Greg

Before we all read the overly clichéd recap on other forums I’ll try my best here to deliver something closest to the truth about our experience at CAC Amsterdam 2009. Anytime there is a conference in The Netherlands you’re bound to come home with some hazy, piecing together the night type of recollection. This conference for me was a little of that, mixed with a little more of ‘you’ve been on this business too long’; more below.

So the trip started out with ambition. I was heading out on Saturday to arrive Sunday morning. I was going to bring my camera, blog daily on the forums and overall try and take over the show. These were some pretty good goals, and debatable that some of them were achieved.

Starting off Saturday morning I woke up to the most random, out of the Arctic snowstorm to ever hit Oklahoma in the twentieth century. All of the flights were cancelled and I was stuck trying to figure out a new way to get out before the conference started. It turns out that United must run the same schedule for American degenerates heading to Amsterdam daily as my new itinerary was the same, only leaving on Sunday. Short flight, long flight, duty free purchase (as seen in the image below) and then the train to the hotel. I arrived at 10am ready to sleep but with a full day to dredge through.

Day One was exactly what you would expect at a CAC Amsterdam show. There were a few people strolling around, a few more drinking water by the gallon due to the party the night before and others like me just checking in. Luckily I was scheduled to speak on Day 2 so I decided to hit my room for a much needed shower and change. Refreshed I headed back downstairs to catch all the gossip from the previous nights Operators Meeting. Turns out that I didn’t miss much; other than the annual 4 Mojitos I always drink on Sunday courtesy of Euro Partners.

I have to say that Day One at the conference was pretty boring. There was just a lot of the same topics being discussed as we always cover on both the forums and the radio show. In fact, listening back on the last session of Affiliate Life Radio I am positive more information comes from the show each week than any session at any gaming conference (period). We should start charging for downloads right lol?

The highlight of this day was definitely heading to the apartment/hostel/rehabilitation center that was being rented for the week by: Jeremy, JohnH, Kyle, Brandon and Steve. Honestly this place made me Déjà Vu. I was just watching an episode of Intervention on A&E before I took off Sunday. There was a mom all strung out of crack and she was jumping from house to house looking for a place with power. I sat there saying to myself, “this is pretty messes up, the places her family finds her must be upsetting.” I still think this but now in my mind it’s an image of Karen (Jeremy’s wife) saying the same thing when seeing the place he called home last week. The Krasnapolsky is no Ritz Carlton, but it might have well as been compared to the now infamous ‘Green House Effect.’ As John Holloway on the forums for pictures and be surprised.

Day Two was the fun night in Amsterdam. I had a great breakfast that day, gave two presentations (one with Jay Todd) and met with a friend of mine, Karim from RaketheRake.com. Always good to get feedback from the leading people in our industry and this was the day to do it. Popped out of the show around 1pm and had steaks with David from TowerGaming, Alex Pratt, Steve and Jeremy. This was another great talk and overall a good lunch. This day made the conference worth coming over for and it was refreshing to get back to business (cliché #1) before a night out. We all headed back inside to meet up with GoodKarmaKid, Kyle and a few others and headed into the final panel session aka Beer Session aka worthless hour of my life.

Before the conference there was obviously a lot of talk going on regarding where affiliates would spend a majority of their forum time. Where would gaming affiliates come to receive their PM’s and speak with their affiliate managers in a public dialogue? I’m not going to go into that here, but I think we have a pretty good idea now. If anything this helped CAC build some buzz and provided some background music to all the ‘business’ (are we back to it now) going on.

That night, after the conference ended was a blast. I mean we absolutely killed it in the streets of Amsterdam. We had a good dinner together at an Italian place with Giorgio, Stephen from Commission Account and the rest of the gang. This was of course after we drank way too much way too early at the Europub (thanks Jeremy for the drinks). Needless to say we found the Red Lights, the best/worst pizza stands and countless other wild encounters. I wrapped up the night with a 4am walk back to the hotel, drunk dialled my wife and crashed fully clothed in my over-priced, twin sized bed.

Day Three was also fun. It was low key but just what I needed. We sat around the apartment looking at each other trying to debate on seeing Ludacris in concert or the Holland Football match. We went into great debate and ended up just walking around and crashing a local Irish pub – with complementary drunk Irish soccer fans. I crashed out pretty early and split the next day.

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I could be off, but here is my take. There were around 300 people there, 75 affiliates and the rest operators. Jason Duke is a good speaker; we should have him speak more at these shows. White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO sessions are about the equivalent of watching 4 hours of Saved by the Bell (mildly entertaining but no value in life). For every topic in the booklet there were 3-4 other ‘agendas’ people had going in. The term ‘back to business’ is really annoying as no one is ready to do that yet. People looking to start new forums remind me of the same drunk people who crash a wedding trying to catch the bouquet thrown out from the bride. Affiliates really want some more to come home with when they leave a show. If someone can figure out how to deliver on that again they will be very popular. Affiliate Programs who book small venues and buy drinks for 3-4 hours never get a dollar in return out of their investment. It’s a good idea for conference organizers to reward their speakers with something. I’d be down with a free meal even, pen set, post it pad, anything. I’ll do it all again in 3 weeks. Now I am going back to bed.