Editors Note: On January 26th to January 29th, the annual London Affiliate Conference (LAC) was held, one of the largest and most prestigious affiliate conferences of the year. Each year, PAS looks forward to this conference due to the fact dozens of our partners and publishers attend, which makes for a great networking and catch-up opportunity with everyone.

Because we not only represent PAS and our retail brands RakeTracker and YourPokerCash at these conferences, but also our thousands of publishers, we thought our publishers would enjoy a trip report from Seb. In addition to his business duties on the trip, Seb managed to have some serious fun and even win an iGB Affiliate Award for best affiliate manager (non-traditional). You can see a picture of him accepting the award below.


My trip began with a woozy, no-sleep flight from Minneapolis to London’s Heathrow Airport (I should know better than to view the entire in-flight movie marathon on an 8 hour+ trip). Despite the drowsy start to our adventure, I have been really looking forward to the LAC experience this year, as I do each year. It’s always a fun one for me, so much so that I get travel withdrawals upon my return even though exhaustion sets in from the meetings, night-outs, and the trip overall.

I love travelling and being in a different environment/city; I guess I have a little nomad adventure junkie in me. Plus, meeting new people and reuniting with people I’ve met before is a real treat. Catching-up, making friends, and reinforcing relationships – which we all benefit from -- are definitely among the perks of going to these conferences/events.

After arriving at Heathrow, the PAS team started off with a Tube trip to the hotel. We had some time to kill so we decided to roll out for a couple hours or London touring – or getting lost within the SOHO district – either or. Of course, it would be easier to navigate around London if I had a working phone for international travels– haha – but gladly, the UK has a lot of shops and even vending machines selling SIM cards and calling cards. Yet, that was still an extra thing to worry about early on the trip.

Grabbing a meal at 7pm after a whole day of surviving the plane’s breakfast snack, we had what we can call a top notch, bland meat resto – yum ;P. At this point, the fatigue was really setting in, but we managed to enjoy a pint at the nearest local “dark” pub. We strolled back to the hotel, with a tired Herb desperate to get some rest. Against my better judgment, I decided to head down to the Fire & Ice party followed by a trek to the hotel pub until 4am. Let’s call most of the first night “relationship building.”

Thursday:

As you would expect, Nine o’clock came too soon but I persevered enough to indulge in another of my delights when traveling: breakfast omelets, which I usually only have when traveling. Next up was an hour-long tube ride to the Betfair offices when, Herb of course, thought it would be hilarious to take a picture of me in a zombie-like state, which I am hoping never sees the light of day.

We ended up at the Betfair offices, where we met some great people and saw their very fancy working space. At the offices, I was happy to finally get a freebie that I found of actual use at the conference, the Betfair cuffs. They actually came in quite handy at the conference. I don’t think that has ever happened before – apart from the freebie drinks, which I will rarely turn down.

After our impressive Betfair experience, we went back for another meeting, which ended up not happening. This is something I have come to expect at these conferences. The meeting schedule NEVER goes 100% as planned. That can be very frustrating, but you just accept it as a reality of the hectic conference schedule. So… let’s grab lunch!

After lunch, Herb snuck in a nap and then caught up on a couple hours of work while I went out for a couple more meetings, but not before taking several power naps of my own in between, including a 9 minute power nap. Believe it or not, this was the first time I ever heard of such power nap. Unfortunately, this power nap may have been cut short by Herb’s snoring. Herb!!!

After a long meeting with a good friend and PAS partner we went out with Carbon Poker to the iGB Awards dinner at the Brewery, which was a very nice venue complete with “Brazilian” girl dancers. By the way, these weren’t really Brazilian dancers but they were still easy on the eyes – although they better watch out on that beer belly. ;P

All jokes aside, the dancers did a great job lightening the mood by encouraging people to dance and have more fun. I have to admit, I also enjoyed the music at the event -- lots of salsa and latino. The only thing missing was the dance floor. By the end of the night, I managed by compensate for the lack of dance floor by dancing near the back bar – not exactly to salsa, but we managed well.

