Pursuing my agenda at the second San Francisco Meet & GreetApr 02 '05 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line For the die-hard Epinionator, the best souvenirs, news, info, and gossip come from official Epinions Meet & Greets.
When Epinions HQ first announced that it would be having another Meet & Greet in San Francisco last March 12, I immediately began forming an agenda. Of course, I was thrilled at the prospect of meeting more Epinionators and once again seeing those who came to the November 13, 2003 M&G. I had review copies of books to give out to interested folks. Since Muze overhauled its database about a year ago, three of my reviews had disappeared from the Epi search engine and my emails to correct the problem went unheeded. CR01 and I have also started a grassroots campaign to locate an official M&G in London, so I wanted to scope the Epi employees on that goal. Although I hadn't seen results on my business items at the time I left, the camaraderie was wonderful. It was definitely the best of the three I attended to date. I spent the week before preparing. With all of the research for my upcoming UK trip, I found a couple of possible suggestions for the London M&G location. Russell had the day off and was able escort me. He has never really shared my interest in Epinions, but the prospect of garlic fries appealed to him. I asked him to pick me up around noon. M&Gs only last three hours, so it's best to be early. I packed my stuff and we were on our way to the "city by the bay." Gordon Biersch could be found at the very start of Harrison Street, which was by the Embarcadero. Parking is a b*tch in this section of San Francisco. We were quite pleased to see that the brick complex it was located in provided four hours of free parking with a validation, otherwise it was $2.50 per quarter hour. We arrived over a half hour early, so we took a short walk over to the Ferry Building, which I had never been in before. Definitely an upscale little shopping center with restaurants. (If I had more time, I might have asked around for ghost stories.) When we returned to Gordon Biersch, Russell went to the car to fetch my stuff while I followed the signs inside and ascended the stairs to the loft where the Epinions banner was hung and Epi kids were strewn. A small cluster of people were by the coat rack, where I was warmly greeted by Garrett (aka roheblius) and Christal (aka christalc1). Garrett spread his arms as if looking for a big hug. I'm not usually a hugger, but what the heck. It set the pattern for the day. They found the nametag lanyard they had made for me. Another special logo had been created for this M&G, with the two pair of little faces facing each other. Poor Lil Guy had the added detail of "wow" eyebrows. The nametags supplied our user names, "portraits," real-life names (if revealed on our member pages), our sign-up dates, number of reviews written, and "hats" (if applicable). I also noticed that all the Epi emps attending were wearing black polo shirts with the special logo embroidered on them. Judging by the bundle of lanyards they produced, it looked like at least 30 had rsvped. We should have had a good turnout that day. I was rather taken back by the comments my pen-and-ink portrait attracted, especially when people asked if I drew it myself. For the record, it was drawn by the late Frank Kelly Freas, who was one of the grand masters of science fiction art and a co-creator of Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame. He did many of these little portraits (about 20 minutes each) from life at science fiction conventions. He was also a very friendly and delightful man. A few Epinionators had already arrived and were among the cluster, including Waynio and Stephen_Murray, who I had met at previous M&Gs. Waynio had relocated to the Bay Area after the Orange, California, M&G. Stephen was the same friendly chap I had met at the last San Francisco M&G. I eventually ended up giving him some of the review copies I had brought with me. These were copies of books written by friends of mine. It is a personal policy of mine not to review the work of people I know. However, I see no conflict with finding someone else to do it. It turned out Stephen may have been an ideal match for the trilogy I handed him. Behind Waynio and Stephen was Epinions's love connection, TomBarnes, and DrDevience. Hugs again. They took the prize for traveling the longest distance to join us that day. Tom was a really nice guy to talk to about hotels, especially since he works as a manager in one. I listened in amazement when he said he could bang a hotel review out within an hour. I guess it helps that he has a better eye for the critical details than most of us do. We both agreed that the slow traffic in Restaurants makes it an easy category to keep up with. I had been looking forward to meeting Doc for a while. She is so petite. Judging by her spec-fi choices of review items and constant references to renaissance fairs, this is someone I share some common interests. She'd fit in really well with my circle of friends. Being constantly occupied elsewhere, we found little opportunity to talk, but hopefully we'll make up for it later. She and Tom are due to get married a few days before the projected London M&G on July 30th. They'll be honeymooning in the UK. Unfortunately, Russell, who is usually sociable, was not in the best of moods that day, annoyed at circumstances in his workplace. We settled at a table near the spread of food. Servers had delivered our drinks. I suggested he help himself to