Wow! Great turnout last night. Thanks to all who attended and performed at last night’s event—and to those who came just to support a friend or loved one.

In case you missed it, there were so many people who decided to perform songs (often with a guitar and/or a friend), that I—your host—decided to offer encouragement for “spoken word” in the form of a spontaneous, “Back of the Napkin” poem contest.

The poem had to be written there, on the spot, and performed before 10:00 PM (though we did allow a couple of late submissions). I was to be the only judge and the one-and-only prize was a (not-too-crisp) five-dollar bill. tahCha then upped the ante by throwing in a delicious tahCha drink to the winner as well. (Not too shabby, in my opinion, for an event with free admission.)

Kicking things off, I explained that, in terms of “style” or “quality,” the only requirement for winning the prize was that I like it the best of all submissions. I also made it clear that, given the number of youth who might participate, my judgement would likely be weighted that way. All entrants were required to perform their work on stage and submit a legible copy to me for review, and there were many, wonderful poems created and performed—several by first-time poets/performers.

It truly was a tough decision. All the submissions were excellent and there were several honorable-mention performances, however, in the end, the prize was captured by first-time performer and star tahCha barista, Olivia!

Congratulations Olivia! And all others deserve recognition; thank you for putting your heart onto the back of a napkin and sharing it with your friends at tahCha.

If we do this again at the next event, and I suspect we well may, one more rule will be that, though the previous event’s winner may submit an entry, he or she will ineligible to win. (That is, one cannot win twice in a row.)

The next Spoken Word Open-Mic Night will be in two weeks, on August 17, 2010. See you there.

Parker

Thanks to Marjan Yavari at A Tasty Pastry for sending her website redesign work my way.  I am up for the challenge and excited about the project.  We have not discussed the details of the project at length, but I understand that she would like her pastry shop to have an updated look-and-feel as well as improved ranking in the search engines.  Actually, there are lots of websites out there that could use exactly this type of attention.  So, the competition for business to get their sites looking spiffier than that of their competition should get lots of out-of-work social media professionals back to work.

This will be lots of fun.  Oh, did I mention that I have a quite a sweet tooth?  Oh yeah!  lots of fun!

Special thanks to @kcolier (aka Kristin) for the laminating setup, and ride to and from the event.