I have been to a lot of conferences and have heard many keynote speakers. Unfortunately, most of them are just so-so… few offer a truly funny, exciting and motivational speech. Fortunately for everyone attending Affiliate Summit East, they were treated to keynote speaker Ze Frank, whose keynote speech had all three elements. I had the pleasure of speaking with Ze last night and he seemed like a good guy, though I wasn’t sure what he was going to speak about today.
One of the most important characteristics of a speaker is they must keep the audience entertained, awake (!), and focused on their underlying message, throwing in some comedy is also a huge plus.
To start things off, Ze got everyone excited and in the mood while he showed slides on plane safety and really looked in detail at how humorous safety guides and plane pillow collectors can be. All the while relating this humor to his underlying message.
Ze’s claim to fame was a funny dancing video he made as an invite for one of his parties when he was younger. What was meant to be seen by only his friends, quickly spread throughout the world and brought in over a million visitors within a couple days, truly one of the first viral videos.
The main message from Ze Frank’s keynote what that we are now in a 2.0 world and everyone is influencing everything. Whether it be funny videos being spread throughout the world, or people twittering their lives…
Overall Ze started out the first full day of the conference with a tremendously funny and motivational keynote address. It gets no better than that.
I’ll be leaving for Affiliate Summit in a couple hours now. What new connections and ideas will I return with this time? Be sure to check back often as I am blogging the whole event while I’m there and will be posting a lot of pictures. Once I arrive I will hit up the "Affiliate Meet Market" a meet up with some old friends and see some of the latest exhibitors. Then later tonight is the "ABestWeb & ShareASale "Under the Stars" Party" which should be pretty cool! I’ve known Brian from Shareasale since he started the network a few years ago. He is now known for having the best opening Affiliate Summit parties.
Something strange I’ve noticed over the past few years is how something big in the media always tends to happen while at Affiliate Summit events… The two that come to mind was last year at the World Cup when 
So once we arrived at the Borgata I went to play craps for a bit and Reena tried her luck on some slots. About 20 mins later Reena came back to craps and said the slots were crappy… I was having the same luck at Craps. I started out with $3300 at the table… then left it with $1000 about an hour and a half later. Frustrated we stopped for a bit and decided what we should do. It was a Friday night, so it was already massively busy. We wanted to play roulette, since that’s where I usually win big or go for broke. All the tables were full so I went to check the high rollers section. There was one guy at the table and it was a $100 minimum. I still had $1000 in chips, so I traded them in for $25 chips… played two spins and didn’t win… 
Reena then said "what do you want to do?"…. I threw an extra $2700 on the table to get more chips and see what we could do. First spin… crap, some number I wasn’t on. Second spin… he’s about to drop the ball to spin…"quick load up red 32!" (it’s my number I always play and stack up)… the ball is landing… BAM! 32 RED HITS! I had $100 straight up on 32 and $200 all around it… payoff was $7000! At this point I was up $1500, so I played the additional $500 for one more spin. (hoping for 32 again) Nothing hit so then I cashed in all the chips for large ones. The croupier passed them to me and I said thanks… the he says "No…Thank You!"
