Work

Agency Leaders' Field Trip (XÜD)

My trip up to NYC to co-host the ALFT was a complete success. I got up there early Wednesday morning which was a fantastic idea -- I really enjoy having a couple of days to ease off the gas with work stuff AND get a good night's rest before all the festivities started.

Wednesday

Got in a little bit before lunch. Stayed in Brooklyn this time since Allie wasn't with me. Got to my hotel, dropped my stuff off and immediately went to grab lunch with David Ries down at the DeKalb Market (near his place). After a number of back-n-forth's via email with FedEx to print out our postcards to have at the event, I ended up going to Minuteman Press. They were super-helpful and were cheaper, too.

We went into Manhattan in the evening for two things:

1. We wanted to get some LEGO sets for the two sponsors of the event. We ended up getting mini skylines of New York for each of them (David Yassky and Euri)
2. For dinner that night, we went to Katz's and got their amazing sandwiches and talked a lot about personal life. It was a very relaxing way to end the day.

After dinner, we parted ways. I ended up working on a metric ton of Consume Media QA tasks because I didn't know if Samson would be able to do them...

Thursday

Hangout

Isaiah Ram landed around 10:00. I ended up calling my brother because Adrianna is getting baptized on Sunday. I wanted to see if we could hash out any of our issues, but that didn't work. However, we are going to go to their church on Sunday regardless, so that's good.

Isaiah and I worked from David's co-working space in his condo for a couple of hours.

Mickey Mellen got into Brooklyn around 1:00. Once he got settled, Isaiah and I picked him up and took the train into Manhattan. We hit up Washington Square Park, walked around there, walked north and got some pizza. Found Chelsea park and chilled their for a bit, and then headed over to Lucky Strike on Chelsea Pier for the kick off of the ALFT.

Bowling

We had a total of 15 people there including me and David. All 5 lanes we booked had people using them. As I glanced around, seemed like everyone was talking to someone at all times. The food they had there was fantastic, the wait staff was super-quick (in fact, they took David's half-drank drink multiple times over lol), and people seemed to enjoy bowling. The bowling ended at 8:00, but the waitress moved us over to a table so we could stay longer. No one left till 9:00. It was a great feeling that people didn't want to stop the conversations that were started during bowling.

To get back to Brooklyn, David, me, Mickey, and Isaiah crammed into a small SUV for the ride across the bridge. As per usual, I was in the middle seat.

Friday

Roxy Bar

Best stop of the whole day IMO. The vibes here were fantastic. We had room to spread out. Good conversation was had. The drinks and food were good. And, I really wanted to play the instruments they had on their small stage.

Chelsea Market

Great spot for lunch. Definitely harder to have conversation, but this is a staple of NYC. Everyone got to eat whatever food they wanted. We got a long, thin table. At this point, most of the Atlanta people talked to other Atlanta people

Starbucks Reserve

We found nook at the bottom of SR were we were able to get a long table. Here, we finally had some new faces show up which made the conversation a lot more lively. The food and drink here was upper-class, and the table we commandeered was the perfect size for us.

Lobby Bar at Ace Hotel

David Ries knows the owner, and he got us the hook up for their main sofa area. We were able to have a dedicated space to ourselves to drink. They also had a band that played some awesome instrumental music all night. Quite loud, but a good vibe. A couple new faces popped in here as well.

Takeaways

Survey

I sent this out today. I'm curious to see how many people actually fill it out. We had a total of probably 20 unique faces between all 5 of the segments of the trip. I want to know what we did right, wrong, and what people wanted more (or less) of.

Too much talking?

On Friday (where we bounced around), we had a core of people at all four stops (me, David, Mickey, Isaiah, Amy, Sarah, and Mike). Each stop had maaaaaybe two people drop by.

• The conversations at Roxy were amazing.
• At Chelsea, it was a bit harder with food, but it was a smidge tough at the end
• Starbucks felt like a challenge (until some new faces dropped by)
• Ace was chill. There were definitely quieter people, but Ace felt good

It makes me think that we should actually build in empty time to the schedule. I feel like we could have done something like this:

• Coffee/breakfast at the Roxy between 9:30 - 12:00
• Lunch at 12:00 with whoever you want (basically: plan this out at bowling or coffee; free'ish time)
• Post-lunch, we let people know a few cool places to go (parks, activities, coffee shops, etc.). We don't have any plans, these are just open areas for people to pair up if they want
• Then, we all reconvene at the bar at the end of the day

I think having a smidge more time would have made it to where the same "7 people" weren't talking 1:1 for 12 straight hours.

Podcast Queue

• Why nobody left bowling until 9pm — and what that means for event design: 15 people, 5 lanes, food was great, staff was fast. The bowling ended at 8 but the waitress moved them to a table so they could stay. "It was a great feeling that people didn't want to stop the conversations that were started during bowling." Activity-based events create conversation naturally; you don't have to force it.
• The "same 7 people" problem in multi-stop events: Friday's bar crawl had 4 stops with a core group of 7 talking for 12 straight hours. By stop 3 it was getting stale. The fix: build in empty time — free lunch, free afternoon to pair up, then reconvene at a bar. "Having a smidge more time would have made it to where the same 7 people weren't talking 1:1 for 12 straight hours."