Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > January > 09 > Entry
What I learned at Geek Austin happy hour
Going out on a work night has become a luxury for me, a planned, carefully coordinated event that involves more strategy than Hillary Clinton’s push in New Hampshire.
I have a 5-month-old, and I’m in charge of picking her up from day care and driving her to New Braunfels with as little incident as possible. (Remind me to tell you about the flat tire we had one time; mad fire ants were involved.)
So nine times out of 10 I turn down going to happy hours or anything else that isn’t absolutely necessary. It was only because of insistent and very humorous e-mail from Lynn Bender that I gave up quality road time with the baby to RSVP for the Geek Austin happy hour, held last night at J. Black’s Feel Good Lounge (how good? Ask me after two beers.) on Sixth Street. Do you know how long it’s been since I was on Sixth Street? I had to ask a friend whether they still serve liquor there.
Anyway, the happy hour was well-attended and certainly not a waste of my night. It was almost worth coming home, looking into my baby’s face and hearing her say, “I have forgotten who you are. Hope you had fun at your happy hour. Also: Change me.”
Here are a few things I learned from the handful of people I got to meet:
- Lynn Bender is a dude. A very nice, social dude and generous host. It has been so long since I’ve talked to Lynn face-to-face that I had forgotten not only what he looked like, but his gender. So when he and I started talking and I didn’t look at his name tag and I mentioned that I ought to say hi to Lynn Bender for inviting me and he said, “I’m Lynn Bender,” well … let’s just say it was not my best moment. I blame lack of sleep. Darn baby!
- John Melanson of Cirrus Logic Inc. is the nicest hippie-techie I’ve met in a long time. He’s shifting his focus from audio/video stuff to environmental tech and is looking for engineers. If you are an engineer who wants to save the world, one green digital signal processor at a time, you should contact John.
- Twitter friends SheilaS, ATXRyan (a former co-worker at the Statesman) and Jmetcalf27 came up and chatted, and it was nice to have a conversation with them that wasn’t limited to 140 characters.
- Philip Wheat from Microsoft Corp.’s Austin offices gave me the lowdown on the PhizzPop Design Challenge, which will have its finals held at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I missed the Austin finals in December (SEE: Baby, Stunted Socializing Caused by — ABOVE), but I plan to see the national finals at the festival.
- Tori Breitling and Julie Gomoll are opening a coffee shop downtown near the Omni Hotel called “Launchpad Coworking” that’ll be mobile-worker-friendly. They plan to open it in early July and couldn’t have been nicer.
- Photos from the event are already up on Flickr.
I’ll plan to be at the next Geek Austin event, babysitter-permitting.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Food, Internet, SXSW
Comments
Click here to report comment abuse.
By SheilaS
January 10, 2008 8:09 PM | Link to this
Hey, Omar, it was great to finally meet you too, and hope we can chat for longer next time....and maybe not have to shout, either, although I'm glad there was a big crowd. :)
By Michelle Greer
January 10, 2008 5:47 PM | Link to this
w00t! Thanks for the mention. If you need a baby-sitter, let me know!