Affiliate Summit East 2001 in NYC was a good event for me as a motivational business speaker. At every Affiliate Summit (as with many industry specific shows with numerous sessions and speakers) audience members are asked to fill out a speaker evaluation form for each session they attend.

Typically audience members are asked to rate the content of the presentation on a scale of one to ten (ten being the best) and then rate the speaker independently on the same scale. Attendees are also asked to give their opinion by adding their own handwritten comments.

I’ve always done well as a professional speaker for Affiliate Summit in terms of audience feedback. I’ve spoken at the Summit several times and typically score amongst the highest of all professional speakers and this time seems to be no exception, in fact, I think I hit an all time high! On a scale of one to ten someone gave me an eleven!

The average rating for the content of my presentation was 9.36 (out of ten) and my rating as a speaker was 9.76 - not bad. I even had an audience member blog about my session.

As a professional keynote speaker I typically do, well, a lot of keynotes for organizations and do not get this type of feedback so it’s nice to see what makes a connection with the audience and what does not.

Here is a PDF of the actual unedited feedback document (with the good and bad comments) sent to me today by the good folks at Affiliate Summit.

I’ve spoken at Affiliate Summit six times in the last seven or so years, it’s one of my favorite organizations. I spoke at this years summit in NYC  and I introduced a new topic titled, Customer Behavior in a Hyper Connected World.

It’s always a little stressful introducing new content at this particular show. There are typically close to 4,000 attendees and they are some of the most connected people you will ever meet. Affiliate Summit attendees are hyper connected to every social media  outlet available to the public (and a few that are not). These attendees tend to be hardcore bloggers and Search Engine Optimization enthusiasts, in short, they know how to get the word out.

If you do a great job on stage at Affiliate Summit thousands will know it before you ever step out from behind the podium but if you bomb, god help you, you’re screwed! Your inept speaking skills and crappy content will lead to a digital roasting as tweets, facebook updates and blog posts fly fast-and-furious alerting all to your lack of skills as a professional speaker.

As a keynote speaker and motivational business speaker I love the challange of a well connect audience, the feedback is invaluable and helps me to hone my message.

I’ve always been one of the higher rated speakers at the summit and it seems my high ratings live on. I found this blog post today written by an attendee of my speaking session.

Original blog post posted on September 1, 2011 by Bobby Hewitt

I recently attended the Affiliate Summit East conference, which had a record breaking 3,943 attendees, it was the largest Affiliate Summit to date.

One of the many information packed sessions was presented by Larry Bailin, of Single Throw his session was titled: Customer Behavior in a Hyper Connected World.

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