Networking

I had an interesting “networking” experience last night. There is a band here in Indianapolis, Extra Blue Kind (EBK), that is managed by one Ray Mills. I know of Ray and have seen him around, but never really met him. Ray does some pretty cool stuff here in Indy in the music arena - booking great events such as the free Indy Music + Arts Festival. He's also friends with the members of Wolfy.

I've seen EBK a few times and liked them, so while fiddling around on Myspace the other night I decided to add them to my friends list. I got a “thanks for adding us” comment, followed by an email asking if I was the same person mentioned by the guys in Wolfy. We emailed back and forth a couple times. I guess since he knew I was friends with the guys in Wolfy - and since he's just a nice guy - he invited me to his 40th birthday party he was having later the same night. It was going to be a big party with several of the bands he works with playing. It sounded like fun, plus a good opportunity to meet Ray and talk with him some more.

I got to this place about 8:15 (the invite said it started at 8) and not many people had showed up yet. It was a bit weird because from the outside it's this slightly rundown brick building; I was expecting it to be a big open room inside, an art studio or something. It's actually been turned into a house, though. The door was open so I just walked in and headed upstairs where I heard some voices. I didn't see Ray anywhere and didn't know anybody, so I awkwardly stood there for a moment. A guy named Joseph walked up and introduced himself and I asked, “um, this is the birthday party for Ray Mills, right?” He puts on a real serious face and says “uhm... the bat mitzvah... for Celeste.” He had me wondering for a moment, but I was pretty sure the address was correct and I'm pretty sure nobody looked like they were having a bat mitzvah, heh heh. So that was an interesting ice breaker.

It was an interesting night. I knew only 3 people that were there, one of which was Ray who I had only just met. He was quite friendly as were several other guests, so I didn't feel awkward for too long. I spoke for a little while with with one guy who works at Interactive Intelligence, a software company here in Indianapolis. I got his business card; always good to have names, numbers, and connections (albeit brief connections, you never know).

This was an amazing house, very artistic. The bottom floor was mostly a big open studio room, one wall covered with caricatures of a bunch of people. Upstairs they had pretty much taken out all the walls. Half of the room was the living room area, with hardwood flooring. There was a pillar with a 50's era b&w television on it. It was on with just a vertical bar of static in the middle and had painted on the screen “Mind Control Device circa 1958”. No other tv was in sight, but that's probably because there was an LCD projector hanging from the ceiling and a huge projection screen that came down on the opposite wall. The other half was the kitchen area, the floor raised about 6 inches. In the middle of the kitchen area was a spiral staircase leading up to the roof.

So anyway, it was a cool evening meeting a bunch of new people in a cool house, or on the cool house, as the case was. In other less rambling news, I'm probably meeting some other cool people this weekend and am celebrating the end of the semester on Saturday night. Huzzah!