This past Tuesday I went to the 2011 Crunchies awards.
It began on Monday when I saw that @TechCrunch tweeted about a contest to win tickets to the Crunchies by using the hashtag #Crunchies. I replied right away with a tweet.
A few minutes later, I got a Twitter alert on my phone that Elin, TechCrunch’s Community Manager, replied and said that I had won a ticket!
After a few hours of constantly refreshing my email and checking Twitter, I finally received the ticket. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. After of years of being a thousand miles away, watching the Crunchies from a laptop in upstate New York, buried under a foot of snow, I would finally be able to attend and see it in person.
It was all I thought of that night, and the next morning.
Before I attended the event the next day though, I had another event to attend at 5:30 - Black Founders Happy Hour at Mozilla SF, on the 7th floor of an office building at 2 Harrison Street, in downtown San Francisco. There I met Hadiya, Nnena from Black Founders, Sunny from the Mozilla Foundation, and a few other people. It was great to go to this event and already have friends and people I know. I realized I’m really starting to become closer to San Francisco.
Around 6:20 I had to leave in order to make it to the Crunchies on time. I walked out and looked for a taxi in the evening night; despite the glow from the streetlights all I could see were occupied taxis. I walked north up to Market Street, the street that runs east and then south of San Francisco, and caught the BART from the Embarcadero over to the Civic center. I got off and walked to my apartment simply to drink a red bull. I figured I would need it for the night.
I snagged the sole Red Bull in my refrigerator and walked out with keys in one hand, and the Red Bull in the other. I thought about hailing a taxi to the venue, Davies Symphony Hall, but decided against it because I really wanted the experience of walking up to the hall and seeing everyone walk in.
The walk was about 15 minutes away from my apartment. As I walked past City Hall, I could see the spotlights and the crowd of taxi lights shine from the Symphony hall.
I walked in and got a card from iMeet, put it in my pocket, and walked in to get ticketed from Eventbrite. After walking up the stairs, I walked into the orchestra seating and sat down near the reserved seating.
The event went ok. It was exciting to be near all these entrepreneurs but it seemed like they had some technical issues (startups not being on screen at the correct time or in the correct order).
About 30 minutes into the ceremony, I dropped my cellphone below the seat in front of me but decided to leave it there so I could focus on the event.
I could not focus on the event.
“Did I miss a text?” “Is someone calling me” “What if someone replied to me on Twitter?” “What’s going on at Path?” These were some of the thoughts that went through my head minutes after I dropped my phone and decided to leave it underneath the chair. I may have a problem.
After a strange drunk-driving tribute to Heather Harde, former CEO of TechCrunch, everyone gave a standing ovation and I finally asked the person in front of me for my phone. They begrudgingly bent down, picked it up and handed it to me.
After the ceremony, I walked out and looked for anyone I knew. Despite my 9 months here in SF, I still do not know everyone so I had to look down at my phone and give smiles to people as I walked past.
There were so many heavy-hitters there that I had trouble walking up to them and talking to them. Luckily I saw a few people who I knew and talked to them in order to muster up some courage.
The after party was packed, so it was difficult to talk to reach out and talk to a few people but it was a great event nonetheless.
It was surreal to see all of these great entrepreneurs talking with one another like it was nothing. I saw Don Doge, Shervin Pishevar, and Dave Morin walking around and talking like they were ordinary people. Which they are, but being new to SF it can seem like they are beyond any one we know. We should realize and remember though; people just like us built everything made around us.
At the end, as I was walking down the staircase to the exit I saw Marissa Mayer from Google and was actually a bit star-struck. I really couldn’t believe she was only a few feet in front of me. Not only is she incredibly smart, she has also made an incredible impact on local and mobile with Google. I hesitated a bit but finally walked up to her and said hi and congratulated her on Google+ winning a Crunchie. She said thanks and I walked out onto the street into the glow of the night.