Oh – and winning an iGB Affiliate Award was definitely a nice surprise. I was extremely pleased to hear my name called – my heart could not stop beating. We certainly feel we deserved the award, but for the judges to decide that you are worthy is very gratifying. I love the recognition, but it was truly a PAS team effort all the way!

Following the awards ceremony was an after-party at the Brewery, which included a ton of relationship building through the night.

Friday:

It’s 8:30am and it’s time for breakfast… where did the omelet guy go?

First meeting at the conferences on Friday was at 10 am with Poker Heaven and from there on, it was a non-stop day of meeting after meeting, after meeting. Even a 10 minute break here and there was lost with more improvised meetings or catching-up with people walking around. On Friday we also met up with PKR, Bodog and PokerStars, to name a few. We even were fortunate enough to see a few PAS publishers.

One major objective of this trip was to look into expanding into other gambing channels – which we may start off with some test runs on our retail properties before expanding. Hopefully we can provide more information on this over the coming year.

Through the course of the many LAC meetings, we discussed some possible new promotions and offers with our advertisers, some of which we hope to live soon. Hopefully we can finalize some details really soon and pass on the fruits of our work to our publishers. I hesitate to get into too many details right now because some of these deals can fall through in the implementation stages.

With the many meetings and other LAC happenings, suffice to say both Herb and I missed Friday’s lunch. We were probably were a bit dehydrated too. Ok, maybe that was my fault. Maybe it had just a little bit to do with the fun from the previous two night.

Once again, Herb left the conference around 4:30 pm for what I assume was a nice nap and a couple hours of additional work and touching base with the home office. I left the conferences at 6pm and decided to walk back to the hotel. Luckily the weather was not too cold during the length of the trip. Global warming, maybe? Hell, even Minneapolis has been nice and warm this winter.

After arriving at the hotel, I tried to do some work as well, but my eyes were not up to the challenge of reading through my many emails. After having nothing to eat all day, we had a much deserved dinner at a restaurant called Oka (I think that was the name) for sushi. What a NICE treat: great food, good times, good friends, and 1 hell of a dessert platter/meal. I highly recommend it. Initially we went into the wrong section of the restaurant, which to me looked like some kind of lounge. I didn’t get a chance to hang around, but it looked like a happening spot, for sure. Mental note: go back.

That night we had some Bodog Social invites, but a very long dinner was scheduled and it was quite far from the hotel so we had to scrap that idea. “Let’s go back to the hotel bar!” My goal of Friday evening was to “get Herb out!” I think many have the knowledge of a day Herb and somebody who isn’t as much of a night owl. I wanted to change that rep at least for a night.

Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful Friday night, although Herb did stay out for a bit at the hotel bar. I finally got back to the room at a nice, fresh time of 6:30am-ish. I tell ya… this “relationship building” is a killer.

Saturday:

Two hours later it’s 8:30am breakfast time once again. By this point, I figured out the trick “garcon, an omelet please” mmmm, omlets.

Our first meeting of the day was at 10:30am. Unfortunately, this meeting was the unfortunate victim of conference chaos and thus never happened. Fortunately, many improvised meetings did occur. We skipped lunch and went back to the conference for more meetings where lunch was waiting for us followed by even more meetings. Decent Sheppard’s Pie too, by the way.

This day we had meetings with 888, other potential partners and some more PAS publishers.

We head back to the hotel via a taxi around 2:30pm. Unfortunately, and I had no pounds on me by this point. So we had to drive around looking for an ATM to pay our patient driver. Of course, we were a tad late for our next meeting, which I really I hate. But it was my fault.
That meeting went quite long too but our next meeting appointment was another no-show, which was a bit frustrating by that point. We had one last meet at 5pm before we headed back to the room, to what I can only describe as the most beautiful thing I have ever seen at the time -- my bed. Aaawwww it looked so attractive: wearing that soft comforter. It ...