It was ten years ago today that the second Affiliate Summit kicked off on the Carnival Victory cruise ship. It was a five day cruise from NYC to Halifax, Nova Scotia and back to NYC.
At the time, this was the biggest Affiliate Summit to date with 230 people on board the ship for the conference. An increase of 30 from the first Affiliate Summit.
It was a struggle to sell the concept of an affiliate marketing conference on a cruise ship to the big brands, but we still pulled off a sell-out. I think my John Caples inspired direct mail piece made the difference back then.
It was a remarkably good networking venue, since we were all together for the whole time, but it was a tricky place to hold educational sessions, and there was no room for an exhibit hall (we started doing that the following year).
We were in a space directly below the disco and there was an open ceiling up to the disco. The people at Carnival assured us there would be nothing in the disco during the days.
They lied.
There were kids groups there a lot of the time, and during one particular session from a couple guys from LinkShare, they were playing musical chairs really LOUD with “Oops, I Did It, Again” from Britney Spears. Over and over.
But with all of the crazy things we had to work around, it was a really fun way to bring affiliate marketers together.
It’s neat to see so many faces in the pictures from back then who are still active in the industry.
Check out pictures from Affiliate Summit 2004.