There has been some hustle and bustle the last few weeks with some great affiliate related conferences coming up over the next couple of months. Affiliate Summit West 2012 (#ASW12) is just around the corner and with thousands of attendees it's bound to be another great show.

However something new has come into the space recently that also deserves some attention. Affiliate Management Days 2012 (#AMDays), the industry's first conference targeted specifically toward affiliate managers and business owners looking to get into the space, will be held in San Francisco on March 8th and 9th.

This event is part of the Data Driven Business Week and will be made up of two full days of informational sessions related to properly and effectively managing affiliate programs. The list of speakers is impressive, ranging from Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners to Ben Edelman, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School.

This event will be a new "must attend" for affiliate managers looking to properly optimize their programs, improve their skills, keep up with industry issues, trends, industry benchmarks and best practices.

Some of the topics will include Trends & Innovations in Affiliate Marketplace (presented by Ali Pasha of Google), Top 10 Tips for Combatting Affiliate Fraud (presented by Joanna Lord of SEOmoz), and The Latest Tricks, Traps & Techniques Black Hat Affiliates are Using to Cheat Your Affiliate Program (presented by David Naffziger of BrandVerity) as examples. I personally will be doing a session on How to Find & Recruit Super Affiliates Into Your Program. You can find the entire conference agenda here.

I think it's an important time for a conference like this to be introduced into the marketplace. With the mass expansion of affiliate programs and few affiliate managers having the experience to be a strong leader and thoroughly effective in their work, it's about time a conference dedicated to the betterment of affiliate management was put forward.

I'm personally looking forward to checking it out. Like affiliate summit in the early days, I feel it will grow year over year and contribute to the betterment of merchant affiliate programs and the affiliate marketing industry around the world.