GPWA Conference Wrap-up and Pictures!

[Vallerius]

Here's a general wrap up of the GPWA Conference that took place at the Riviera in Vegas two weeks ago. Overall, the event to me was both fun and beneficial, and based on the conversations I had with others and the post-program surveys it seems like most of the members who attended felt the same.

The event kicked off Tuesday night with the opening reception. I'd estimate that about 70 people showed up, a mix of both portal webmasters and affiliate program managers. Everybody I met was cool, and through a lot of conversations I had I was able to figure out what sort of issues are important to a lot of you. For the last three years I worked as a journalist in the online gambling industry, but the publication that employed me placed very little emphasis on affiliate marketing so I was in many ways clueless about it until the GPWA conference. At any rate, there were lots of free drinks at the reception and lots of good people to enjoy them with. I could tell that a lot of people were meeting up with old acquaintances they don't see often and everyone was in a jovial sort of mood. Many people even stayed around long after the reception was supposed to have ended. The reception was rated as the best part of the conference according to the feedback surveys.

The turnout for the conference sessions the next day was not as high as it was at the reception. I'd estimate that about 30 people were there. I'm aware that a lot of people were unable to come because of other meetings and obligations going on at the same time. Again I learned a lot about portal sites and affiliate marketing through the presentations. I've even been thinking about my own job differently as a result of some of the things I heard. Dominating search engines, analyzing traffic flows, linking content, tactics to improve sites and content-- these are all things I knew little about before hearing the presenters discuss them, but now I think about them quite often. The presentations were good, but a few of them went a little long. I delivered one on the current regulatory environment in the U.S. as it pertains to operating a gambling portal site. I was nervous as hell, and I'm sure it slowed me down, but feedback was still really good.

Everybody who attended the conference got a cool little conference guide that also includes a member directory of everybody in the GPWA. It also provides information about every member's websites. There's also a lot of information about each GPWA sponsor affiliate program.

Feedback for the entire conference was very good overall. More than 4/5s of the responses said the conference was 'valuable' or 'very valuable' while less than 1/5 thought it was 'just average'. Nobody rated the conference negatively. All of the presentations received great feedback; all of them received a rating of 'very good' or above.

Perhaps most importantly, we gathered from the feedback what sort of suggestions and improvements we can implement for next year. Feedback shows that members would like to see more networking time, more cases and real examples, more search engine optimization tips, more time for discussion and real site statistics. Members also want to learn more about how the GPWA represents its members' interests. These are things that we are now discussing and figuring out how to improve, and by next year we will definitely have these improvements and more in place. The Casino City team actually put the conference together in a little over a month. I wish I could take some credit, but I served a very minimal role in its production. With a full year to prepare I'm pretty sure they can pull off even more of an outstanding job.

Please chime in and give your thoughts if you've got anything to add.


Champagne Showgirls at reception entrance



Registration Desk at reception



Reception



Reception



Foresite & Hindsite - Affiliate Program Panel Discussion: Making Your Site Better & More Profitable

[aksana]

I like those girls!!! Nice idea!

[Paolino]

I like the pictures! I wish i were there, maybe next one

[ntaus]

John was talking about maybe having a conference on the East Coast.

Is there anything in the works about that?

ntaus

[MichaelCorfman]

We don't have any active plans like that right now. One thing we are looking into is whether it might make sense to do something in association with the ICEi conference in London in January. But those thoughts are more on the level of "that might be an interesting idea" rather than anything else at the moment, so it is really premature for me to even mention the idea at all yet. If we do decide that is something we might be able to do, we will post material about our thoughts on the forums and ask for feedback.

Michael