So this blog post is a little late because I have been consistently 100 plus emails behind every day on top of balancing a new endeavor as the head organizer for all the 202 Meetups in Southern California. Sounds like an easy position right? Well easy isn't quite the word I would use to describe when it came to putting this together, but the hard work and scramble definitely paid off. When I say scramble... I mean SCRAMBLE. Just ask my co-organizer in crime.... She not only got texts/phone calls from me at 3:00 am the morning before the Meetup, she also got a wake up call at 6:00 am to remind her that she needed to go hold down our place at the Burton Chase Park in Marina Del Rey and hang out with homeless people by herself while she waited for myself and my friend Eva to show up and take over staking out our location since they weren't available for reservation and on a "first come - first taken" basis...which meant in order to fight off homeless people playing poker, screaming children's birthday parties and family bbq's that someone would need to be sitting in this location until the Meetup started at 2:00.
Delegating staff to pick up food and party supplies from a water front view isn't too tough of a task on a beautiful summer day... but seriously I almost went stir crazy sitting at that park from 9:00 am until my helpers arrived around 1:30 PM to set everything up. (Way to be fashionably late kids) Guests started to pour in around 2:30, and by 3:00 we had well over 75 guests show up and over 10 pitchers of Sangria ready to serve. One of our favorite Midwest values affiliates, Riley Pool agreed to speak at the Meetup about his experiences as a dating affiliate and all the lessons he has learned over the years buying banner inventory on display sites and battling with webmasters. Riley got a little nervous before it was time to speak... so it was necessary to calm his nerves with a few tequila shots. For me personally tequila shots are usually a sign that I will be losing a credit card, cell phone, employee or my self dignity sometime in the near future... but in Riley's case is actually made him a more confident and clear public speaker. Different strokes for different folks I guess?
I initially had a few more people lined up to speak at the Meetup, but spontaneity is always more fun especially after a few glasses of home made sangria, so I decided to put Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor of Ads4Dough on the spot and had him do a Q & A session for everyone along with Nana Gilbert-Baffoe or as Eleah likes to call him "Nana Banana." For those of you not familiar with Nana's back round, he is one of the original members of Prosper202 prior to the Bloosky sale and re-purchase - So it was a great pleasure to have him in attendance. Both Jason and Nana answered probably 20 questions each and everyone in attendance seemed so engaged that they didn't seem to notice Eleah's laser eye'd dog running around AND that we had entirely run out of beer. Even though we are technically competitors, I consider Jason to be a really close friend of mine and have an immense amount of respect for him, so it definitely meant a lot to myself and all the AKMG members that he took the time to attend our Meetup, and didn't kill me for making him answer questions for an hour! Curious to know what Smax and Nana talked about? Well next time you will have to attend ;)
The first ever AKMG sponsored Meetup ended up going until about 7:00 PM and we amazingly got everything cleaned up in less than 30 minutes. Good thing affiliate marketers also like to eat! From there about 15 of us headed to Hal's in Venice and had a few post Meetup drinks and appetizers. Alas, all the planning fully paid off and we heard from everyone that attended not only did they have a great time, but they took away some helpful tips and techniques that they would be applying to their business models. I truly wanted to go back to the core values and principles that Wes Mahler had in mind when he started the Meetups.... Keeping it simple, informative and not jamming network sponsors down the throat of attending affiliates.
The next Meetup with be located in San Diego in which Chern Lee & Valentino Vaschetto of Pinnacle Dream Media are my fabulous co-organizers. Dates are still to be announced and I promise the venue will not be The Ivy, Stingaree, Fluxx or Sidebar! For those of you reading this and know what I am talking about, I hope you either have a big smile on your face because you understand my humor and what I am referencing (Alonzo especially) or you are shaking your head because you know how much your bank account balance is going to suffer if you go to any of the four places I just mentioned. This post is long enough.... Moral of the story here: Meetup #1 was a success and that there are many more to come!
