The year was 1999, and I was working for Verio (now NTT), a Tier 1 network provider, and I was selling high-speed bandwidth – business-level access to the worldwide Internet. Back in 1999, the United States only had a handful of NAPs (network access points) to the global Internet, with Boca Raton being a new one for Verio. Back then, when a business wanted internet service, they rented a “leased line” from the local telephone company, and paid by the foot – the further away you were from your internet connection, the more you paid. Therefore, if you had a bunch of servers that you wanted online, you wanted to “colocate” – or place them as close to a NAP as possible. And who uses servers? Website owners… e-commerce companies… emailers… you get my drift.
Over the next few years, Boca Raton saw a plethora of internet marketing companies pop up. Also, some of the most prolific spammers built their empires in Boca. In fact, companies in New York and California thought twice about doing business with companies with a Boca Raton mailing address or even a 561 area code.
Fast forward sixteen years to present-day Boca Raton. The true spammers have been relegated to Russia or China. The 561 area code and Boca mailing addresses were no longer toxic. The worst things about Boca are the senior drivers and “Boca bitches”. Performance marketing is alive-and-well in South Florida. And in the middle of May, Affiliate Summit brings a unique, one-day event to “The City of All Seasons”.
The Performance Marketing Summit takes place at the Renaissance Boca Raton Hotel on Monday, May 18th. This event will be very different from the standard Affiliate Summit conference – all attendees will be in one room for all the sessions, with each session only lasting 18 minutes. There will also be plenty of time for networking during the included luncheon, the speed networking session, and the evening’s cocktail party sponsored by BMI Elite.
Featured speakers include Elesha Aflalo, Joe Sousa, Karl Norelius, Jay Berkowitz, Jeff Fisher, Rachel Hirsch, Eric Crusius, and Evan Weber – topics range from legal issues and compliance to attribution and digital performance techniques. For those who would like to travel to sunny South Florida for this event, I suggest you purchase your passes soon – the seating is limited to 100, and there are only a handful of tickets left. And hey – if you’re in town the weekend before the event, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to party with me & Missy on my birthday!
To register for the summit, or for more information, visit http://performancemarketingsummit.com.
