'Game Show' Opens IgniteNYC III

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

O'Reilly Media's IgniteNYC III was held last night at Santos Party House in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood.  Beginning about twenty minutes late, it opened with a "game show" organized by Rocketboom's "Institute for Internet Studies" called "Know Your Meme: The Game Show! Pwn, Win, or Fail!" and hosted by the Web programs' Jamiedubs, Elspethjane, and Yatta.  Two opposing teams competed for bragging rights about their knowledge of viral Internet content or memes.

The teams, "Team Sorgatz" and "Chocolate Boxxy Babies", consisted of Internet entrepreneur Rex Sorgatz, Jimmy Fallon Show's Gavin Purcell, RCRD LBL's Peter Rojas, URLesque's Kelly Reeves, NY Tech Meetup Organizer Nate Westheimer, NextNewNetworks' Michelle DeForest, Bre Pettis, c | net's Caroline McCarthy, and Tim Shey. 

Team Sorgatz won [Update: That may be incorrect according to Michelle DeForest's Tumblr post here.] and, at one point, seemed to have won over the crowd with an impromptu rendition of the Soulja Boy dance.  [Update: Rocketboom's Kenyatta Cheese has video available on his Tumblr blog here.]  However, most of the other jokes during this portion of the evening fell flat.  Audience members standing with us in the back of the packed room were unaware, for instance, that Team Sorgatz was wearing outfits consisting of Rex-Sorgatz style eyeglasses and scarfs. 

While there, we spoke with and saw (in no particular order): Abrams Research's Rachel Sklar, freelance copyeditor Andrew Graham, Translation's Rosie Siman, Tumblr's David Karp, Clusterstock's John Carney, Ripple6's Katie Morse, freelance publicist Josh Sternberg, The Horn Group's Yuna Park, Contentinople's Ryan Lawler, R2 Media's Roger Resnicoff, Sawhorse Media's and Shorty Awards co-founder Greg Galant, independent consultant Sara Holoubek, and Baveo's Ari Greenberg.  If you'd like to see some photos, photographer Brian Van Nieuwenhoven posted a few on his Flickr page and Sklar posted hers on Flickr as well.

If we missed you, please let us know at tips@nyconvergence.com.  Since this portion of the evening ran long, we missed the talks and you can also let us know at the same e-mail address about anything which we should highlight.

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