Oh man. Internet week. It’s taken its toll on me, no doubt.
Eight days of intense internet conferences, parties, networking, awards. And, it being in New York, where, you know, we have an office, that means that unlike SXSW, it’s eight weeks where I try and do it all while going in to work.
We have a deep relationship with Internet Week NY. I’m on the
Executive Council, which is pretty sweet. It means exciting meetings with the mayor and whatnot, though I always seem to be out of town for those. Still, it’s the one organizational body I can claim to be on that also features John Wren, so that’s something. We also built the
Internet Week NY Website, as well as the websites for the sister organizations
The Webby Awards and
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. (It is, for this reason, in case you’re wondering, why we don’t enter or win any Webbys. We’ve also built their judging app, and manage their People’s Voice app, so we’ve always felt it would be inappropriate to enter. On top of that, then, we’re a sponsor of the Webby Awards, and no less than three of our clients were having parties this week. All of this meant for a pretty intense week.
Internet Week started off for me last Monday, at the Youtube Internet Week Kickoff party. I had just gotten back into New York from my SF sojurn, so this was a nice homecoming. Good to see people that would become stalwarts of the week like
DMD, executive director of the Webbys, and Neil and Roger, the executive producers and owners of the parent company Recognition Media. Also ran into my buddy Tom Clifton from
Animoto, Caroline Waxler, Liane Mullin from
Modelinia, Rachel Sklar and good old Dennis Crowley of
Foursquare fame. Lots others, but it was a super good time, and a bunch of us ended the night over at Tom and Jerry’s, where I think the last people standing after Dens took a bunch of people off to Karaoke were me, Tom, Felicia Williams from NextNewNetworks and Caroline.
Tuesday started with some liesurely drinks with Beth and Aubrey from Digg over at their hotel, and they ran off just as Trammell from Digg showed up, and then Soraya Darabi from the New York Times showed up with Jack Dorsey from Twitter, who it was obviously very exciting to meet, and a few more friends. Then it pretty much did what it does, and the early evening went into the night and the party grew until there were a good hundred or two hundred people there. I was excited to finally meet Elizabeth Spiers, and super duper excited to meet Cecily Von Ziegesar, the author of the Gossip Girl series of books. Man, that was exciting. Liane asked her how well she thought the books translated into a show, and we got to hear her opinions on that which was SUPER INTERESTING, and it was fun to introduce her to THE INTERNET. The night slowly degenerated into a migration over to the original Coyote Ugly bar Hogs and Heiffers, but I left early because I was a responsible adult and I had to get up early to…
Judge the Effie Awards! Bright and early, 8:45, uptown, with some really awesome people to participate in the Grand Jury for the Grand Effie. It was super interesting insightful, and I think we made a good panel of judges: myself, Greg Anderson, Managing Director BBH NY, Minda Grainek, VP/CD Target, Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence for Coca Cola, Gerry Graf, CCO Saatchi NY, Rob Master, North American Media Director for Unilver (who I previously had the pleasure of moderating a panel for at the first Webby Connect), and Scott Nesland. In the end the Grand Effie went to Crispin’s work on Whopper Freakout, and I feel good about our decision.
Home and work and a change of clothes and then off to the Effie Awards show, which was super awesome and a good time. Got to catch up with Brian Collins, who was seated at our table and chat about
his new consultancy and also Paul Schmidt, who’s now out on his own as
Operator. The show was at Cipriani’s midtown, and it was gorgeous and really well done. I’ve been spending so much time over there in internet land that it was good to see ad people again – good long talk with Greg from
BBH, caught up with some friends over at
TBWA’s Media Arts Lab, Charles Rosen from Amalgamated and Paul Lavoie from Taxi. Yeah! I’d make some comment about the amount of money flowing through traditional advertising compared to internet, blah, blah, but considering that just five days later I’d be at yet another Cipriani’s for an ad awards show, I’d probably be barking up the wrong tree.
