And with that bit of primary knowledge I headed out to the Brooklyn Anchorage for the Creative Time/MOUSE party. Before there were bits and bytes, there were bricks and mortar, and this exhibition space, inside the historic Brooklyn Bridge took use of the cavernous brick spaces for fashion and art installations. Odd fashions were draped on mannequins, videos were on TV and computer screens and ambient music pulsated in the historic base of the bridge. Originally designed to be a market -- this traditional commerce space might soon well be an e-commerce space. Carl Goodman, who's on the board of Creative Time, and SonicNet were instrumental in fully wiring (by Bell Atlantic) the space a few years ago for a Digital Music festival and there are plans and hopes to host more new media events there. Jaime Levy was hanging out with a small group of creative types in one nook/cave. Sarah Lefton, Greg Elin and Seth Price (Freeride.com) were among the over 1800 people who came out in support of this awareness-raising event for the two organizations. Andrew Raisej (MOUSE and Digital Club Network) told me that Joanne Wilson just joined as Chairperson of the Board and her first act was to convince StarMedia that it was in their best interest strategically to donate 100,000 shares of their pre-IPO to MOUSE. Go Joanne! MOUSE has had an incredible amount of success with bringing 40,000 kids on-line in 21 schools in the short 18 months they've been in existence. I was even more touched when I heard the $1500 from their first benefit I organized as part of the WWWAC Holiday party in December of '97 gave them their vital seed money to get things rolling.
Other guests who traversed the bridge for the fine event (and luscious strawberries) were Jennifer Runne (who showed me how her cell phone still had reception under the tons of brick), Tim Nadeau (Brandscape), Rob Steir (MBA Free-agents), Stephanie Agresta (who was very excited about broadband), Michael Pozner (Robocast), Randy Schoenfeld (Redwood Partners), Jeremy Kagan (EZCD), and Anthony Lorado of PR21. Julie Saltzman of MOUSE told me more about their intern program and I chatted with Mark Sawicki (VP of Virtual Growth), who made an appearance in stead of the usual Virtual Growth guerrilla marketer-partiers Marni Kotak (Development Coordinator) and Stephen King (president). Alex Santic of Silicon Alley Connections told me how after our joint appearance on the Metro Learning Channel's Metro Byte show with Bobby Rivers, the host followed up and featured them on Fox's Good Day New York. Woohoo!
