Thursday, February 17, 2011

Social Media Week - New York/ A Boy in His Bubble.


Social Media Week was here in New York on Feb 7-11.  It was also in London, Singapore, Paris, San Francisco, Rome, Seattle. Almost any place you would want to chill and be fab with an iPad.

I managed in my continuing great tradition of "What Would Lucy Do?" to make my way into the opening party at the New York Public Library.  Fab place for just about anything. It is such a cool space, it has Bryant Park for a backyard and appropriate lions guarding its entrance as opposed to the lions on every ramshackle in Queens ("Every man's home is his castle" - I know,  I know.)

I met a woman who works for an app called BarSPace.  She was 28 and lovely and right in it. She explained so much for social media to me except how to connect because I cannot find her info anywhere.

Then on Thursday I went the Far East to 1st and E29th for the Digitas party on Webcams and Tweeting at the Apella event space. I didn't want to go because I was in midtown west and had to get the Flatiron district after and then back to the West Village so this was Siberia.  But I told myself  I was not ready to be a provincial neighborhood-as-ghetto New Yorker. I am SO glad I went.  It was a very cool space.  Some futuristic vibe but in a "What's Up Doc" 60's party scene vein.  I sat in a hanging circle and Tweeted.

At the bar area this guy came up to me and said "I read you."  ("Reed" you or "Red" you.) It was RED you. Or maybe it was REED you.  I felt like a New Yorker columnist. But it turns out he reads my posts on LinkedIn.  He recognized my face and my name at a Social Media event! How amazing was that? And it gave us license to talk and for me to introduce Stan Friedman whom I met from Conde Nast.  (Stan knows my friend Tom Kulaga a the New York Times!) The man who recognized me from the internet was former NBC reporter Glenn Zimmerman who is now the CEO & President of MadBear Productions. But it doesn't stop there. He knows my good pal Susan Kiel from NBC days and his business partner Julian Williams' wife grew up in Scotland with Peter Morris from BAFTA LA.  They grew up in Scotland not far from where my mum grew up! 

Social Networking, New York, me, it is all just a party! I love it. Would never happen like this elsewhere.


Thank you #smwny!!