Wednesday, March 01, 2000

The Cyber Scene in Los Angeles ~ by Justine Kenzer

March 1st VIC WebFest at Skirball
So many goodies and not a branded bag in sight. Brad Nye, Executive Director of VIC.com (Venice Interactive Community) threw a networking schmoozing Media WebFest held at The Skirball Cultural Center.
Attendees arrived promptly at 6pm, causing a lengthy valet parking grid lock. After what seemed like a trip to the Disneyland parking lot during summer vacation, I made my way into the fest. All kinds of give-a-ways were handed out by the exhibiting companies. I strolled the booths and cyber chatted it up with the representatives from IBM e-business Innovations, The Silicon Alley Reporter, Steven Silver, Regional Sales manager from ibeam.com, Alden Sellers, Marketing Communications Manager from internetwire.com, and the people from uswebcks.com, collecting my wares as I geeked along. 

With all the marketing power behind the exhibiting company’s, I am was surprised that no one came up with the idea to hand out bags to hold all the giveaways in. The usual trade fare T-shirts, mouse pads, company logo notebooks and pens were passed out as well as some other random fun gadgets. My favorites were sapient.com who gave out cute tin boxes of red hots, ebillboards.com who gave away nifty monitor dusters, and ice.com who gave away these red thing amajiggy twisty toys that my accompanying friend quickly made into an ingenious bracelet. We both looked like we were on a internet branded scavenger hunt with all the products shoved into and overflowing from our purses.

VIC claims that 2000 people attended their last event and I’d say that there were close to that many there that night too. The finger food lasted through out the night, the live jazz played, the internet obsessed eyed each others named tags, mingled under the stars and around the recruiting booths. I sipped a few glasses of red wine, did a ton of shameless self-promoting, and went home and wore my prize idealab! T-shirt to bed.

www.PsychicGirl.com
Watch for upcoming press on PSYCHIC GIRL! Justine Kenzer in the April issue of Glamour Magazine and the June issue of the new Simplicity Magazine.