The main reasons I’m telling this story are because –
1) I can hardly even believe this actually happened. So I just need to talk it out. Because, seriously?
2) This weekend went from ridiculous (in a not good way) to ridiculously awesome. The part coming up was so super fun for me that we have to talk about this first. Hopefully you can enjoy the wild juxtaposition.
Okay, so this conference. Oof.
I make my way over to the Time Warner media booth to check in for the challenge and team up with people.
I’m an hour or so early for the start (leaving myself time to be assigned a team and meet people and such). But I’m still about two hours past the start of registration. I assumed with people registering for the past two hours things would be pretty hopping. But all I found over at the booth was one small circle of women hanging out around a table. I figured this must be just one of the teams and everyone else must be somewhere else. But no. They told me they were the only people they knew of there so far.
Okay, well, we are on California time where everyone is late to everything always. (Even the starting bell for the hackathon went off half an hour late.) Considering there’s still an hour to the start, everyone must just not be there yet.
A little time goes by, and then a man walks over to us and tells us that we’re gonna be giving 30-second business pitches, and he asks the woman next to me what her business is. At this point, I’m pretty confused because I think we’re there to make PSAs – and to actually make them, not just give a pitch in front of a camera. That’s the whole point of this thing, right? To put together something whole as a team? From the planning to shooting to editing, we’re in control… Right?
But as soon as the man asks what the woman’s business is, she starts talking about her yoga studio. I look around to see if anyone else is confused, and then for a few of us, our heads dart down into our cell phones. We start looking up what this competition is supposed to be about.
After that woman’s done talking about her business, the man turns to me and asks what mine is. I then say that I’m confused and thought we were here for a competition, not a business pitch. Other women join in echoing that sentiment.
Then it gets kind of weird.
And this is where I’ll pick up next time.