Blind date #FAIL

I’ve only ever been on one blind date. It was a bust. A friend set us up because we both wore black all the time. That was obviously not enough.

The SeedNetworking experience was also a major bust. First of all, the room was full of  suits.

It looked and acted like a job fair. Web agencies fishing for clueless potential clients, developers looking for funded startups, small businessmen convinced they were on the verge of Internet greatness.

The developers, wearing blue dots on their badges, were outnumbered 2 to 1 by people seeking developers (red dots). It was totally a cutthroat game of musical chairs. Red dots hovering like vultures over blues, diving for the vacant spot across from a blue dot the second the whistle blew.

So since there weren’t enough blues to go around, I tried to chat with other red dots. Didn’t meet a single red dot (other than the cute kid from tipdy I’d met at the TechCrunch thing) who seemed to take me seriously. Was it my gender? My age? Both? Should I have worn a suit? (Don’t own one.) Did I mention there were three women and about 60 guys there?

Thank gawd for Olivier (blue dot). At least I got 7 minutes of brainstorming with a super pro dev who knew me. And for Alain (blue dot) who appeared to accept that I had a brain. And for Sylvain (blue dot), who’d seen the rise and fall of punch cards. I left after four blue dots and made it home in time for La Nouvelle Star…

[May 6, 2010: Had coffee with Sylvain, who assured me he wasn't around for punch cards. He was very gracious about it, having recognized that there might have been a little hyperbole in that statement for literary effect.]