This week was all about eTech for us, the emerging technology organized by Tim O’Reilly publishing group in San Diego. This year’s eTech was my second appearance at the event and I finally started to recognize faces and go and engage with some of the people I respect a lot in this hackers’ universe (hacking being the main theme of Tim O’Reilly keynote this year).
But this year, we weren’t just there as participant but as sponsors as well and Disney threw a rather nice party on Tuesday evening, right after (if not slightly overlapping) the EFF fundraiser event. So after a light indian curry (need food before booze), Mike, Yoshi and I reached the party and were soon joined by way more people…
And as you would have expected, many well known members of the blogosphere were there, including Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow (baaad father), Laughingsquid’s Scott Beale and more…
The party itself was fun except for one thing: Our party organizers (HR/PR) had insisted, despite several warnings, that every attendant of the evening would have to add a little sticker to the conference badges, reflecting their sector of activity (designer, programmer, technology, exec, etc) which was, to me, going totally against the spirit of eTech (Simply take a look at Ignite evening, no one cares about your position in the food chain, just come and share your project/opinion/point of view in a fair and equal manner). I personally refused to get the little sticker on my badge and found another way to get my 2 free drinks.
As this wasn’t humiliating enough, Mike was told in his face by some journalist that this sticker thing was stupid, bad, effin’ this, effin’ that (or something similar). Well, the journalist we are talking about is simply the “Wired Magazine” Editor in Chief! OUCH! Hopefully the dude will blog about it and we will be able to print it and share it with the great minds behind the sticky thing concept!
At some point in the evening, I realized that someone was shooting some form of interview and as any good mosquito on a summer night, I rushed towards the light. I there met another famous eTecher, Johannes Grenzfurthner, artist, activist, Monochrom’s represenative, fully dressed in Soviet Uniform, wearing his Nikita Chrusov’s eTech Speaker badge. The prank is obvious and entertaining, a polite version of Borat, without the fart jokes! Pose, picture and I moved on to the bar.
But right before leaving the party, I recognized Violet Blue, sex columnist, writer, blogger also known for her Steve Job’s encouter at Macworld! Remembering el Jobso’s attitude when asked for a picture with her, I walked towards her group and kindly asked if I could have my picture taken with her. She obviously agreed (“I, of course, said yes (no Jobs am I)”) and picture was taken…
She then started explaining to me (after having realized that there was a Disney badge under my EFF T-Shirt) that Johannes had been kicked out of the party by our own PR people… I asked her to repeat, willing to be sure I heard correctly and then felt slightly ashamed! We parted and I went back to the guys, explaining them what just happened, unable to do anything or changed what hapened.
One one hand, yes, Johannes played prankster and it did work! He was asked to leave, he was able to put a great show on and he got more attention than almost anyone else that night but on the other hand I absolutely doubt the plan was be come and attack Disney head to head! This is eTech for God’s sake! Not NAB or the Oscars. I know we tend to be paranoid about our image and the rest, but here, it simply backfired!
Next year, HR/PR people, please do your homework and study your audience before getting pranked again!