the appetizers that had been set out for us. After all, he was in this for the garlic fries. In addition to the fries, Epinions provided chicken/prawn/beef skewers, crabcakes, rabbit food, buffalo wings, potstickers and a few dips and sauces. I was a little baffled that the hot items were put out on plates that were the same size used to serve at a regular guest table. Then I noticed that the servers were constantly replenishing as a dish was emptied. Good move. The food that was out was kept fresh. As Russell and I were eating, Randy Stewart stopped by and introduced himself. I quickly mentioned the business items on my agenda. It was positively exhilarating to learn how jazzed the Epi emps were at the idea of having a M&G in London. The biggest obstacle keeping HQ from immediately committing to it is their budget, which is legitimate. Garrett had previously told me for the money it would take to send Epi emps there, they could do two or three stateside. On the other hand, there is some merit to the idea. Outside of the USA, the UK comprises more Epinions contributors than any other country. I dug up the copies of information for a couple of site suggestions. Several American members want to go to this international rendezvous, so I suspect, like me, they'd like it to be placed somewhere representative of the host country. Putting it in a modern yuppie bar would just be wrong. Randy accepted the info I gave him, then asked if these places were haunted. ...Well, London is in England after all. The next thing I asked about was the reviews that were lost by the Epinions search engine. It appears one of the reasons I never received a reply was because I was sending my emails to the wrong people. When the books/movies database was overhauled last year, a few of my reviews went missing. They could still be found from my member page, but nowhere else except through Google or any links I created. After they were lost to the search engine, the rate of hits I receive on them slowed down tremendously. Muze is an overseas vendor that Epinions hired to maintain its database. Unfortunately, the Epi emps are unable to alter the data Muze manages. After the many complaints about how inefficient the system was, an effort was made to correct most of its shortcomings about a year ago. After Muze's overhaul was completed, many of its listings--with and without reviews--went missing from the website search engine. They might turn up in a Google search, but not on Epinions. After searching for all of my reviews through Epinions, the product pages for three of my reviews failed to appear in results. Randy had the foresight to bring a laptop with him so I could show him what was going on. He went to my member page, then did a search for the foreign language films that I complained about. As luck would have it, the Epi emps must have been working on this since I had last looked. Wasabi came up without any difficulty. Mad Love was still unavailable. When I last looked for it, this title failed to show up at all. The DVD product page now does, even if the In Theatres version does not. Since Kristinafh also had a review on that product page, it has double value. Randy said the easiest way deal with this one was to shift our reviews to the DVD page. My long lost book review, Haunts of Arizona, was another can of Spam. The books category is the biggest Epinions has with over eight million entries, gobbling up more than half its database. Being the largest, it is obviously the most difficult to maintain. In addition to this one, there are a couple of reviews I would like to post, but their product pages have disappeared as well. Since I found them before the Great 2004 Muze Overhaul, the Book CLs decline adding another because they are scolded by the Epi emps when duplicate listings clog up the site. This is really aggravating. It's obvious these pages still exist, but where in heck does all of this data go? After venting my frustrations on Randy, I bumped into Gaelkm. Hugs. Gael was very amicable and it was hard to believe we were meeting each other for the first time. It felt like she had been a long-time friend. We immediately fell into a bit of friendly gossip and firmly agreed that travel reviews are some of the most demanding to write. Books and movies and are easy-peasy compared to some of the background research required for hotels and destinations. I ended up wishing we lived closer to each other so we could spend time checking out movies together. She and her hubby are planning a trip to the UK, but unfortunately their arrangements were already made a month too early to attend the London M&G. The handsome Macresarf1 arrived to lend us his special brand of Scottish cordiality. With so many people to mingle with, we didn't gab as much as we did at the last M&G, but he's a great conversationalist nonetheless. He took another review copy off my hands. I then sat down briefly with Alow90. She's just starting out on Epinions and it was refreshing to see her enthusiasm. She's doing very well with a VH on her first posting in Kids and Family. She also took a review copy and I look forward to seeing her contribution. MrsFitts and LadyGumby were sitting together. I best know MrsFitts for her contributions to Hotels & Travel, although her primary concentration is on the Home & Garden. I was pleased to meet another fellow Epinionator from the South Bay. Her pet peeve in hotel reviews is knowing whether rooms supply coffeemakers. LadyGumby and I chatted very little this time around, but it was nice to see her again. I notice she has been