Remedies for When People Rip You on Your Blog

Yesterday was a not-great day that can best be summed up with how it began –

Meeting Instructions: Please arrive no later than 8:30 a.m.

Left a bunch of must-do! work to rush to meeting on opposite side of the city.  Nothing was set up.  Lights off.  We arranged the tables and chairs.  Sitting around.  Meeting did not start until 9:20.  One of the main reasons seven years ago I decided self-employment was for me.

Will bypass all the other not-greatness that occurred between 8:30am and 6pm because who wants to dwell on bleh!.  The point is, if you asked me this morning about yesterday, I would say it rocked.

Last night was the inaugural Potluck!, curated and hosted by Boyfriend and I –

Potluck! brings together several of Chicago’s best and brightest, funniest and handsomest, wittiest and engaging-est for an evening of rapid fire musings on whatever they choose to muse upon.  In the vein of Pecha Kucha, Ignite, and TED Talks, each presenter will stuff 10 pounds of awesome into a 5 pound bag…er, into a six minute talk.

When you’ve had a bad day, the last thing you want is forty-seven people over.  Or so I felt at 6:53pm.  And then they started to trickle in.

Remedies for Bleh!

• Strangers and your friends meeting, liking one another, and exchanging info to keep in touch
• Learning new things [i.e. internet dating is a great source of inspiration for launching a start-up and an auger is a drilling device used in farming]
• Jock Jams a la Pump Up the Jam
• Photos of men in suits doing the splits
• Folk being introduced to a fun new presentation tool and collectively whispering “Prezi” every time it did something cool
• Seeing a couple that met via her and Boyfriend
• The name “Bliss Brown”
• Do something for the first time, worry it may crash and burn, and it not only going great, but exceeding all expectations
• No tech issues
• A BYO event where folks share their goodies with strangers
• An audience filled with people who came solo, with friends, with significant others
• Presenters who are calm, cool and collected
• Presenters who are nervous
• Presenters who are sick and dealing with serious family stuff, yet still manage to not only participate but to knock it out of the park
• Presenters who change their topic hours before go-time and still rock it
• A woman filling a sketch book with things inspired by what she was experiencing
• Live tweeting at an event of yours for the first time and ensuing tweets –
  • @iLive40: I found inspiration and had some good laughs at #potluck 
  • @mjwex : New people, new ideas, contagious energy! 
  • @sarahjindra: Thanks to @sayahillman and @goteampete for organizing a fun and inspiring night of talks!! Awesome #Potluck
  • @brandon_weiss: No guest towels in the bathroom? Wtf? #potluck 
  • Twitter lesson learned – make your hashtag specific unless you want to be reading about stuff that has nothing to do with your stuff, i.e. #potluck1.0 instead of #potluck
• A tweeter sitting next to a sketcher
• A room full of laughter, engagement, friendliness, diversity, and comfort

So thank you to Megan, Arnie, Sarah, Griffin, Marcy, Heather, and Drex for setting the Potluck! bar so high.

Thank you Boyfriend for being the bestest collaborator.

And thank you Audience for being so fun, nice, and not storming out when you had to use toilet paper to dry your hands because we forgot to put guest towels out.

Nights like last night makes you shrug at musings like “Not a fan of how Saya does business so I won’t be attending any of these events,” part of a reflection on my life from someone commenting on a post of mine.

Onwards and upwards!  I love my life.

See more Potluck! 1.0 Photos