5 Things I Learnt at the A4U Expo

Just a quick post (about time!) to say what a good time I had at the A4U Expo on the 14th and 15th of October. I’d originally not planned to go having been snowed under with work but team DGM enticed me with a free ticket and after a bit of cajoling from Helen, Cat, Jess and Kev I simply couldn’t say no! So here are the main 5 things I’m taking away from the Expo.

1. Matt Wood and the team at Existem do a cracking job
   Fantastic organisation from start to finish and Matt was omnipresent as he seemed to be in every seminar, bar and exhibition making sure everything was running smoothly. In fact I was surprised he wasn’t in the gents offering me a hand towel and some aftershave to “freshen up”. – I Just read that back and it maybe sounds a bit iffy – I mean the guys in toilets in nightclubs and bars who offer you aftershave etc etc – maybe it’s just Northampton?!!!
2. Free Bars lead to a lot of drunk affiliates!
   Thanks to Affiliate Future, the Artists formerly known as buy.at, DGM and everyone else who put their hand in their pocket to ensure that affiliates got as drunk as possible. There were a number of casualties and fortunately for me the only major issue I had was remembering what floor I was on in the hotel (oh and losing my train ticket). Being a shy and retiring type I’m never that keen on “networking” but once a few beers had slipped down it was great to meet lots of new people in the industry – and not just people trying to sell something to you!
3. Try seminars on subjects you don’t have a great knowledge of.
   On day 1 I stuck to mainly SEO type seminars and was left a little disappointed as they obviously need to target a level of learning that won’t put off the newbies. I’m not saying I’m a specialist by any means but a lot of the topics covered was information / techniques I’m already aware of – that’s not to say they weren’t good, there was still the odd nugget of information that made them worthwhile for me. On day 2 however, I made the conscious decision to view a wider breadth of seminars and was please I did as I really enjoyed the seminars on PR, Voucher Codes, Million Dollar Blogging Strategies and Meet the Super Affiliates.
4. Leaving the office for a few days (with hangover time) means you end up working all weekend!
   Coming back to a stack of emails from existing projects plus all the new contacts from the expo means I have only just had time to start writing my blog post, I also have a stack of content updates to do as well as watch the Cobblers (hopefully) beat Yeovil, Utd (hopefully) beat West Brom and update the Wombles website with last weeks match report!
5. Meeting your hero’s leaves you a quivering wreck!Thanks to Grant and Surge at Stream 20 for inviting me to the Sky VIP Room at the closing party where we got to watch England win 3 – 1 (I missed all goals bar 1!) with some Soccer celebs Chris Kamara and Matt Le Tissier. It was a great opportunity to bombard footballers with questions they’ve probably heard a million times before but they handled it with humility and really were great guys.

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