The OPMOM Blog

Dinner with Guy Kawasaki: Chicks, Guns, & Eating Crow

Written by Carrie Pacini on April 26, 2008 – 10:28 am -

After Guy Kawasaki’s terrific “Art of the Start” presentation at the Houston Technology Center Thursday night, a few of us really lucky ladies got to go have dinner with him and talk shop. Well not exactly “shop” in the literal sense, unless you’re running a gun shop, boot shop, sleazy law firm, etc. Let’s just say it was a perfectly casual conversation and a great end to a memorable night. But first let’s review how the evening started good, and went uphill to amazing from there.

Here’s Carrie’s recipe for an awesome night in 3 easy steps:

Step 1. Get to listen to a totally incredible presentation from startup guru Guy Kawasaki in a small, personal venue. It was funny, intimate, and if you didn’t get something out of it for your business, you were freakin’ asleep. Or dead. Or too busy Twittering.

Step 2. Have OpMom called out by Guy (and w00ts from friends in the audience) when he was going through his Alltop demonstration. Guy announces “Is OpMom here tonight?” My husband practically sprains my arm raising it into the air! This is being streamed live on the web. Things are good.

Step 3. Get immediate props from Guy for your work. While sitting there with Guy at dinner, he shows me an email from his PR firm about a cool blog post they discovered that was about his new “Adoption” section on Alltop.com. If you’re a regular reader here you know that the blog post was written by…me. So he hands me his PDA to read the email as proof. Amazing.

And I was in good company – there were some truly awesome Houston media power-chicks at the table:

Jenny Lawson (www.theBlogess.com)
Laura Mayes (www.Sk-rt.com)
Erica O’Grady (www.peanutbuttermedia.com)
Tracey Wallace (www.truelightresources.com)

So what did the group talk about at dinner?
That’s a total secret, unless of course you go read Jenny’s blog, which I know will recount everything from the adult beverage count to the dirty jokes in perfect, gory detail (I mean, she was taking notes in a little book, what else should we expect?).

And being in Texas, Guy – with his sweet new Lucchese boots – brought out our best Southern-fried conversation. Yep, we talked about guns and eating awesome hillbilly foods like squirrel and crow (I don’t mean the latter in the metaphorical sense). On the sort-of-business front, we talked about frivolous lawsuits, stupid lawyers, bad branding, food/restaurants (because Erica likes my cooking – thanks!), this summer’s BlogHer conference, etc. We also learned that Guy holds business meetings in an ice skating rink because I think he likes hockey more than meetings. All interesting pieces that made up a very cool evening. And I’ll leave the bar tab recap and R-rated content to www.thebloggess.com. Her storytelling ability and great sense of humor is worth the visit.

Tags: ericaogrady, good times, guy kawasaki, houston technology center, jennylawson, lauramayes, lucchese, my husband, opmom, sk-rt, texas, the blogess, tracywallace, truelightresources
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