Reply]
Matt McWilliams Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
This is not the first time I have heard how great of a job you do at moderating. Look forward to seeing you in action in NYC.

[Reply]
Matt McWilliams

21. Jan, 2010

Logan, well said. You left off the part about the “question-askers” who take up the first 20 seconds telling us their name, web sites, what they do, mother’s maiden name, and prediction on the entire NHL playoffs.

By the time they get to the question, I am asleep. LAME!

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Haha, so true. I guess they think open mic = free plug.

[Reply]
Panda Marketer Reply:
March 12th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Matt, what is worse, the time spent on this detail, or their thoughts on a current e vent?

I think everyone should give their cridentials when stepping up to the mic, like name and blog url, or name and twitter name. But that’s it.

PS: Logan, the comment entry textarea in IE is off kilter.

[Reply]
Eric Nagel

21. Jan, 2010

I almost always leave a session once questions open up – and when the entire session is Q&A, I just don’t go at all. Affiliate Summit is about face-to-face networking – you can watch all the videos at home in a few weeks, and e-mail your questions to the speakers (who will more often than not, respond to you).

Great seeing you again, Logan!

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Great to see you as well Eric. Glad I’m not the only one annoyed by the q and a.

[Reply]
George Kim

21. Jan, 2010

Nice meeting you Logan, lets keep in touch. I’ll sharpen my poker skills for next time. lol.

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 2:02 pm
It was great meeting you to. Yeah, I thought you’d make it a lot farther than me.

[Reply]
Shawn Collins

21. Jan, 2010

> Get a bigger variety of sessions (does there really need to be multiple social media sessions?) with more interesting topics.

For example?

> Pre-screen questions. Get the questions ahead of time. People can then ask their questions to the panel after the session is over so time isn’t being wasted.

We’ve tried to get people to submit questions in advance in the past, and got very few. Many people come up with questions based on the content of the panel as they watch it.

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:45 am
Hey Shawn,

First of all, awesome job on the conference. Affiliate Summit is definitely the best conference I’ve been to.

For topics, it seems like there are multiple sessions with similiar content such as social media, blogging, and SEO. How about more concrete sessions such as media buying techniques, ppc tricks, etc. I missed Scott Jangros datafeed session, but I’m sure that was good.

For the questions, maybe have users tweet, email, text, or AIM in their questions during the session and the moderator could screen them while panelists are answering other questions.

Great job though on the conference as a whole. It was well organized.

[Reply]
Shawn Collins Reply:
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Hi Logan -

Thanks for the feedback – we’ll try to work out some sessions on those topics.

And we’ll see what we can do with vetting the questions.

I agree that audience questions can be a problem – I hate the big, self-serving preambles, random questions, etc.

Plus, it’s tough live and on the video of the sessions to hear some of the audience, even when they go to the mic.

[Reply]
matt

22. Jan, 2010

Besides pre-screening the questions, they can have either the mod or someone else say “and the question from so-and-so from xdomain/company is…” – maybe take texts or tweets during the presentation.

Then the mods can pare down the question to the absolute essentials. Controlling the conversation in a time-limited arena is essential. It’s like talk radio where they take the question, cut off the question-asker and then respond.

[Reply]
Logan Reply:
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:47 am
Excellent suggestion Matt. I agree. There is only so much time per session so it is essential to control the conversations as best as possible.

[Reply]

Logan Thompson