steadily posting since the last San Francisco M&G. She was looking snappy in a blazer tastefully decorated with flowers. NVHerron sat at another table where I learned his big passion is hotel reviews and my writeup of the Sainte Claire was still fresh in his mind. He started to tell me about another haunted one in San Jose, the Wyndham, but I mentioned that was one of mine too. (Haunted hotels, destinations, and restaurants are my special interest.) He and his wife drove all the way from the Reno, Nevada, region to attend the M&G and I'm glad they did. I would have liked to spend more time talking him about hotels, but I wanted to say hi to everyone and we only had three hours. Although I appreciate his passion for professional hospitality, I was a bit disturbed that he had no interest in other aspects of Travel. He does such a fine job with hotels, he'd probably be excellent on destinations, too. I ended up issuing him a challenge on his Doubletree Hotel Historic Savannah review. I was pleased to see that a Personnel Finance CL, Mrisch, again, who told me that Sweeper had a schedule conflict and was unable to attend. Mrisch confirmed that Sweeper had left the company I work for, since I had noticed that he was no longer listed in my company's address book. I have to admit that Personal Finance is not a category I'm ever likely to contribute, but Mrisch is a nice guy. It was just hard to find something to talk about. He was sitting with another bloke, Iggy, who turned out to be the CEO of Epinions, if I remember correctly. Whoa. It's hard to think of Epinions requiring a CEO. Considering how much fun so many people have on this website, many of us rarely consider that it is a money-making business. It was amusing to see how humble and down-to-earth Iggy is. I suppose Epinions has yet to match the status of HP or Yahoo, but once it does, watch out for this fellow. During the last hour, Randy then called us all together to make a few announcements. He thanked us for our contributions to Epinions and said it wouldn't be possible without us. The company's big goal this year is to straighten out its database problems, which will be no easy task. He also introduced us to Zane, who is apparently taking a major responsibility in this fix-up job. We talked briefly and she seemed like a gung-ho lady. Then came the pièce de résistance. As a token of Epinions's appreciation, we were all given a fleece sweatshirt. It was fancier than the heather gray thing I purchased from Café Press. It was black with a zip-up collar. The M&G logo was embroidered into the left side. Russell received one, too. Even though I'm sure we'll all wear it with pride, I find my Epi sweatshirts a little awkward when I travel. I may as well tell hoteliers and restaurateurs I'm going to review them for special service from the start. There was an amazing number of Epi emps at this one, though. I said hi to Sarah (aka Guru) and Paul, who I had met at previous M&Gs, but not much else. I didn't mean to be rude, but I was concentrating more on other members. In the end, we had many no-shows. Judging by the remaining unclaimed lanyards, around half who said they'd be there never appeared. I'm sure they had good reasons, but it was a bit disappointing. It looked like those black polo shirts outnumbered the members attending. Some of the other Epi emp names I noticed but have not yet mentioned were Will Hall, Sean, and Brad. There may have been even more that I missed altogether. My bad. A couple of more reviewers came to my attention in that final hour. I found one of the Restaurant CLs, Megugrrrl, holding court off in the corner. She looked quite dashing in her red and black outfit. Books are a category she is never likely to tread into because she's the type of reader who refuses to even read the back cover of a book before she starts it. She wants the entire plot to come as a surprise. The last but not least personality to wander in was Horswispr, carrying a guitar case. He immediately attracted a cluster of people who wanted to meet him. He was late, but he definitely had a presence. At 6 p.m., the Gordon Biersch staff immediately started cleaning up and setting up tables for their evening diners. The sudden rush took several of us by surprise. From what I could see, I did quite well with my action items. 1. Meet other Epinionators - talked briefly with them all 2. Review copies distributed - done 3. Database product page repairs - 2 fixes, 3 pending 4. London M&G made official - pending decision Shortly after the M&G, the Mad Love reviews were moved to the DVD page just as Randy said they would be. My renegade book review is still lost in the database somewhere. Learning that the Epi staff is chuffed at the prospect of a London M&G is encouraging, but an announcement that Epinions will officially sponsor it has yet to made. (The more support we have on this, the better--hint, hint.) Even though my agenda is still incomplete, I had an excellent time at the Second San Francisco Meet & Greet. The company was excellent as well as the food. Members who devote much time to Epinions should go out of their way to attend any that come close to them. Heck, use them as an excuse to travel. The best gossip will never appear on site and the questions the Epi emps answer gives insight as to how the community works. For more info on the proposed London M&G, go to: Calling all UK members (and others who are up to the challenge of traveling), by moi London Meet and Greet - Saturday 30th July 2005!, by CR01  |
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