Since I have never been to Las Vegas before, I decided to book a few extra days to relax. I arrived a few days before the event and we celebrated my wife’s birthday there. Two days were enough time to check out the strip, gamble a bit, check out some clubs and restaurants and just enjoy the city. The first two days were also great because I was winning on every single table/slot machine I played. The time flied by really quick until I had to go to Rio and register.

After I received my pass I went to check out DK’s charity poker tournament. I did not pre-register online but was able to get in and play as they had a few spots left. Poker was a lot of fun, I didn’t do too well and finished 30th… Should have been more patient. One all-in in the wrong time killed me. It was a pleasure to play with all the affiliates, publishers and advertisers. At first it was a little awkward to get the conversations started, but after a while people started to have friendly conversations.

Charity poker event is definitely a good place to get to know people and I we had a few good conversation with Jonathan Volk, Jon, Lisa, and other affiliates. There are also a lot of interesting people watching and hanging around the tables. It was a pleasure to meet DK, Brian LaFrance, Ruben Orozco, Geoffrey Nuval, John Chow, Andrew Wee, Jim Kukral and many, many more great people. There are just too many to list in one post. Anyway, in case you are thinking to register for the event in the future, go for it. Awesome game, networking with great people and of course good cause.

After the tournament was over and all the good SEO/Affiliate Marketing/Management Strategies/etc discussions were over I went out with my wife.

She was waiting patiently and taking great pictures all this time. This was the last day when the weather was nice so it worked really well for us. We still did not know Vegas and just walked around stepping into every place that looked appealing. Had a good dinner, walked around Bellagio, Planet Hollywood area and ended up in Prive club. The club was decent, but we had a lot of fun. We stayed up really late and I ended up missing some keynotes the next day.

I tried going to bed earlier and just have less fun in the next two days, which worked pretty good. I was at the conference most of the time. It was a great learning and networking experience. I met a lot of people. Everybody was super nice. I was expecting some people to be jerks, but even the most popular bloggers/affiliates were really friendly and some didn’t even mind sharing some really useful information.

Popular bloggers/affiliates were everywhere. Some were speaking, some were just walking around the conference, sitting next to me on the keynotes and others were just sitting chatting with the affiliate managers on the show floor. It was pretty interesting to meet everybody (still quite a few that I missed ).

It was nice talking to all the Affiliate Managers and clear the questions that I had. All seemed to be prepared to answer my questions since I am sure most of the affiliates had similar ones. The trade floor was full, there were so many attendees and networks.

It was fun, I was walking from room to room and at the end of every day my legs hurt from so much walking. In case you are planning to go for the first time, get yourself a pair of comfortable shoes.

There were many parties after the conference. Some were thrown by affiliate networks while others were more general and anybody could attend. I really enjoyed meetup 202 and met quite a few people there as well. There were a few tips here and there and some were really great.

The weather started to change towards the last days of the event. It was actually raining for the last 4 days of my trip. We did not walk around anymore but still had fun and went to some other affiliate parties.

Well, I hope this is enough for a recap. I want to write more, but I may end up being removed from google for 50mb blog post that takes an hour to load. After all, positive user experience is #1 priority of this blog, right? Now I totally understand why most of the affiliate bloggers have a post for every day of the event. Anyway, Affiliate Summit is a great event. I learned a lot! I met a lot of great people! I had a lot of fun! What else do you need? As for now, I am still waiting for the missed keynotes. I would love to go over the videos of the keynotes that I was not able the attend.

I took a lot of pictures and I hope I can sort out the business cards and associate faces with names. Now I want to list some of the people shown in the pictures above. Please remind me if we met, took a picture, you are not listed and I will edit the post.

1) Jonathan Volk. It was a pleasure playing poker with Jonathan. I just wish better luck to him and myself in the next tournament. He is a super affiliate and writes useful posts on his blog frequently. You can check it out at www.JonathanVolk.com and follow him on twitter @jonathanvolk.

2) DK. I would like to thank DK for the tournament, it was great to see the presentation on killer facebook campaigns and great to meet him. Stop by his blog at www.PurposeInc.com and follow him on twitter @purposeinc.

3) John Chow. I met John by the bar and just took a picture, had a small conversation. He is one of the most popular bloggers, which you can read it at www.JohnChow.com. Follow him on twitter @johnchow.

4) Jim Kukral. Jim is a moderator at ASW and you can read his blog at www.JimKukral.com. Follow him on twitter @jimkukral.

5) Andrew Wee. Andrew is a popular blogger/affiliate from Singapore. Read his blog at www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com. Follow him on twitter @andrewwee.

6) Bryn Youngblut. I didn’t meet him personally, but played poker at the next table. Was hoping to catch up at the event. Read his blog at Bryn.me. Follow him on twitter @brynyoungblut.

7) Nicky Cakes. Congratulate him for winning the award, he is officially affiliate of the year now. Nicky was sitting at a4d booth and we just took a few pictures. You can check out his blog at www.NickyCakes.com. Follow him on twitter @nickycakes.

8 ) Murray Newlands. He is an Australian blogger/affiliate and won another award. Read his blog at www.MurrayNewlands.com and follow him on twitter @murraynewlands.

9) Jeremy Shoemaker. I didn’t get a chance to catch him at the event, just listened to his answers on killer facebook campaigns. Most of the time people just asked facebook guys on why their ad platform is so unstable and approves ads at one time but not the other. Anyway, Shoemoney is one of the most popular affiliate blogs and you can check it out here www.Shoemoney.com and follow him on twitter @shoemoney.

10) Dr. Ngo. One of the top affiliates who doesn’t really blog. However, you can still follow him on twitter – @dr_ngo.

11) Wes Mahler. The guy behind tracking 202. Read his blog at www.WesMahler.com and follow him on twitter @wesmahler.

12) Ian Fernando. He is a blogger and affiliate, has a lot of good things to say, so read his blog at www.IanFernando.com and follow him on twitter @ianternet.

Pfff… At first I wanted to add all of the blogs that I follow, but the post is getting way too long. Perhaps next time.

At last, I want to thank Dennis Yu for the help with getting to Affiliate Summit West 2010.

Another thank you goes to Harry Tamacas Perla – CEO of QwikMedia for the party.

The last thank you goes to you for reading the entire post.

ASW10 was just great! Hope to attend ASE10 as well, but we’ll see! I better stop writing now… 5 hours later… Its time to sort out business cards and all the cool pictures I took. I hope you enjoyed the post.