• by Kelly Samardak , November 8, 2010

Netmining One Year Anniversary Party, Carnival! New York
November 4, 2010

Where's the party? Send invitations to kelly@mediapost.com and get covered in Just An Online Minute!

Do you remember your first birthday?  Some people at Netmining may not remember theirs either.  But that's what happens when you plan an event at Carnival where the question is "Who darted?" and the answer is "stuffed hamster."

The first thing I noticed was the Netmining blue cotton candy and their special blue beverage of the night, the "Netini."  I have this very strange, but very helpful promise to myself to not eat blue-tinted things.  And I actually don't enjoy blueberries, which nature itself has tinted.  But that's beside the point.  The cotton candy also looked a little like that chicken "thumb" that always shows up with your batch of chicken wings.  You know the one, the bone is exposed and you can see inside of it, and the meat seems like it fell off once and was slapped back on the bone with an untrained hand.  Chicken thumb.

Even two hours into the party, a decent crowd was belly-up to the bar. As I glanced around the games to see which animal I would aim to win that evening, I saw a few people speckled here and there.  A gaggle already had monkeys and a strange bulldog rug tucked under their arms. I always think I'm the only weirdo that still geeks out about stuffed animals -- especially WON stuffed animals in a carnival atmosphere -- but there are more of you weirdos out there!  People like Doug Schnebel and Blakeley Low of Carat and Steven Losic of Deutsch Inc. Netmining's Rachel Klausner was in the company of those animal winners, happily clutching her drink, not a monkey.

Michael Hegarty, Director, East Coast Sales, at Netmining was celebrating, as were Justin Zimmerman, Justin Volk, and the dolphin-grasping Joseph Lavan.  The very happy Anthony Martinelli, SVP Director of National Sales at Innovation Interactive, could be found bouncing from group to group as well as Amanda Bird, Director of Marketing, Innovation Interactive, and Kat Fernandez of Netmining.  I found John O'Neill later in the evening, a man who not only an account manager at Netmining, but also a big winner in carnival games -- for others!

At some point Mediacom's Search Specialist James Cote is going to think I'm stalking him.  I met him at the adMarketplace dinner, then ran into him again at the RadiumOne party, which he says got much better after I left, when they opened the whole place up into the danceclub.  He and his Mediacom cohorts Chris Sipola, Dell search, Chandra Jawalaprasad, Warner Bros Digita, and Anthony Scarola, GSK search may or may not have been the Solid Gold dancers that evening, memory is a bit cloudy.

Juan Espin of Draftfcb was also there, as was the winner of the huge squishy alligator: Jessica Stewart, project Manager Flying Point Media. Damion Chijindu, Senior Ad Ops Manager, Traffiq and Jenny Perez also from Traffiq won a fish that evening, which is no doubt flushed by now.

My favorite part of the evening was flame-themed, beginning with the cake lighting that no one but I paid attention to.  The candles began as closed-up flowers that, upon lighting, sprung open with tall shooting sparks, blooming into musical, spinning, flaming lotus blossoms.  "They're from China!" Amanda Bird kept exclaiming.   I don't care if I have to travel all the way to China to get them, I want at least 50 of those things so I can light one every day during my 4 p.m. slump. 

The other flame came at the hands of magician and trickster Rory Wheeler.  I saw him and his flaming wallet out of the corner of my eye.  He began some pretty simple "Where's the coin" tricks that made my +1 Gail Hilton (of Thought Equity Motion) and I think we could trick the trickster.  No matter how smart and observant you think you are, a person deft at sleight-of-hand and distraction will always win.  You cannot trick a trickster.  Rory had me laughing so hard as he confused Gail that I almost dropped my stuffed hamster (won in combination with the efforts of James Cote, thank you!)

Oh, I shouldn't forget that, as part of the one-year-anniversary celebration, the Netminers raffled off a $500.00 Jet Blue gift certificate.  The winner was Colin Smith from Zinio.  Sounds like someone will be jetting off to Cleveland!

Because the night beforehad me running all over town, covering four parties, it was difficult to motivate myself to head up to 230 Fifth for the final party of Thursday evening: Rubicon's.  Also, the fact that it was an ad:tech-related party made it even more difficult, but I rallied.  Because the people I've met from Rubicon are pretty kickass, and because, again, I saw it as my Amazing Race challenge - I HAD to complete it.

So off we went...

Party? Send invitation to kelly@mediapost.com and get covered in Just An Online Minute!

Photos are up on Flickr!