Over the weekend, I stayed up till 1:30 am to plan my flights and get my hotel confirmed for Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s upcoming Affiliate Summit West, at the Rio in Las Vegas from Feb 24-26.

Unlike the past Affiliate Summit where I found myself hiking from Harrah’s (which has great prime rib) to Bally’s every morning, I was determined to get lodging at the Rio where the summit will be held.

Having said that, here’s some summit survival tips:

• Take the bus if you have time and like to see the city. It costs about $6 for a 1-way ticket and stops at most of the major hotels. It does take a little time to get around though because it stops at quite a number of hotels.
• Wear comfortable walking shoes as you’ll be pounding the show floor if you’re diligent about meeting merchants and networks (I only got through about 25% of the booths the last time round because I was talking to and got waylaid by people as I was walking around).
• Carry a backpack if you don’t want to be lugging your schwag all over the place. Especially if there’re booths giving out Plasma TVs, Xbox360s and Nintendo WIIs (I think most of us can go out and buy one, it’s just the ultra competitive streaks in every motivated affiliates that comes out when it comes to competitions…)

With that out of the way, and a 15 hour plane ride (I’m taking a direct Singapore-Los Angeles flight on a brand spanking new Airbus A380 this time) ahead, what’s in store at Affiliate Summit?

The fun begins before the event starts.

Anik Singal and his Affiliate Classroom team have organized Affiliate Classroom Live, a 1-day workshop for affiliate managers on Saturday 23 Feb. What’s more it’s free…Places are very limited though, so check out:

–> Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom Live

Chase the workshop with Brook Schaaf’s Affiliate Dinner. Expect to see a guest of honor. Expect to see the guest of honor roasted…What fun!

Is Affiliate Dinner a ponzi scheme? Here’s the answer…

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So day 1 of the summit kicks off with the “Affiliate Meet Market” from noon to 6pm. I missed this the last time because of a delayed flight, but I’m arriving a day early to make sure I am able to take part in the meet-and-greet and associated networking.

Here’s the floorplan for the Affiliate Meet Market. (PDF format)

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Day 2 kicks off with Jason Calacanis’ keynote.

With Jason recently refering to “Affiliate Spam” “polluting” the search engines at the Paris Le Web seminar, you can expect some fireworks during the keynote.

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One note about the presentations that follow. An overwhelming number of presentation proposals were submitted, with the result that about 4 presentations are simultaneously ongoing during each time slot. In many cases, you have great sessions going on at the same time.

I checked with Shawn and he mentioned that the sessions will be recorded and available for viewing later.

I’d suggest prioritizing your favorite sessions and making a beeline for them. In some cases I can see the majority of the crowd gravitating towards ONE session…

Forewarned is forearmed…

I’ve listed some of the sessions I personally am interested in attending:

As I’ve been doing a number of podcast and vlogging (video blogging) lately, I’m keen to check this session out.

I met Buy.com’s Melissa Salas last Feb at ASW, and she present a pretty great show for Buy.com over at Buy.Tv.
(As of last October, on the BuyTV MySpace page it’s mentioned that “BuyTV was just informed that it has been picked up for local programming via Time Warner, Cox, Charter, DirecTV, Echostar, Dish Network and others – Sunday mornings at 11:30am PST”)

And you have a panel of other video marketing/video blogging folks on the panel.

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Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds is always a popular presenter, and I’m looking forward to checking out his presentation ahead of his session.

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Day 3 kicks off with an “Ask the Experts” session:

I’m keen to talk to Heather Paulson about her new Paulson Management Group company.

A little later in the day, be sure to check out:

A media panel chaired by Revenue Magazine’s Lisa Picarille. Besides myself, you’ll also see Jim Kukral, Anik Singal and Valerie Stevens on the panel.

In parallel with the media panel is the Super Affiliate panel:

With the likes of Pepperjam’s Kris Jones, John Chow, Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta in attendance.

And if you’re not already torn between two or more sessions, consider that later in the afternoon, you’ll have the ABestWeb panel:

With AbestWeb’s Haiko De Poel, AffiliateCrew’s Chuck Hamrick and Team Loxly’s Loxly AKA Deb Carney in attendance.

In the same time slot you have the social marketing panel:

With a Who’s Who of the blogosphere/social media space, like Sam Harrelson, Tris Hussey, Stephanie Agresta among others.

I would point out more highlights, but my fingers are worn-out from all that typing, so you might like to check out:

–> Affiliate Summit West 2008