Views on The London Casino Affiliate Conference (LAC).
Well, we just got back to the office after the London Affiliate Conference which was held at the Old Billingsgate Market in The City (London). So how was it, I hear you ask, and what is a Casino Affiliate conference might I add?
Overall, it was good, and what was it? Well, it was a big conflab involving the great and the good (and a few of the poor and bad) of the online casino industry. Players, affiliates (website owners who promote online casinos), online casino , poker and bingo companies and a whole host of service providers, dancers, hangers-on, ne´er-do-wells, city slickers, bums, chancers and snoozers.
The intinery proceeeds along these lines: all the participants jump on planes from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the southern tip of Africa and congregate in a small hotel in London where they shuffle along a big queue to collect their coloured bracelets and barcode badges. Once these have been bagged, the parties and waffling commence, the booze flows and the networking begins.
The online casino conference kicked off proper with an Awards night which like many an awards night probably went on a little too long. And then we were into 2 days of workshops, lectures, shows, parties, nights oot and dinners. Phew…
So can we summarise the event in 8 points for all you urban stress monkeys pulling this off on your iphone RSS feed apps? I doubt it, but here goes
1. 2010 is the year the mobile Internet will take off for the casino market (so was 2009 and 2008 but 2010 really is the year).
2. The US is gearing up to legalise and regulate gambling online…….maybe. But it might not.
3. Billingsgate market is along way from the rest of London and most restaurants, shops and public conveniences do not open at the weekend.
4. They make loud loudspeakers these days.
5. A good blagger always peppers his or her converstions with at least 5 mentions of link juice/infrastructure/dynamic/power play/fishy/loose/tight/variance/super/windfall/mega/über
6. If you are not on Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/MySpace you are missing out but you´ll have a lot more time to do other stuff. Twitter in particular have pulled off an impressive coup by persuading alot of people that they should be on Twitter, nay need to be on Twitter, without really knowing why they are on Twitter. With the end result that there are alot of Twits following other Twits which is all helping to inflate the sites´s numbers. That´s got to be a good thing for when they eventually flog it to Sergie and Lazza.
7. You can´t fit that many people into a Mini, but you can fit ALOT of people in a club called Parker McMillan which isn´t that much bigger than a Mini.
8. It takes 16 and a half minutes for the bar staff at The Grange St Pauls hotel to make a Martini. I know, because I was trying to order a simple pint of beer (estimated pouring time 30 seconds) while some American chap who´d been to New York has mistakenly ordered one. 2 lessons here: (1) Train your staff. (2) When in Rome, drink the local brew.
