It's Day 1 in vegas - at Shawn and Missy's  Affiliate Summit Conference.  I've attended before,  but this time we're both attending,  and speaking, and exhibiting. So that means we've got a ton of stuff to transport - set up - and manage - it also means we're right in the middle of the action.

Few things right off the bat.  The turn out is HUGE.  3,000 attendees. Wow.  The next thing is that there are a ton of Magnify.net customers here - folks who use the platform,  or ad networks we work with,  or folks that might be new channel builders.  If you don't know much about affiliate marketing - it's really an amazing unknown world.  It's advertisers, and web sites who work together in more of pay for performance model than conventional advertising.

The new booth elements look great (thanks Paul!)  and we've got he entire set up down to an art.  To make this show special,  Ari has developed a hand out that offers new site builders who go live between now and April 1 a 90 day show special.  I can't blog about it - 'cause it's just for folks at the show - but it's causing quite a buzz.  The show opened with Jim Kukral as MC.  Jim has more projects going than anyone I know - among them Video Ninjas (a weekly radio show that Jim and I host each week on Geekcast.fm).

After Jim's intro,  the Keynote was Jason Calcanis.  Jason was his typical self.  He chastised the audience for thinking small,  poking at them for using Affiliate Marketing techniques to damage the quality of the experience on the internet.  Sure,  bad ads and cheesy offers are terrible,  but there's no doubt that Jason isn't going to protect the web from spam or other garbage by telling the CPA world they have to get religion and clean up their act.  Jason has spent so much of his career fighting his way up from the bottom,  that he may not be able to remember that he's now supposed to be the sage old wise-man who does more than just bluster and blame.  Missing from his talk was any specific ideas about how his audience could make money without spoiling the commons.   He's right to point to the problem, and wrong to show up without any solutions.  But hell,  if his idea was to 'stir the pot' he did that for sure,  and turned some heads.  Later in the limo he joked that he wished he'd had a 25 million dollar check that he'd held up (joking about he sale of weblogs inc to AOL).  No check - just this limo photo of Jason and the gang jammed in to a hummer limo.

But - back to the show.  Next up,  my panel.  With  Melissa Salas from Buy.com moderating,  and panelists  Tim Carter, Founder, Askthebuilder.com, Joel Comm, President, Infomedia Brian McCarthy, SVP Business Development, Revver, Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net, and Gary Vaynerchuk, Host, Wine Library TV.

The panel was fun - and smart.  Gary is a real internet TV star... which is fun.  Tim knows how to turn web video into gold with Google,  and Joel and Brian and I had a good time sharing tips and ideas for an audience that was clearly ready to hear about the future of video.  A good time.

More about the booth and such - but save that for tomorrow's post.