I am writing this at 4:30 am on Saturday morning.
While this may at first sound like a reason for great mourning to fill the land, don’t let your heart be troubled.
I’m awake and being productive at this ungodly hour because I am GOING HOME, BABY.
Nothing like a 4 am walking/bus/subway/train/plane/automobile journey to kick off an extended Thanksgiving celebration. This is the first time I’m going home since moving to New York, and I’m excited.
Now, to the week.
This week at work!
What I’ve been working on:
1. Event attendance endurance
Three events, three nights in a row—this week was a party to say the least.
One was a community happy hour hosted by a food innovation fund/accelerator. Their current cohort is comprised completely of food startups focusing on plant-based proteins.
This one was great because 1) food is amazing, 2) innovation is awesome, and FREE innovative food is even better. I met some really cool people here.
The second event was Demo Day for StartupBoost, which is the pre-accelerator that—
We interrupt this broadcast for a real-time trip update:
My train has been sitting on the tracks for the past 30 minutes.
There is a man sitting next to me talking loudly to himself and eating cold chicken.
What if I miss my flight?
yikes
Back to Startup Boost I guess. After months of practicing their pitches over and over and over again, the seven startups are—
We interrupt this interruption to bring you another real-time trip update!
The entire section of the train that has a flight to catch is about to make a mass exodus in order to figure out other methods of transportation to the airport.
Stay tuned.
As I was saying, the startup founders have been practicing their pitches and are now ready to deliver them to a real-life crowd of people!
And a crowd it was. We sure know how to fill a room! However, I’ll cover that later.
The third event of the week was Industry Night for—
WE INTERRUPT AGAIN TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THE AUTHOR IS CURRENTLY SPRINTING UP SOME STAIRS TO CATCH A TAXI TO THE AIRPORT WITH A GROUP OF STRANGERS SHOUTING “WE HAVE TO GET TO NEWARK!”
Is this real life?
Please hold while our systems are momentarily down due to unforeseen circumstances.
Translation: I finally made it to the airport, but it was an adventure. Everything up to this point was written in real time. Everything after this is written retroactively after the fact. That is all.
So anyway, the last event of the week was the Industry Night for the current cohort at Numa New York.
It’s always exciting to listen to startups pitch, but this event was especially engaging for another reason.
The Numa Industry Night was the very first event I ever attended in New York—three months ago, on my very first day in New York, I attended their last cohort’s pitch night.
It was really surreal to think about who/what/where I was three months ago at that first Industry Night compared to who/what/where I am now, three months later.
2. The Startup Boost Demo Day
I mentioned before that one of the events that I attended was one that the Hapday Team was largely involved with hosting.
Because both of my bosses are co-directors of the New York chapter of Startup Boost, they were the ones planning the event.
And because I’ve been involved with the social media management for both Hapday and Startup Boost, I also was involved with helping with various components of the event.
Promoting the startups on social media from various accounts before the event, creating graphics for social posts announcing judges/startups/sponsors, compiling the slides for the demo day presentations, sending emails before and after, and documenting the evening itself are a couple of ways I pitched in to help with the event.
That night we had a very full room with lots of lingering conversations—so much so that by the end, they practically had to kick us out of the space.
That’s a sign of a good event in my book.
3. An attitude of gratitude
Last week I mentioned planning out a Thanksgiving-themed series of posts for LinkedIn (because I thought Thanksgiving was closer than it turned out to be).
It ended up being a good thing, because with all the craziness of the events and getting ready for Startup Boost, our own Thanksgiving plans would’ve gotten lost in the shuffle.
My boss and I both had a similar idea of highlighting and expressing gratitude for various members of the New York tech ecosystem, so this week I worked on creating and posting those.
What I’ve been learning:
1. What social media scheduling tools can and cannot do.
One thing in particular that they can’t do is tag individuals in a LinkedIn post from a company page.
In a week full of posts that all involved tagging people, this was an annoying quirk to learn about.
2. What goes into a good event.
One of the most important things when planning any event is truly the quality/quantity of the food.
The food at the food innovation event was easily the best food I’ve ever had at a networking event. That night is now burned into my mind—both the people I met and the startups who were featured.
While the food is obviously not the main focus of these kinds of events, bringing in delicious and unique offerings is still an incredibly easy way to differentiate yourself from the masses. It also shows that you’re willing to pay attention to the details in order to give your guests the best experience possible.
I love food. It brings us all together. And I think that it has the incredible power to bring any event from good to great almost single-handedly.
3. Why I am the way that I am.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been increasingly aware of my struggle to get things done in the amount of time I think they should be done.
