During my high tech career over the past 20 years, I have been to LOTS of conferences, trade shows and events. For example way back in 86 attended Apple’s official GALA launch of the very 1st Mac. Anyone remember that? Now that was a glitzy affair. Back then I was Sales Manager of Bell Atlantic CompuShop. A year later I won an award from Epson for top sales. The prize??? All expense paid 1 week tour of Japan. 200 winners from all over the world traveled the country. Epson put us up in 5 star hotels in Tokyo, we rode the bullet train and stayed in quaint little Japanese Inns where we were waited on hand and foot by real geisha girls. I remember one night after those Geishas poured me WAAAAYYYYYY too much sake, running down the halls of a 5 star hotel at 2 in the morning screaming BONZAI and karate chopping all the plants. I almost got kicked out! Well so much for the trip down memory lane. I was thinking about some of the good old days on the long drive back from CJU, which leads me back to the reason I bring some of this up.

In my 20 year history in the technology industry I have been to more high tech conferences and events than I can even count, but I have to say CJU was a stand-out. One the best events I have ever had the pleasure of attending! I strongly encourage anyone that wants to go next year to put in an Outlook reminder NOW and be sure you register next year the 1st day they announce it. I think this year the event sold out in the 1st 7 days and I know many people that could not get in. If you consider yourself a player in this industry, whether you are a merchant or affiliate this is an event that you simply cannot miss.

EVENT OVERVIEW

The hotel was phenomenal with many of the large group events taking place out in a beautiful open air Rotunda with an Ocean view. The food was fantastic. The 1st day at lunch, expecting the typical conference chicken dish, we were pleasantly surprised by an all you can eat buffet which included gourmet prawns and scallops. All the meals were awesome and were out in the Rotunda. The location and accommodations just could not get any better.

The courses, at least all the ones I attended, were extremely informative and well done. I will be covering them in more detail in part 2. Everything was on-time and well orchestrated by tons of CJ and ValueClick staff who all proved to be gracious hosts.

I think there were around 500 people there. I saw lots of industry friends and gurus and got to meet a lot of great new people – affiliates, merchants and service providers. Wow we have a lot of talented, brilliant people in our industry! I have so many new ideas to implement and actually learned a lot at this conference. I went mainly for the networking WHICH WAS PRICELESS, but came away with so much more than that.

The Keynote Address was made by - John Battelle, Chairman, Federated Media Publishing. It was titled “Search, Blogs and Web 2.0: The Role of Publishers in an Intent Driven World”. How can someone with such a brilliant mind, deliver that dynamic of a speech with such calm humility? What a genius and a great speaker! I would definitely keep my eye on John’s new company FMpublishing. Follow this guys lead. We also each got a copy of his new book. “The Search” - About the rise of Google—and how the search industry is changing the way we live in profound and unpredictable ways.

CJU - TO BE CONTINUED…
I’m blogging this before I even read email or begin to try playing catch up. Have not even checked my 5 star forum or scanned the blogs to see what others have to say about CJU. So this is just a tiny overview which will turn into a 3 or 4 part series.

When I have time I will cover the sessions. My favorite 3 were Deep Linking and Beyond – Best Practices for Data Feed Optimization, The Low Down on Downloads and The Dating Game - Affiliate Style. Now I will just tease you with the fact that this was NOT a boring old panel discussion about how to find the right partners – which is what I was expecting. It was THE Dating Game. The music, the format – everything except Chuck Woolery! I was sitting with Shawn Collins, Heather from X10 and Linda Woods from PartnerCentric. We were practically ROLLING on the floor. It got pretty spicy and showed us what a great sense of humor CJ has.

I will cover some new products and services that are coming from CJ and other companies. I’ll also share links to some of the other good blogs about CJU so you can hear the news I missed, since there was just so much going on. I’m sure Lisa from Revenue Magazine already has a blog up. She was taking good notes and blogging from the event at night I think. Shawn and others probably already have blogs ups too.

My last blog of this series will cover the 3 P’s. Some of the People, the Parties and the Pics. I’ll blog after I catch up a bit. In the meantime, feel free to ask specific questions about the CJU event or share your experience if you were there over in the 5 Star Forum. Forum Reply

Stay tuned to the 5 Star Channel for CJU Redux Part 2…