canadians drankkit, like champs

Wow. There weren't nearly as many people at this Toronto meetup as there were in SF, Boston, or New York, but they certainly drank enough to make up for it.At some point during the night, I promised the guys I'd take one of the event photos and turn it into today's logo to commemorate this monumental event -- the only stop scheduled for our "world" tour.

We've gotten to meet 4 of our super-redditors (top 10 and long-timers at that) on this drankkit tour. I'd gotten the chance to meet noname99 back in NY a few months ago, but it was great introducing him to Steve. And then hearing him say how much he was looking forward to tags. Hehe.

This was the best group pic of the night, so I thought it'd be an even better logo.

Change the logo in the middle of the day? Sure. That's the kind of power I have. I had to do a bit of photoshopping to get a few heads into the frame, but you could probably already tell from the pixels.

One intrepid redditor/journalist, Jordan Yerman, even documented the event on NowPublic. Thanks, Jordan, and thanks to all of you who came out.

Everyone was quite courteous, insisting that each team reddit member drink 3 shots for every 1 shot they had. I still affirm that shots of tequila are to be taken with salt and a lime, not a lemon. That was probably the biggest dose of culture shock on the trip.

Oh yes, your beer is better than ours. Your jager-bombs are also tasty, but comparable to ours. Maybe we really should have picked up some citizenship papers.

Unfortunately, we only had a day in Toronto. We'll have to come back, but now we're on our way to Detroit. We'll see if it is indeed a rock city.

I still haven't gotten an answer for why they're called the Toronto Maple Leafs and not Leaves. Hmpf. +5,000 points to whomever can explain this one to me...

reddit new york meetup: the valleywag-fairy strikes again

For the record, Connor's digg shirt read "i digg [me]." It was the perfect attire for our New York reddit meetup.

Beer + geeks = Valleywag-bait. I guess we're doing something right.

Despite what you might have read about an 'impromptu' Q&A session, this terrible idea was advertised earlier as a chance to hurl vitriolic barbs at team reddit in real life -- just like in feedback emails. Only the problem was that despite our host's best efforts, the sound system wasn't going to suffice for a crowd as large (or as well open-bar-ified). Fortunately, we managed to get through a couple questions from our plants (congrats, Sabriya, you made it on Valleywag) and it was time to thank folks for coming out and return to taking drink orders.

I guess it turns out that not all user suggestions ought to be implemented. Like so many, this one seemed like a good idea at the time. Shit. Maybe that's because "the time" was at the last meetup and all those users had probably been drinking.

Unsolicited advice: Don't take user feedback more than 1 hour into open bar events.

Oh, and Julia Allison did show up (didn't you hear?) which was a good thing, because I was ready to Photoshop her into a picture to guarantee Gawker would have something to blog about Monday. It turns out she drives enough pageviews to be on Valleywag, too.My only complaint is that Steve's last name is Huffman, not Hoffman. Sloppy tagging makes Web 2.0 angels lose their wings.*

But twice in two weeks guys? I haven't even sent you reddit shirts.

Teasing aside, Julia was a big fan of reddit back when we were just a few guys in a Somerville apartment. And that's really cool of her. I think it was the alien (the drawing of which -- as Valleywag correctly reported -- is the only thing I do).

But we had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of the community last night, including another super-redditor -- raldi! We always try to be the first to admit that you all make reddit such a great site. This really was the least we could do. Thanks to all of you who came out (and apologies to those of you may have had to wait outside for a bit). With a population of 8M, things got pretty cramped; we're expecting a much smaller turn out in Detroit. Heh.

Details to come...

(Our poorly lit photos of the NY event are on facebook. The camera got misplaced pretty early in the night, so there aren't too many.)


*Kiwis have wings, but since they're flightless birds, they might as well not have them -- like Web 2.0 angels when someone tags sloppily. This particular kiwi is the mascot for some adorable product management software, FogBugz. I will gladly be a Fog Creek billboard.