A friend of mine from my first job in California has a startup and is developing a Next Big Thing, and he and his team went to the TechCrunch Hackathon on Saturday. I haven't seen him in years, though we've kept in touch across the ocean, so I went along for the ride, just to hang out, see him, meet his team, and enjoy the atmosphere of a thousand marauding geeks.
That day had by far the least nutritious eating I've engaged in for many a moon. I believe not one thing I ate was nutritionally better than just going hungry. But that's another story.
The main thing that happened though, was that when I went in to present my ticket and get the little sticker to put on the front of my shirt, I somehow got in the wrong line and ended up in front of this TV personality who wanted to interview me. She was there, her microphone was there, and some guy with a TV camera was pointed right at me. And she had that same big phony corporate voice that I've grown to feel represents total insincerity. And the more I tried to ignore her, the more she felt the absolute need to get me to participate. She ultimately got me to tell her my first name by promising that she'd tell the ticket taking guy to put me next on his queue. But the whole time I was just saying, things like, "I just want to sign in for the hackathon, I don't want to answer questions, please leave me alone." And she was like, "C'mon, just tell me your name! Tell me your last name too. Are you uni-named, like Cher?"
The experience was awful enough, but after it was over, the friend of mine from way back - who I'm sure would have loved to be the subject of an interview, and gotten to talk all about his product - he said I'd been very rude, and hadn't followed social conventions, and that the whole rest of the world behaved one way, and that for reasons he couldn't fathom, I just chose to behave another.
That was really the worst. And at the time, I couldn't understand how bitter he must've felt at missing the opportunity to talk about his product. He didn't really tell me that it had been the opportunity of a lifetime, if only it had happened to him instead of me. So I got very resentful, explaining that I hadn't asked to be in her TV show, and that nobody was obliged to play their stupid media game just because they were smiling and sticking microphones in their face. So he said the whole thing was a TechCrunch media event, and that the cameras were part of the whole point of anyone being there. Which I suppose was true. If I'd known beforehand that I might find myself on TV, I could probably have responded more to his liking. I wouldn't have minded terribly, advocating for his startup. But just being caught unawares like that really discombobulated me.
And him calling me rude, and being basically very condemnatory, pushed me over the edge, and I left the whole event, and walked back almost to Market Street for the BART before he ended up calling my phone, and telling me that we really only had a few short times available to hang out before we'd be on opposite sides of the ocean again; and I should just come back and get over it. So I did.
And actually the rest of the time was not so bad. He's very conflict avoidant actually, so it was easy to make up. And we ended up sitting around a table, him and me and his startup team, and having a really good time. They hacked on some code, and I helped out in little ways, like getting people drinks, and debugging JavaScript and whatnot. I was glad I went back, because I did really love that friend, and it really had been a long time since we'd seen each other, and storming off the way I did was definitely inspired by a feeling that was going to pass, as in fact it did.
So really, it was a good time. The food though. Ugh, the food! I have to list it off before I end this entry. I started out with a cup of coffee and a plain croissant. Then my friend got me a sugar-dusted, fruit-filled almond croissant. Then I had a long string of cans of Coke - free for all takers at the hackathon. And then my friend got me and everyone on his team a bunch of triple-burgers and fries from a place nearby. Holy cow. It satisfied the hunger, but in no way aids the human organism. And that was it. That was all I ate for the day. So it was a day of adventure on multiple fronts.
And really, it was great to see my friend again after so long.
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