Today’s post is from Sharleen, YesVideo’s Director of Marketing Communications. She shares her report of last week’s Golden Gate Smackdown.
YesVideo, along with VSCpr, Tandem Capital, and Xtreme Labs sponsored the first annual Golden Gate Smackdown in San Francisco last Wednesday. About 200 techies, reporters and VCs gathered at the Mezzanine for an invitation only mixer in the form of…a ping pong tournament!
Photo Courtesy of VSCpr
Our CEO, Michael, and I found out just days before that we were 2 of the lucky 64 to be vying for the crown…and $1000 towards a charity of our choice. We immediately confessed to each other that our table tennis skills fell a little short of Olympic-caliber. So a couple hours before heading up to the Smackdown, we quietly snuck out of our headquarters and into City Beach, desperately hoping that 10 minutes of practice would save us from a night of embarrassment.
At the Mezzanine we checked in and picked up our official YesVideo headbands. Yessss!
We met up with some of our YesVideo teammates and were able to enter Bill, our mobile developer, into the 64th and final spot. An experienced player, he would surely make up for our novice showing.
Michael and I were predictably smacked down in our first round matches, and Bill advanced a few rounds in the bracket. But in the end it was Saad Kahn of CMEA capital who eliminated Jordan Meyer of Ustream for the ginormous cup.
Photo Courtesy of VSCpr
The open bar featured the Fireball, a bold shot of cinnamon schnapps shaken with Tabasco sauce. I was not so brave, but instead happy to see the Kung Fu Tacos truck parked out back to feed the famished ping pong stars.
The evening was closed out by a live blast-from-the-past performance by Shock G of Digital Underground. Both Shock G and his alter-ego “Humpty Hump” brought back the 90’s hip hop that flashed me back to high school and still occupies most of my iPod today. With some help from the VSCpr crew, I even got to meet him backstage!
All in all, the first annual Golden Gate Smackdown was a huge success. We were happy to be among the sponsors and to meet new folks in the tech world while spending some quality offsite time with our YesVideo teammates.
My next project: convincing Michael that our office needs a ping pong table, to get these underdogs ready for next year’s Smackdown!
YesVideo Winners at Type A Parent Conference