Anyway, after the Effies it was back to internet land and we attempted to go to College Humor’s Yacht Rock party, but ran into DMD and Neil and Sklar on their way out, so I decided to hit my local bar, Local 138, and wage what I call “foursquare warfare” and just keep insisting everyone come to where I am. In short order, it worked miraculously. It’s pretty amazing. At first it’s people you know – Mark from Flavorpill, Tessa Horehled of the Atlanta advertising scene, Liane from Modelinia, Lidsay from Ralph Lauren, Danielle from Getty Images. Eventually, though, my pal Aubrey came by with her boss Kevin Rose, of Digg Fame, and then things got crowded and rockin’. Things get blurry, but I remember meeting an awesome interactive producer named Rob and eventually running out to another nearby bar with Eva, Rob, Danielle and some nice dudes we met who made Flash animations.
Thursday brought The Bigg Digg Shindigg with a live Diggnation filming. Mad props to Aubrey Sabala for the
VIP Hookup, and it was good to see some peeps – Michael Galpert from
Aviary, Tom, Eva, Emma, Caroline, Rex and a whole host of good Digg people – Marshall, Beth, Trammell, Michael, etc. The party was super fun, the band Wallpaper kicked ass, and the live taping of DiggNation was hilarious in that it featured that To Catch a Predator Guy.
Friday saw Aubrey and Eva’s birthday party at 10 Degrees, a bar in the village. We rented out the place and turned it into a good wrap-up-the-week internet party. Had a whole host of good people – a good 20, 30 Barbarians, 10-12 Diggers, some of our favorite journalists like Brian Morrissey, Nick Parish, Caroline McCarthey and Bret Petersel, other ad people from around town and a bunch of the NY internet peeps. It lasted late into the night, things were done, champagne was drunk, suits and lovely gowns were worn and our bar minimum was met. Whew. Thank you! And happy birthday Eva and Aubrey!
Saturday was pretty low key – did get to meet Graham Hill from
Treehugger, though, and that was good, as well as getting to see former Barbarian Annie Zags, which was super awesome. After dinner and drinks, Me, Aubrey, Emma and Marshall hit the Social Media Karaoke in the village at Tracy J’s, which was hilarious and drunken. Social media peeeps – karaoke lovers one and all, I swear.
Sunday saw a whole new host of people in town at the Webby Awards Sunset Cocktails for sponsors, judges and winners over at the Thompson
LES. Simon and Ian from Poke arrived, and I met the people behind that Beeker video that won. That was funny. Found Mike and Ozzie from
Lolz LLC (also props to them for just saying they are an agency.
NO FEAR). They are always a wonderfully good time. Talked to Rori from Ascentium for a long time and generally enjoyed the nice vibe. Then on to the NextNewNetworks party where I ran into some good peeps from Wieden + Kennedy as well as said hi to April, Michelle, Felicia and Tim from
NNN. It was awesome to see a bunch of their
$99 music videos, especially the one by Neil Halstead, who I love love love.
And, finally, yesterday brought the Webby Awards and the following after party. Wow. Sarah Silverman, Lisa Kudrow, Trent Reznor. Saw Harvey Weinstein in the audience, and Rachel Zoe and some victoria secret models and Cameron Diaz and Jimmy Fallon and inventor of the world wide web Tim Berners Lee. Ridiculous. Oh and Alan Cumming! And Martha Stewart! And Charlie Rose! Holy Moly! Took the train over to Hiro with Jeben from YouTube and the Boards Mag crew and Bret from Mashable and a bunch of Barbarians and rocked out through the night to some awesome hip hop band and ?estlove DJing, who was really great. Oh and someone introduced me to Biz Stone and I pretended to not know who he was, but he seemed super nice.
It’s hard to imagine all this is work, of course. And having a company to run during the day meant that I couldn’t participate in many of the daytime activities – Benjamin had that covered with something like 3 panels and 2 presentations (one about GE seemed to go particularly well). But it’s good to get out there – especially when you’re a technology company that everyone thinks is just an ad agency. Advertising people and internet people really do need to hang out more, I think. They don’t really talk too much except through sales people and media people and whatnot. There’s a pretty big gulf of understanding. I’ve learned a lot about this being out in the Bay Area the last few months, and I’m sure I’ll ramble on and on about it more as the weeks go by. I love Internet Week precisely because it affords these sorts of conversations, and because it gets these groups talking in new ways.
Anyway, thank you Internet Week people for a lovely week, and to everyone I met, it was awesome to meet you.
on December 16, 2009 at 03:18 PM
