We woke up pretty late today, after hanging out for so long last night. Dustin made a fantastic breakfast of eggs with bacon and tomatoes.

There's a geek conference tonight, the Online Marketing Lounge. This sort of thing is common in places like New York, Silicon Valley, LA, Tokyo, London, Berlin, etc, but not really in Charlotte. Since I'm a professional in Online Marketing I think it would be really cool to check out. Dustin is in a related field, and has some great ideas of his own about web development. We're both looking forward to this thing... problem is, Dustin and Robert (a friend of his, also a geek like us) both have tickets, but I was "at sea" on the ferry while the ticket option was available. Dustin has come up with a scheme to get me in: I'll announce that I'm a big-shot Web Developer from America when we get there, and flash some business cards, and boom: free drinks.

(photo of Online Marketing Lounge flyer)

Catch is, I don't /have/ any business cards. I mean, I do, at home - some quite nice ones... rounded corners, gloss, full color, custom design... the works. I wasn't really planning to pick up business in Germany though so I left them behind. There's a print shop down the road, so I have a sketchbook, Photoshop, and about twenty minutes to make business cards. I think /these/ are actually much hotter than my fancy cards. I plan to replace the design when I get home with my new sketch theme:

(photos)

We got bad information from a quick google search about standard biz card sizing, so it was a little too wide and had to be cut off. Doesn't lose much though, makes it look edgy and artistic I think. We literally printed them on one sheet of card stock and cut them out by hand.

Somehow that crazy German's scheme worked! I left some cards with the girl checking tickets and joined Dustin and Robert for free drinks all night! These Berliners know how to throw a Web 2.0 party: open bar, lots of big digital displays, a kicker (fuseball) table, venture capitalists and angel investors from all over the world. We were pretty young at 23, but the oldest guys were about 35 and there was a steady stream of absolutely stunning women making the rounds. I'm pretty sure they're not developers or entrepreneurs... my guess is the German version of Silicon Valley groupies. It was pretty exciting; the looks they were giving us suggested that they thought we were successful "Online Marketers" rather than a few geeks still in uni with hand-made business cards for somewhat defunkt businesses.