Today was another whirlwind day at Affiliate Summit East in New York. I started the day by visiting the blogger lounge where my friend Heather (@HeatherinBC) was Blogger Lounge Mistress. She ran the blogger lounge and helped out the bloggers who were there to post up their pictures and stories and many other things. I had to get my post from yesterday up so I did that along with my Photo-A-Day from yesterday. So I did that and then made sure I got breakfast and breakfast for Heather because she was tied to that blogger room for the day. Which was great because I could leave stuff there and come right back to it easily.

This morning I also met Connie of BrainFoggles (@ConnieFoggles). She is such a sweet lady. She saw me and asked, “Are you a hugger?” I said what the heck and she greeted me like an old friend, which we are because of our friendship through blogging. We had a really nice time in the morning and I worked fiercely to get that post and all my photos up and ready to go so I could start the day. Tim Jones (@Timothy_Jones) also caught up with us in the Blogger Lounge and he and I went to the opening Keynote which was done by Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan)and Julien Smith (@Julien).

They wrote Trust Agents together.

I had never seen Chris Brogan speak before. I had been following his twitter feed until I checked twitter karma and saw that he wasn’t following me. He follows so many people, why wasn’t he following me? So I unfollowed him and tweeted that to him, never heard anything but then again he’s a very sought after guy. Well, after hearing him speak today I quickly followed him again, he’s a guy you should be listening to if you are part of social media. He put so much of his personality into the session and was so engaging that I knew I had to start following him again regardless if he doesn’t follow me.

Update: Chris and I are cool. We are mutually following each other and may even hang out for a beer (like in the “Real” World) sometime. It had to be the Milli Vanilli song. I just know it.

Later in the evening I told him that same thing, we may catch up sometime back home because he is a local guy. I tried to tell him how much I thought his keynote was a good one but I think I should have lead with that rather than how I unfollowed him and only would follow (@JimmyBuffett) knowing from the outset that I wouldn’t be followed back.

The keynote was also emceed by Jim Kukral (@JimKukral)

Jim and I spoke last night in the limo and I really enjoyed what he had to say last night as well as today. I’m definitely going to give him a call after the conference.

After the keynote I went to the How to Monetize Your Site With Widgets. I wasn’t quite sure if I was in the right place and I asked this guy if this was the Amazon Affiliate session and he said that he sure hoped so because he was giving the talk. That was Andrew “Woody” Wood of Amazon.com. He had a really good session and I learned a lot about the widgets that are possible for blogs. After the session I asked him if we could get a photo together with the xshot and we did.

I have some great ideas for a mashup type widget for BenSpark.com that will be pretty sweet. While in that session I met Russ Wollam (RustyFenderMan) from HorseLoverz.com, The World’s Biggest Tack shop. They also sell items for pets because basically if someone has a horse most of the time they have a pet. Russ was a really nice guy. I also met Laszlo Ember from New Jersey State Auto Auction he was an interesting guy as well. I realized that my Photo-A-Day project really connects me to so many different things like my horse photos and my car photos.

After the session I went to the business office because I had to pick up my Poken. I was so excited to receive my Dragon Poken from (PokenGirl) via FedEx at the hotel. I felt like a secret agent because I had never received anything at a hotel before. I’m an affiliate of PokenGirl and if you are interested in purchasing one and high 4ing with me than cool, we can certainly do that. I’m going to do a full on review of the Poken once I get some people here at Affiliate Summit to High 4 me. The only person that has one that I know is Tim Jones, and he got his today. He has a caveman.

While in the blogger lounge I had a 15 minute session with Kim Ann Curtin who is a Life Coach and has the blog The Coach Shoppe. I had never ever wanted to talk to a life coach before to be honest. I like being and independent person. I’m very much a “shut up and do it” person when it comes to tasks for other people. I just get the job done. when it comes to tasks for me I shy away and do not push full on ahead. She cut through the crap and asked the questions that I should be asking and together we worked out a plan for a dream that I’ve had for a while. We put together an action plan and I’m going to work on it. She goes and gives 15 minute sessions to people on Wall Street, she’s really good.

