The No B.S. Seattle Meet and Greet rundown
Sep 16 '05
The Bottom Line I name names and tell ALL (almost)
Saturday September 10th was the day of the Epinions Meet and Greet in Seattle. I arrived about 5 minutes early and was the first non-Epinion employee at the event. I enjoyed meeting the people behind the scenes at epinions face to face. I could not believe for instance that the good natured, often smiling Christal has the horrid job of dealing with epinion member complaints. She actually has this job and shows up to meet and greet members face to face? Brave lady !!!! Garrett and Andy enjoyed explaining that she often played the role of ‘bad cop’. Hard to believe.
I met and talked to Andy (Andyman) bending his ear about minor past snafus and asking him questions about how this merger with EBAY was really going to affect the future of epinions. I explained how I have had a few less than perfect buying experiences from EBAY sellers in the past and how terribly unresponsive the EBAY customer service seems to be. Well Andy told me a few things that would probably send chills through a lot of epinion members if they knew the truth. *
I met Garrett and Christal and Greg, Gary and Paul and then I realized as I was talking, some Epinion members had arrived, the buffet table of food was complete set up, and the meet and greet was in full swing.
Well half-swing I guess you would say since only about half of the people who RSVP’d arrived. A few more would arrive late. Some had excellent excuses. One guy tried to explain that he was on a bus from a completely foreign country (having little in common with the U.S. except perhaps BEER) and it was stopped at the border and searched by agents of Home Security. As I understand it, people were taken off the bus, drugs were seized (and only shared by the finer members of the U.S. Homeland Security forces, border patrol and a few Canadian Mounties) and somehow, the epinion member, a U.S. citizen living in Canada with the love of his life, made it through the ordeal relatively unscathed. Hard to believe… but things would get even stranger and more bizarre before the afternoon was over. **
It was a particular treat to meet one of the most talented writers on Epinions face to face. I mean of course the one and only Brotherman (Robert). I was hoping he would be able to make it to the event, and although he had to leave early, it was the highlight of the event for me (seriously). If you are not acquainted with the passionate, well researched music reviews written by brotherman on the site, I suggest you start reading some as soon as possible. I figured there would be some interesting stories to share with someone who writes like he does and I was not disappointed. Even before he was a teenager he would play D.J. for his grandmother and choose songs from a huge record collection of 60s era blues and r&b singers. Even though he’s only in his 20s, he still grew up listening to the music he writes about. It gives him an incredible well of knowledge and experience to draw from when he writes about newer music. He promised to do a review of Kanye West’s new album which I am looking forward to reading. We also discovered a mutual love and respect for William Faulkner. We talked a few minutes about the Sound and the Fury and how important it would be if more people actually read the masterpiece particularly with what has happened in New Orleans and surrounding areas due to Katrina. It was a downright poignant moment in the middle of the socializing and partying. At the table while this was going on was the one and only Lisa J and her husband. The conversation was interesting and lively.
I wanted to meet some other people so I wandered over to the table where Anderclayton,knotheadusc (Jenny) and cuculuain (Bill) were sitting.
Ander is a fellow Epinon writer obsessed with writing about movies. So we had a few things to talk about. It was a real treat to meet Bill and his wife Jenny who were visiting from the D.C. area. They had some very interesting stories to tell. I particularly enjoyed hearing about Jenny’s adventures when she was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia !!!
Hey wait a minute what kind of conversations are these to be having at a Meet and Greet?
I have to confess that I don’t read a lot opinions or reviews just for the fun of it in the travel and hotel arena, but that will change now that I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to LordBalfor who also explained how you could link to his photo albums from the reviews he wrote about some of the places he has visited. Places I hope I’ll be lucky enough to travel to someday like the South Pacific Cook Islands.
It was time for the announcements from Garrett and other Epinion folks. They were short, they were full of positive messages and quite frankly I would probably rant and rave and complain about this part of the afternoon but I have been bought off with wonderful Epinion swag gifts that included those wacky eppie dolls and hats and mugs.. Mugs that were personalized for the event by the way. They had little graphics of the space needle too!!!! Hey… free food, good conversation and free goodies to take home. THIS WAS FUN !!! No complaints here.
Finally I got to sit down and talk a few minutes with Edge and Jeff and Dave (hist).
It all ended too quickly. I was already going to be late for one of the poetry readings I was supposed to be at, and then right after that I was scheduled to be one of the featured readers at another poetry reading in nearby Ballard.
The naïve (or perhaps that would be the very gullible) Ander pretended he was interested in hanging out at these poetry reading events so that’s where we wound up going. I think he might have even enjoyed himself. It was a pleasure hanging out with him and gossiping about movies, epinion people, life in Seattle, and more.
I hope you’ll excuse the sloppiness of this piece. I wanted to get something written and out there about the meet and greet before anymore time had passed and I don’t have time to toil over making it better than a hastily written first draft.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this Meet and Greet. I’m not particularly active in terms of the epinion community and contributing to message boards or even wandering too far out of the Movies section of epinions. Part of me believed there was something very positive about remaining at least somewhat anonymous in regards to an online writing community , but part of me realized that such a belief is a cop-out and there is much to be discovered about ourselves and others through an interaction of personalities. It was a very rewarding experience to meet so many great people that are brave enough to not only write for epinions, but show up and reveal part of their real selves to each other.
I don’t want to forget to thank all of the people at Epinions that made the event possible. I found the experience very worthwhile and.. (wait a minute I’m sipping some coffee out of my EPINIONS mug) …and I hope they will visit the Seattle area in the future with another meet and greet. Thanks.
* complete lie: Andy told me that E-Bay was excited to have Epinions under their umbrella and considered the online community to be very unique. They do not anticipate interfering or changing day to day operations of Epinions. There will however be more money and access to more people who will probably be able to improve search engines, fix bugs and put up new products faster. This is the same message that Garrett later shared in his announcements. Cross your fingers.
** believe every word
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Epinions.com ID:
ChrisJarmick
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 - Top 50 |
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Member: Chris Jarmick
Location: Seattle
Reviews written: 588
Trusted by: 178 members
About Me:
With or-w/o hat,writing quality reviews,encouraging-others-to-do likewise-since-the-'50's.
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