Revenge of the Nerds

"Where are the cheese sticks! We want more cheese sticks!" You'd think this sort of a chant would come from the football-watching crowd in a sports bar (no offense!) but instead it came from selected attendees at the Art Director's Club roundtable "Revenge of the Nerds: Chic Geeks in New Media" on Tuesday, February 2nd. Anthony Vagnoni of Advertising Age kept the rowdy panelists in tow with decent moderation (as moderator). John Carlin of Funny Garbage, Rich Lefurgy of the IAB, Kyle Shannon of Agency.com and Howard Fishman of Real Media were among the panelists. Not rowdy, but Amy Shapiro of Doubleclick led the charge in a discussion (from the audience) of the need for good design to draw people to sites, not just banner advertising and e-commerce/retail sites. Meanwhile, I overheard a very artistic-looking gentleman tell Jaime Levy of Electronic Hollywood that "I love computers" and "I also like chat rooms." Marc Scarpa, president of Jumpcut, and I discussed the better business choice of slow, measured, growth coupled with the thrill of being selected as one of the companies to present in the "AlleyCat News" Alley to Valley '99 conference in San Francisco. Alayna Tagariello of Peppercom mingled about and bubbly journalist Pamela Parker and adorable Kit Cody, executive producer of Concrete Media were perched at the door as the event was ending and small sanctions were deciding to head off to one of a handful hip, underground bars.