Bandcamp Meetup
August 2010. It was the very early days of Bandcamp (i.e. the on-line music streaming/download service we all know and love). I already had a couple of my silly solo albums up on the site, and as such got an invite for an Bandcamp "meetup" at the Makeout Room in SF. Basically the very small Bandcamp staff was hanging out to chat informally with the public and poke brains. I had misgivings about such a social errand being a pain in the ass or waste of time, but I wanted get out of my comfort zone and practice networking. And maybe I could help improve that site with my polymath expertise?
I arrived and found it to be a small gathering. I wasn't drinking, so I got right to awkwardly looking for anybody I knew (fat chance) while gravitating to the few members of the Bandcamp team identified with stickers on their shirt. Eventually I just horned in on one discussion involving a Bandcamp guy named Kevin, an outgoing German visual artist lady, and some nice drunk dude. They gladly had me and we introduced ourselves.
Kevin was an all around computer geek (like my role in the SETI world). In fact I name-dropped my connection to SETI@home for some street cred, but he claimed to have no idea what I was talking about. I found that impossible to believe, and wrote off his dismissal as a passive aggressive way to say, "SETI@home? That's so 2000." Or maybe, "we're not hiring."
Fair enough - I guess that project was old news and it was good to know I could stop expecting that being useful on my resume. Oddly I was the only active musician of the bunch, so they listened to my opinions of what was good and bad about the site. I made a lot of suggestions that on hindsight were pretty dumb, but out of courtesy Kevin pulled out his iPhone to jot some down.
While talking about piracy fears in the streaming age I brought up Adobe's Photoshop and the hackneyed anecdote about how piracy totally helped them. I went on to mansplain about how everybody stole Photoshop until it became an essential standard in the design world, which ended up being very good for Adobe.
Kevin let out a laugh and quickly pointed out his previous job was at Adobe working on Photoshop. Whooooops! I felt like I committed the worst faux pas ever, but he totally agreed with me.
When this discussion reached its obvious conclusion I had already exhausted all my introvert energy and couldn't stomach any more networking. I quietly left, feeling somewhat irrelevant though proud I mingled with strangers and tried to get my thoughts out into the world somehow. After getting back to Oakland Jenya and I headed to Dave and Elisabeth's to watch the latest episode of Mad Men.