Hasta La Creative!

OK so I’m skipping the obligatory “we” in this article, because there’s just no we about it. I attended the 12th annual Advertising Women of New York ‘Women to Watch’ luncheon, alone, because (as you know) there’s only one other writer for this blizzog, and she’s anonymous.

I showed up at the Hilton, right on time, and was immediately greeted by the very nice folks at the welcome desk (Lindsay Galin of Hearst = awesome). I was issued my table number, some tertiary information on the day’s events, and scuttled to AWNY President and Redbook VP/Publisher Mary Morgan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with AWNY, it’s like 100 years old. Snap!

After getting the lowdown from Mary, I spoke with AWNY board member Melissa Goidel. When she’s not representing the group, she spends her time as the VP of Sales for Brand dot net.

At one point in our conversation, I commented about how ‘frightening’ it is to be in advertising these days. Poignantly, Melissa remarked that there’s more to be done in advertising than ever before. Emerging technologies (I’m extrapolating), collaborative opportunities and a down economy all equate to new challenges &#151 and AWNY provides the social and professional networking support system to get it all done.

In all, I chatted up as many people as I could. I only had one awfully awkward conversation, with an AdAge reporter. I had been taking notes when I stumbled upon her. I have a habit of being in journalist mode at these things, and as such I usually write something about whoever I’m speaking with &#151 as a reminder of who I’ve spoken with. It’s annoying to some, and apparently caught this reporter off guard. “Are you taking notes,” she queried, “don’t take notes, I just wanted to say hi.”

Maybe she was afraid I’d put her name in a headline. Either way, hard as I tried to salvage it, the conversation was doomed to continue uncomfortably. Luckily, another person walked up to us at the peak of the nails-on-the-chalkboard-knife-scraping-a-plate moment, and I sneaked off to grab a beer. Phew. I regrouped, and launched myself back into the crowd.

More after the jump.

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