The Affiliate Summit West has come to an end, and I can tell you that it was awesome. From the beginning, here it goes…So I wake up at 3:30 am on January 21st, and am out the door by four.  I picked up Tara DeGiusto, Maura Goodwin, and Brock Siegel and we were on the way to the Wilkes Barre/Scranton International Airport.  Barring that Brock’s name was not in the computer and we had to book a flight for him on the spot, things started off well.  Get on the plane and we are on our way to Vegas…so we thought.  A light amount of snow caused the navigation system at the Cincinnati Airport (CVG) to go offline, so we make a pit stop in Pittsburgh to refuel and wait (and that we did).  45 minutes later, we are in route to Cincinnati.  Because our connecting flight was scheduled for 45 minutes after we landed, we unfortunately missed the connecting flight that was supposed to take us from Cincinnati to Vegas. So, a little upset, we proceeded to the Delta Representatives to find a flight to get us to Vegas.  The lack of customer service made me want to vomit.  For all of you who know me, I am a very friendly person.  I am nice to strangers, respectful to my peers and generally fun to be around.  DELTA REPS AT THE CVG AIRPORT HAVE NONE OF THOSE QUALITIES.  They are rude and incompetent.  They also could not help us.  I ended up calling the 1-800 number for Delta and the rep on the phone found us a flight to Boston and then to Vegas.  Not ideal but she was awesome and it was all she had.  So all in all, we flew from Scranton to Pittsburgh then to Cincinnati, then back to Boston, then on to Vegas.  Total travel time…a whopping 18 hours minus our presentation booth which made it the following morning.  Our flight home on US Air was a breeze.

On to the conference.  By the time I actually got to Vegas, I was so tired that I ordered food and went to bed.  The next day was great though.  I stayed in the booth the whole time and got to meet some of the nicest affiliates ever. The Martini’s are great, as well as the crew from Zanox.  I also had the wonderful opportunity to finally meet Shmuly.  I had multiple conversations with some of my favorite affiliates, including  Scott Hazard, and Asif who was his normal, friendly self.  I was able to meet up with some friends from 77Blue, Fat Wallet, Upromise, and last but not least, Ebates.  I also had the opportunity to briefly speak to Shawn Collins in an elevator, and he was great as usual. The Pure Imagination party was fun, and if I owned a club, it would totally look like Tryst.  I was so happy that Scott won the Affiliate of the Year, and had my fingers crossed all evening.  After about 4-5 glasses of champagne, I retired (believe it or not!) and had some quesadillas with a friend back at the hotel.The next day, Kris Jones , our CEO, spoke and it was actually the only speaking engagement that I was able to attend, but it was awesome.  He did a great job.  I was impressed.  I did hear that Shoemoney’s Q and A was also very engaging.  The speaker line up for the Summit is usually impressive.We all had a good time, I got to meet Shoemoney’s sister, Andrea, and saw Dillsmack again.  They are great people.  The best thing about the Summit is that attendees get to meet people face to face who we work with over the phone and through email.  I made a lot of new friends, connected with some old ones, and had a really great and memorable time. Can’t wait until Miami, although I can tell you that we will not be 9 people strong again. 

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