re-blog from my new friend Jess Eddy over at ARC90
We arrived at Mashable’s New Year NYC Networking Event at 212 Restaurant and Bar last night around 7:30, prepared to spread the good news of our first product launch, Kindling. Much to our surprise, there was a pretty significant line already forming. We thought, ok – cool, we’ll just wait in line with everybody else and chit chat to pass the time. Who says you can’t wait and network at the same time? Someone started passing out cookies (always a plus). At this point it’s about 10 degrees on 65th Street. After a few minutes, word gets out that the restaurant is full to capacity and no one is allowed to enter until more people leave. Needless to say, this was not good news.
This is when things started to get interesting. We were already with a great group of people that we wanted to hang out with and get to know better, we just needed warmth, space and alcohol. There was clearly only one option in this scenario: host an alternative party.
Jen, our in-house, one-woman, PR-machine took this task very seriously and paired up with someone else (Frederick) who was standing in line. They immediately started scouting the area for bars. The area seemed to lack a nightlife… all they could find was a hair salon called “Blow” (and even if it was a bar, probably wasn’t the kind of place we were looking for, as comically noted by Frederick). Meanwhile, Rich was searching the Internet on his iPhone and had a short list of possibilities, one of which was the Carriage House, a semi-short walk away. We knew this was our place. Jen and Chris rounded up the troops and started corralling everyone downtown. Once the word got out, the masses took followed us towards our new prospect of a bar. It was hard to tell at the time, but there appeared to be a steady stream of people up and down the sidewalk. We were almost to the bar when we were split up by a miscalculated green light. This is where we really bonded; it was cold, the walk was longer than we thought, and the Carriage House wasn’t exactly where the Internet promised it would be. Doubt was starting to set in and we feared losing some of the group, but Jen quelled the dissension and we forged on.
When we finally arrived at the Carriage House, it was like walking into heaven. Aside from finding warmth, it was the perfect place. There was empty space in the back of an otherwise busy bar and it just seemed to be waiting for us to arrive. We coordinated with the hostess and told her to direct anyone looking for the Mashable event towards the back. When we saw the long line of people streaming in, it finally hit us. We were hosting a party!
There were so many amazing people there. Between Twitter and word of mouth, the word had spread and Mashable’s own Adam Hirsch even joined us for awhile. What was particularly surprising was the sheer diversity of reasons that people came to last night’s event. Some were affected by the recession, some were scouting new talent, some were pandering their recent inventions to the Tech World Elite. There were writers and accountants and programmers and bloggers and radio DJs and VCs. Jeremy showed photos of his 10-month old daughter. Lucius demonstrated a recent iPhone app he’d written. Lauren crossed out the info on her old business cards and scribbled her new info on the backs. Our own Josh challenged people to games of darts and snapped some pictures on the side. In short, it was exactly the way you want a networking to be: connective.
The night was great for a variety of reasons, but mainly because of the people. We could have thrown in the towel and headed home, but we soldiered on, made friends and new connections. But we couldn’t have done it without the goodwill of the others; we were excited to have spontaneously gathered a group of new friends.
To put a perfect end to a perfect story, the Carriage House sent us flowers this morning…seriously, they did. Big thanks to the Carriage House who was not expecting us, but took great care of us. We had a fantastic time!
