Meeting great people

We first shopped around down town today before going to our first meeting. Jacob and I walked around and window shopped at some of the nicest stores in the US, like Neiman Marcus. I did manage to find some awesome deals at Lacoste and Guess though. Thank you Clearance.

When we were grabbing lunch in the square, we watched a really cute bird go from table to table cheeping for food. It knew it was fairly adorable, and it definitely got more food donations than the dumb pigeons that were flying around. You have to admit though, that when we left the plates at the table and walked away about a dozen of them swarmed on my breadcrumbs in a huge swarm.

When we met back up with the group, we headed off to our meeting with Porter Novelli, a public relations firm that handles accounts such as Pepsi Co. Instead of giving us beers like Digg did, they gave us milk and cookies. I felt like I was in kindergarten, but I will admit that it was delicious. Because I'm interested in public relations as a possible career, it was especially fascinating to listen to their representative talk about her job. I really liked the description and feel like it would be a pretty good fit for me and the life I would like to have in the future. The woman mentioned that she was a connector (Referance: the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell) and knew lots and lots of people, which I will remember as I begin my job search and possibly internship search for this summer. I also felt comforted by the fact that she had many jobs and different career paths that she took before taking on this PR job- this soothed my anxiety over finding that perfect job right away and taking this super smooth path to early retirement.

Creative Commons was our second destination of the day. For those of you that are unaware, allows deeper collaboration of creative works, such as media. It is a copyright of sorts, but much different than we have taught to think of it as. "Some Rights Reserved" is one of their slogans, and I think it clarifies what they do. It smooths out the copy writing process to allow greater sharing which thus allows greater progress in learning through different medias. Another mantra is "Share, Remix, Reuse -Legally." On their website, this is followed by the simple description that CC is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration." One of my professors from last semester, Tim Schweizer, believes that eventually copyright will disintegrate because our system of learning and collaboration will become so incredibly shared. It was interesting hearing about this organization, that is seemingly moving towards that path by loosening the copyrights as they apply to media. I'm taking Organizational Behavior with him next semester, and I will definitely be asking him about his opinion on this issue, and if he uses it at all (although I know we utilize Flat World Knowledge in the class, which is similar because books are viewed electronically for free by students). Allison Domicone, who worked at CC, has the same job that I have at Luther, which is a Development Assistant. I'm becoming happier every time we meet with a organization that I took that Student Director of Annual Giving job, instead of sticking with cleaning the pool at night.

After our meeting with CC we had free time. Jacob, Aaron, Bryan and I went to China Town to look around and grab dinner. It was mostly window shopping, most of the things I actually liked were from Thailand. I think that will be my next travel destination. We asked for recommendations for dinner, and went to R&G lounge (we should have shared food, they were rather large portions) then raced back to the hotel before heading off to the Purple Onion comedy club.

We barely got into the Purple Onion, which was hosting SF Sketchfest- a traveling comedian troupe. We didn't buy our tickets ahead of time (woops). While we were anxiously waiting in

line to get in, I looked up the stairs and saw the one and only ROBIN WILLIAMS! I told my group and started tapping them all on the shoulder and it took them a while to actually believe me and turn their heads. He passed by me and was very polite. It was the best moment ever. Everyone got super quiet- it was just too surreal. We finally got into the club and half of us stood at the bar while we listened to the show. There was only one Comedian in the firstgroup (Dave something?) that I thought was pretty funny. His style was sort of like Dane Cook. We were able to stay for the second show, called Joke-e-oke. Where people from the audience do a short stint of acting like comedian. There were 3 funnies from this group, a young white woman doing Chris Rock, a young chinese woman which was funny in of itself, & a middle aged man doing a black woman. It was much funnier than the previous group I thought. At the end of the show, the group got pictures with Robin Williams, Rick Overton, Paul Provenza & one other who I now forget. It was an incredible night, and day. A wonderful Friday, I can't believe how much fun it was.