I’ve felt caught in a cycle of constantly running behind in project and never quite being able to get ahead on anything.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t working hard or spending time messing around—I’m constantly working on things, and I’ve never watched YouTube videos at work. But I’ve still felt this lingering sense of unproductivity.
Well, miraculously enough, this past week I feel like I finally began to understand the underlying cause for these frustrating cycles.
I thought maybe it was a time management issue, or a focus issue, or a procrastination issue, or an organization issue.
Turns out, it’s all of them! But also none of them.
Confused? Same
Turns out, I suck at everything because I’m a nine.
That’s right, fellas—we’ve officially moved up to Code Enneagram on the Official Scale of Annoying White Girl-ness.
Although I still don’t subscribe to the whole “eat, sleep, and breathe the enneagram because it’s the closest we’re ever gonna get to ultimate truth” ideology, I really have gained a couple of incredibly helpful insights from the two videos I watched last week.
I’ll most likely be creating a post diving into this into more depth at a later date, but suffice it to say that I’ve learned things about myself that will hopefully help transform the way I approach (and complete) my work.
This week in New York City!
The most exciting thing to happen New York-wise this past week was hands-down my trip to the airport on my way home.
While you got the first part of the adventure in real-time (I really wrote it as it was happening, so please forgive the, uh, conversational nature of those portions of this post), here’s the overview of the rest of the ensuing events.
Went to bed at 11 and woke up at 2.
Packed and cleaned my room and left at 4.
Got on the Amtrak at 5. Supposed to leave at 5:05.
ETA-ed at Newark at 6:15 or so.
Large (presumably homeless) man, reeking of cigarettes and alcohol and smattered with red stains that I was praying wasn’t blood, sat next to me at 5:05.
The four rough and tough, tattoos and gauges railroad guys sitting in the seats in front of me all made sure I was okay with this enormous, mentally unstable man sitting next to me. I felt cared for in the most New York way possible.
5:30 and the train was STILL SITTING THERE. half an hour behind with NO word as to why. My gps was showing that I was sitting somewhere 7 miles from my actual location.
5:45 and still no word, and there were anxious rumblings spreading throughout the car. People, also heading to Newark, were getting nervous about their 8am flights.
I, realizing I ALSO had an 8am flight, started to get nervous.
The railroad guys in front of me decided to abandon ship, almost an hour after we were supposed to depart.
There was a mass exodus from the car after one brave soul brought back the report that the sole employee was on the phone, surrounded by a mob of angry train-passengers, STILL with no answer.
The railroad guys didn’t even ask me—they just told the talking-to-himself-man to move so I could get out, and then asked where I was going.
I didn’t quite catch that convo because there was a panicked crowd of people, almost late for their flights, shouting “WE HAVE TO GET TO NEWARK,” and so we all sprinted through the station, up the stairs, and to the cabs waiting outside.
Half of them went in one, and I wound up in one with a guy named Steve** who had a flight at SEVEN which made me feel SLIGHTLY silly for being nervous about my 8 o’clock flight.
But then I justified it with “yeah, well—thanksgiving weekend. Security could be crazy, I ain’t takin no chances.”
And I watched his eyes widen and his spirit fall as he screamed “SECURITY. I DIDNT THINK ABOUT SECURITY. I DONT EVEN HAVE TIME TO HAVE A SMOKE.”
Eventually we made it to the airport, after first establishing that we both work at consultancies. His, however, is with finances and ours is with organic fertilizer companies, so whatever.
I had never paid for a cab before, so I had no idea if we could split it in the actual cab payment. Then he was like “don’t worry about it, just Venmo me”So I scanned his QR code and we went our separate ways and all was well in the world.
EXCEPT.
VENMO CRASHED AND I LOST HIS VENMO CODE.
SO NOW I OWE SOME RANDOM STRANGER NAMED STEVE** $45 BECAUSE WE TOOK AN EMERGENCY TAXI TO THE AIRPORT AND I DONT EVEN KNOW IF HE MADE IT ON HIS PLANE OKAY
The exact text I sent family and friends who asked how my travels were going.
**only the names were changed to protect the innocent
This story does have a happy ending on multiple levels:
- I made it to my flight fine and had no issues at all for the rest of the day.
- I found Steve** on LinkedIn and confirmed that he was, in fact, the correct Steve** and did, in fact, receive his money. Thank you, technology.
- I was a woman of my word and the very first stop I made in Minnesota was at a Kwik Trip. #theholyland
That is all. Thanks for reading this behemoth of a post. It was a good week.
Be blessed!