I just returned home from Affiliate Summit East in New York City. Affiliate Summit is an internet marketing conference that includes education sessions as well as an exhibit floor where companies chat up their products and services. Due to my limited eye sight, show management was kind enough to provide me with an additional show pass for my wife to assist me at the conference. She takes notes at the education sessions and guides me around the exhibit floor.

The harder part of the two tasks is walking around the exhibits. The floor can be quite crowded. As we walk by the booths, she’ll tell me the name of the company. There were times when we got separated because of the traffic. Only one of those times did it lead to a collision. A man came from my right and I didn’t see him at all. While I have limited vision in my left eye, my right eye is useless, making my right my blindside. Literally. That is why when we walk, my wife is on my right.

My nose hit his bicep and I stepped on his left foot. While I wasn’t hurt, I was embarrassed and frustrated. It wasn’t a little tap. At about 6’1″, he’s probably wondering how I didn’t see him. After I apologized to him I was able to catch up to my wife. From that point on I made more of an effort to stick close behind her. It was just too crowded to walk side by side.

At the education sessions, I listen carefully while my wife takes notes from the PowerPoint presentation. I sometimes got lost when the speaker was referring to a slide and talking about it, but didn’t actually read what was on the slide. I have loathed slideshows and overhead projectors since I was in elementary school. Even when my sight was better than it is now, I always had trouble seeing them. The nice thing about Affiliate Summit is that all the sessions are recorded on video and the PowerPoint presentations are made available at a later date. I’ll be able to view them once they’re posted. In the meantime, my wife will type up her notes so that I can read them.

I really enjoyed Affiliate Summit and learned a great deal of information from the various sessions and keynote speeches. It is not comfortable for me to walk around a crowded exhibit floor or sit in an education session and try to follow the speaker’s movements, but to learn and grow you have to step out of your comfort zone. My hope is that the more I do it, the more comfortable I’ll become.

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