• by Kelly Samardak , April 6, 2009

Social Media For Social Change, Roger Smith Hotel, New York
April 3, 2009

Charity events bring out the best in people -- at least they should. Yet, I'm not exactly basking in the glow of hyper-philanthropical glee following Friday's Social Media For Social Change event at the Roget Smith Hotel -- which is not the fault of the organizers, sponsors, or anyone else there who likes the person they see in the mirror. This clump of pureed hair on my brain has everything to do with rotten apples. And granny always says "it takes one rotten apple to ruin a record breaking keg-stand." I guess there's still that naïve, seeing-good-in-most-people side of me that expects warm, smiling, positivity-oozing souls at a charity event. After Friday night, you can consider me one step further down the path to Jadedtown ---and I'm probably wearing some sort of blanket-doubling-as-tunic outfit for the trip.

Friday night was my first trip to The Roger Smith Hotel (@rogersmithhotel on Twitter) or, as their green sparkly sign says, Hotel Roger Smith. Either way, Roger Smith is involved and people sleep there. They may be the only hotel in NYC that offers dining and bar discounts (and in the case of the hour before the official Social Media For Social Change NYC event ---a Patron sponsored Happy Hour) to Twitter followers. Now, imagine you live with your granny, she's gone for the weekend, and you have the run of the roost so you throw a party in her attic. This is what the room felt like -- but the addition of the colorful art lining the walls painted the party with a SoHo loft feel. As the space filled with the body heat of social media types, it teetered on super sauna. The open bar was in full swing, but not The-Who-arena-level panic - and the first person I saw was the lovely Alyssa Galella from M Booth Communications, hanging by one auction table with the Australian Paull Young, Converseon dude.

I looked to my left and saw a stage/performance space clear of people with a podium in the center. Later in the night, Lauren Scala, TV personality, would try to make raffle announcements and short thank-you snippets over the roar of the socializing crowd without stabbing herself in the eye with the mic. There was a screening room next to the cleared "Stage" housing more of the silent auction, and a livestreaming crew. Michael Gruen of wearenom.com was being interviewed as I skittered through the room to avoid video capture and find the food room -- where I stuffed my face with at least two dozen cucumber circles topped with tuna tartare. Yum!

Back n the main area, a guest pointed out a fluffy-grey-haired fellow who simply walked around alone, engaging no one in conversation (perhaps he thought this was the antisocial media for antisocial stagnation party). According to this guest, Fluffy Grey was a "professional party crasher." Big. Deal. Another guest, eyes wide with "you've got to be kidding me" shock, pointed out another fellow who, after two minutes of already offensive conversation, offered "I can take you somewhere better..." and then later showed the same guest tongue acrobatics as she walked by. Fluffy Grey joined two blond women, one I recognized as Karin Klein from Softbank Capital.

Let's digress together for a minute. If you're a "professional party crasher," doesn't that make you a perpetual unwanted guest? I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would embrace that moniker. I'm 32 and I would call myself pathetic and encourage others to call me pathetic if I crashed parties at this age. Or any age for that matter, but sometimes incorrigible youth is a good excuse. I hope that anyone who crashed that party dumped a tractor-trailer-sized lump of cash into the silent auction to offset the bottom-feeder lameness of crashing a CHARITY EVENT. "Hey, what did you do last night?" "I totally crashed a charity event where all proceeds go to City Harvest" "So... you screwed people out of a meal, neat." Commence karmic retribution. I sincerely hope that this was the one event where the crasher bought a ticket but kept the rumor floating that he crashed it. And now I'm not sure which sounds worse.

An uninvited guest sucks up energy best placed elsewhere. In this case, the chatter around "That's the dude who..." took attention away from the real goodies -- the Slanket (Team Snuggie!); Lisa Lacy's delectable cake; the squirrely and talented Walt Ribeiro, the Internet's Music Teacher; the tall drink of water Lauren Scala, who emceed the event; and all of the invited guests looking to help feed NYC's struggling in any way they could.

Some of these guests were Sharon Feder, Features Editor of Mashable; Whitney Hess, User Experience designer; Kristin Maverick, Director of Communications at Carrot Creative; Chantelle Karl, three-dinner eater and Communications Manager for Yelp East Coast (and beyond); John Riordan, Senior Account Executive at Yelp; Biana Bakman, smart PR gal looking for a place to showcase her skills (and get some dang benefits!); Julia Kaganskiy, Unigo-er and Art/Tech connection-maker; Oz Sultan; Karen Glidden, Bliss Spa wonderwoman; Trish Ginter from Smashing Darling, an indie/emerging fashion online community; Dana Glidden, Digital Editor at Dana Digital; Morgan Johnston, Manager Corporate Communications at JetBlue; Amy Grennlaw, Regional Sales Manager for PortalVideo; Translation's Rosie Siman; Trylon PR's Matt Caldecutt; Nichelle Stephens, cupcake enthusiast; Alex Gordon, Time Out New York date-prey and Senior Account Executive at CJP Communications; Gradon Tripp, whose twitter profile is awfully sweet -- read it yourself @gradontripp; Sarah Cooley, video blogger and podcast producer; Karsten Vagner of ZocDoc.com, Stephen Melfi of Investor Relations Group (IRG); and PLENTY more. So how'd the event do? Check 'er out.

Judging by the constant flow of people, the attendance was a success -- and every little cent of ticket sales went straight to CityHarvest, yay! Walt Ribeiro smacked mic trouble in the face and tickled his guitar strings as I made my ghost-like- Swayze exit, passing Roger W., hooting "Get a picture of this! Get a picture of her taking a beer out of my butt!" gesturing to the beer in his back pocket and a female guest.  I will hear this phrase over and over in my head should I become morbidly depressed. I will never NOT laugh at the memory. Maybe we can blame the Patron-sponsored happy hour for some of those early Saturday morning "ack!" moments.

Invite kelly@mediapost.com to your good (or bad) doing event (if you don't, I won't crash it).

Holy moleman, that's a lot of photos!