• by Kelly Samardak , February 18, 2009

Stats are fun, aren't they? I'm serious - it is so frickin' cool to see where people are coming from, what word they needed that landed them at your site/blog/online column, what social media channels are flooding your stats with tubes of links. I like seeing what inspires people to click through and read. I was up to my eyeballs in Google Analytics and other in-house measurements last night which is why I missed the Web2New York event. I looked at my still crud-tastic BlackBerry, saw it was 8:00PM and figured I'd head down to Tribeca to catch the cocktail networking arm of mediabistro's "Digital Marketing in a Downturn: How to Get Results Now and Build a Base for the Future" - a panel.

Tribeca Cinemas Gallery is a good half hour walk (well, hopstop.com tells me it's 26 minutes, but they don't figure in heels) from my place in the east village, and since it wasn't frigidly cold and I'm poor, I chose to hoof it. It was really a quiet, beautiful walk. It's Fashion Week so everyone's on the other side of island, and with with SoHo shops closed for the night, I felt like the only person in New York. It was actually quiet if you can believe that. Ah, there it is, Tribeca Cinema up ahead.

As I approached the red swinging door I saw a familiar baldy emerging. My eyes are horrible so I had to practically stand on his nose to recognize him, but yup, it was Adam Broitman - a very tired Adam Broitman, Director of Strategy/Ringleader of Crayon. I asked him what he thought of the panel, since I missed it. Adam's impression was that the panel wasn't there to rock the boat, no one got all wacky with the economic situation, just gave sound bites about their products. Referring to his vibrant, boisterous, in your face leader, President and Chief Interrupter at Crayon, Broitman said "when you're used to someone like Jaffe, it's almost hard to watch other panels". I had to run inside so we chuckled about stats like proper media/marketing nerds and parted ways.

Down a hallway and through a door I found myself in the bar portion of what may now be my favorite theatre. It was pleasantly full but not grossly packed with all kinds of people. My first encounter was oddly enough with Julie Ginches, Vice President of Marketing of JumpTap. I was perched on the stairs and saw her weaving through the crowd with the moustaciod Matt Van Hoven, adverblogger on AgencySpy. JumpTap sponsored the iPhone raffle whose lucky winner was Vijita Kumar of Unicef USA.

Climbing down the stairs and weaving through scads of others I saw a familiar face. It was Kim Tice of Agency.com. Weird story here, she was one of the first girls I met when I moved to NYC - only at the time she was at Ogilvy with my +1 Gail Hilton (now of Qwikker). Worlds collide, right? Kim was there with her client Ignacio Rosales, Director, Customer Development for Jackson Hewitt. When I asked what they thought of the panel, they both expressed a desire for the panel to answer the "what the heck do we do in the economic down turn?!" question more directed. "They sort of skirted the issue" said another guest. Maybe the idea is not to speak of it, then it won't be true. I felt a poke and found myself face to face with the Morris+King contingent of Andy Morris Co-Founder and Partner/Principal, Chris Macowski, and Lane Buschel. Regarding the panel's skirting of the crappy econ issue, Lane smiled, "Larry [Weintraub CEO and co-founder Fanscape and moderator of the panel] definitely asked the question directly, but no one seemed willing to be the one to stand out."

Julia Kaganskiy, Editor and social media dilettante at Unigo.com AND (I know, how does she sleep) arts, culture and tech writer at juliaxgulia.com, came with her roommate Andrea Rosen, Digital Marketing Manager at The L Magazine (web relaunch coming in the next couple weeks!) and both felt it was a little entry level content wise, though she really enjoyed "Chappy and the Razorfish guy" (aka Lee "Chappy" Chapman, Director of Strategy, Branding and Consumer Markets, Translation LLC and Shiv Singh VP Social Media, Razorfish) - sounds like a great TBS sitcom if you ask me.

Dori Fern, whom I met at the Saveur party a couple of weeks back, was there as well and thought the panel was great! It's so hard to plan a panel that hits the right points without going over too many peoples' heads. Not one level of content will please everyone. Just like pickles. I also saw Heather Silverberg of Access PR and Roger Resnicoff. Joe Ciarallo was there of course, curious about my week's activities, which are practically vacant. He's attending some Fashion Week party on Friday, and hopefully not getting kicked out by some whackadoodle with a clipboard.

It looks like next week is going to be a busy one - so if you missed multiple Online Minutes this week, you'll get your fill next week, never fear!

What's going on in March?  Send invitations to kelly@mediapost.com

See the pictures on Flickr!