The Black Jack tables were by far the most popular at Flycast's Optimizer party at the Puck Building on Thursday evening, November 2nd. As I walked through the gallery space I passed a Central Park booth, which was serving classic American cold cuts, cheeses and veggies. In the Broadway booth there stood a young woman hawking hotdogs to passers-by. I found Tery Spataro waiting patiently by the Sushi tent with Amy Lieberman of Kokopelli and Glen Hauman of Bibliobytes, who greeted me with a big hug.
Bill McCloskey and Aran Shetterly of Comet Systems and John Gassner of Small World waited breathlessly to try their hands at the classic "21" game. Bill told me a wild story of a new media caper that I'm sure will go down in the history books. Before the Rich Media Circus, Bill and Nicole Kikowski picked up a 6-foot tall inflatable giraffe. Throughout the night people decorated and dressed the giraffe, much to Bill's glee, who was thinking he'll have a pretty special thing by the end of the night. When he turned to go the Rich Media Sig mascot was gone! He pined for months, asking friends and attendees at each subsequent Sig meeting if they had any info on the giraffe. He began receiving ransom notes and eventually a picture with the giraffe, undressed save a new beret and an email from giraffe@adexec.com, saying, "Having a much better time with them than with you." Well, with a lead like this the folks at Comet didn't'rest, they traced the e-mail. Would you believe it went straight back to the very computer of the Rich Media Sig ranter!!!!
After such shocking news, I stumbled over to say hello to Darian Heyman of Beyond Interactive, swing past the swing band as they crooned and said "hello" to Ken Magill of Direct Marketing News.