Hanging out in the Blogger Lounge I got to meet a guy that I’ve only recently become a fan of and that is Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee). Gary was there visiting and I took a photo with him using my Xshot then I ran over to my PoGo and printed out our photo, slapped it to my business card and brought it right back to him he was pretty impressed and showed his friends.

When I met him I asked him about the 80’s toys that show up on Wine Library TV. He-Man and WWF wrestlers. I didn’t get to ask if he had any Transformers that might make an appearance. It was a great time. Here is the photo that we took together

I also caught up with and finally met Eric Shechter (EricSchechter) from Clickbooth. He’s going to be a celebrity judge of the Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack Contest. We need to talk more on stuff and I hope to catch up with him tomorrow.

I went off to find a session, decided against it and then went off and met with a bunch of people up and the floors. I met my Publisher Manager at MarketLeverage, Erica Messore. That was a bit embarrassing because I was talking to Jen from MarketLeverage.telling her that I had never heard from my account manager and then looked at the business cards and realized that my manager was Erica, who was right there. We formally met and took a photo together so it is all good.

Back down to the Blogger’s Lounge and I did two interviews. One with a guy named Mike Stark and the other with Murray Newlands (@MurrayNewlands). I’m looking forward to seeing what those are about. Also while in the blogger lounge I made a Mii Character of myself on the Wii and named it BenSpark. I said, I can guarantee that at least a couple of people will play Wii as my Mii. And I sat and watched at least six people do it. If that ain’t personal branding then I do not know what is.

After the Blogger’s Lounge I went back to my room and dumped most of my stuff and headed out to the MarketLeverage / John Chow Dot Com Pizza meetup at Ray’s Original or Original Rays (I can’t figure out which was which). There were quite a few people and I met Michael Buechele (mikebuechele) who is friends with Tim Jones. We also caught up with Dina (@MLDina) from MarketLeverage as well as Kim Rowley KIMarketing.com and BajaLori. We walked over to the pizza place and met up with everyone. The amount of pizza that came out hot and fresh for us was amazing. We had a really good time while we were there and I think I went and made BajaLori’s night with an Xshot of her very own. You would have thought I gave her $100.00 on the spot she was so excited.

While we were at the Dot Com Pizza party Ted Murphy (@TedMurphy) showed up and it was great to see him. Kim went over and introduced herself to him and I shot this photo of the two of them together.

Then as Tim and Mike and I were leaving we caught up with Ted on the stairs and I shot the Photo-A-Day shot. The thing that cracks me up about this is that the guy in the foreground was one of the people working at the pizza place. It is so random a shot that I had to use it as the daily photo. Ted told Mike, Tim and I that a couple of guys asked him to go outside for and interview and they were so excited to interview him and that they had watched all his podcasts and read his blog all the time. They thought that he was Zac Johnson (@moneyreign). No word of a lie. It was hilarious.

So I went back to the hotel and started writing this post and didn’t make it too far before I got a call from Ted that he was with Heather in the bar downstairs. He asked me to come down and for a while we hung out and talked about all sorts of things from babies to running and everything in between. I’m so excited for IZEAFest that I cannot even tell you! Hanging with Ted gives you this energy that is amazing. We eventually made out way upstairs and hang out at the Affiliate Summit Karaoke party.

We had free drink tickets, enough to get me and Ted up there to sing Milli Vanilli – Girl You Know It’s True with the Affiliate Summit man himself, Shawn Collins (AffiliateTip). I had a great time singing and dancing with Ted and Shawn. Heather taped the whole thing with the Flip cam. Here is our epic video. Please, no autographs. LOL.

As you can see I wore my I’m Not A Famous Blogger shirt today and it got a lot of attention.