EVENT REVIEW: excitePR and eRSVP.com Party It Up at Notorious Club New York

The excitePR/ eRSVP Aug 15 party at Club New York was a
success if ever we’ve seen one! Upwards of 300 attendees
from companies like EntryPoint, Playboy.com, DoubleClick,
Crains NY and About.com jammed into Club New York.

The venue’s notoriety made for great conversation – at
least three different people pointed out to us the exact
spot where Puff Daddy and Jennifer Lopez were standing
during the infamous shooting. The club is spacious, nicely
lit, and almost completely devoid of chairs. Perfect for a
networking event! (Ventilation was also extremely good –
cigarette smoke was barely noticeable.) The floor is multi-
leveled, and sponsors (Vindigo, Fanning.com,
SaveTheDate.net, iClips.com, efrenzy.com, and eShowNY.com)
were situated on a platform on the left side of the bar (in
the Puffy/Jennifer area), visible from just about
everywhere, but not in the middle of everything.

Signage for the host companies was large and clear (for
once!) taking up most of the back wall of the club. A wise
move on the part of the hosts was to keep the music down
for the first half of the event, to optimize networking
conditions. The halfway point of the evening was marked by
cash and attaché giveaways, and after that, the music was
turned up – but not so loud that you couldn’t carry on a
conversation.

ERSVP’s Biz Dev guy and official party planner, Michael
Aufrichtig credits us for helping with the ins and outs of
party planning: "Reading the MarketingSherpa.com
newsletters, we learned a few pointers for do's and don't
for networking parties. We made sure everyone had nametags
and the music was not loud to allow quality networking
between our guests... We also made sure we had a lot of
tchotchkes to hand out!" (We’re blushing.)

We had such a great time that night, in fact, that our
complaints seem almost petty. But of course we have a few
– it’s us, after all. First of all, drinks were EXPENSIVE.
Our vodka gimlet cost us a whopping $8! Free drink cards
did abound, though – we just weren’t fortunate enough to
get one before our first trip to the bar. The only real
faux pas was the complete absence of food. Even Michael
Tchong has recently lambasted parties for this oversight –
can’t have revelers drinking on an empty stomach. And our
own publisher quotes a friend whose credo is that “Food is
What Makes an After-Work Party Sticky.” Well, no matter –
everyone seemed to stick til this event was over.

A brief note on tchotchkes: Few and far between at this
event, which is fine because no one really had anything to
carry them in. But the two stars of the evening were
definitely eRSVP.com’s liberal supply of The Brick (The
Official E-commerce Sourcebook) and Vindigo’s free
downloads for Palm devotees.