Who has the most infectious laugh in the industry? Why Michael
Tchong, of course! The editor and chief information architect of the
weekly ICONOCAST newsletter arrived at the newly renovated
(wow, is it renovated!) W Hotel New York on Thursday, May 13th,
to a welcoming crew of myself and Dara Tyson of Penton Media. We
were sampling the refreshingly light avocado hearts with lemon aioli
on toast points just before he snapped a few pictures for the
ICONOCAST Society page. Terry Kent of VNU and Don Miller of
Horizon Media Inc., and the Mass Transit Interactive crew of Danny
Schaeffer, Jason Burnham and Hope Distant were all there for the
lovely cocktail reception and presentations. There's a concept -- the
cocktail party beforehand! Mike Corso stopped by before heading off
to hear Winston Marselis play at Alice Tully Hall for an Ellington
tribute. Jeff Olander of AdForce and Bill Somers of
Neilsen/NetRatings explained their services to me. Neil Cohen (senior
VP, biz affairs, AdAuction) introduced me around, and I got a nifty
baggage tag made from my business card. The silent auction included
funny money we could use to bid on AdAuction's site, where they
were launching the banner-ads-for-auction service. Neat concept. I
met Harold Van Arnem (CEO of Money.net), who'd been getting my
newsletter from Mark Friedler at Gigex. Dinesh Ahluwalia of Tribeca
Internet Initiatives, Inc. told me about one of his companies' sites,
IndiaServer.com, which is the world's largest destination site for
Indians. He said that 70% of the traffic comes from the US, but the
content providers are in India. Margaret McCann of Bluefly.com
came out for the event, and as the topic of fashion came up, Michael
and I realized we were both in our blue Versace suits!
