I’m not the type to get star struck very often. I’ve written a couple posts that were graced by the presence (and comments) of some people that have inspired me to work in this industry, and I managed to keep my composure.
Most of the time, your online experience is spent imagining what a person looks or acts like via their online persona. Blog posts, things they find cool, the occasional tweet. I keep up with the on-goings of the web world via my favorite feed reader, and get instantaneous updates on cool stuff multiple times a day.
One of the blogs I’ve been following closely for several months is that of Tina Roth Eisenberg, otherwise known as “swissmiss.” She somehow manages to reliably find mind-blowing art and ingenious creative creations on a regular basis, and publishes them on her blog for the world to enjoy.
In the course of a typical day, I check my reader in the morning, just after lunch, and then again as I’m leaving. It just so happened that I had a late lunch today, and was forced to skim the feeds before I ran to my next meeting. The last post I came across was “White Space Wednesdays,” a Flickr pool dedicated to tasteful uses of whitespace. Needless to say, I’m a fan of white space!
When I got the meeting, the project manager had an Acrobat Connect session open with 3 designers working on our redesign. When you log into the chat, you get to pick a screen name, and one of the participants, a lady, had chosen “swissmiss.” As I pondered the likelihood of two people using that handle, the project manager addressed her directly as “Tina.”
My heart stops.
Me: Her name is Tina?
PM: Yes…
Me: As in… Tina EISENBERG??
PM: Uhh.. I think so.
Me: Oh my god! She’s famous!!
At which point I collapse to the floor and beginning spinning around, clucking, and flapping my wings. It was my natural reaction. Well, not really. I managed to keep myself composed, but still!
Anyway. Best meeting ever.
For those who haven’t been lucky enough to join her in a videochat, she is ebullient, humble, and very pretty. And she laughs a lot.
Oh yea, and swissmiss posted a screengrab of the meeting. Check it out:
Eli, it was such a pleasure to e-meet you in today’s video conference. I am blushing again. Thank you for your compliments! Next time I am in the Chelsea office, I’ll make sure to come by and say hi! Sound good?
sounds great!
How about April 14?
Hey Regg!
Are you commenting via the touch?
Tell me you picked up a case for that, dude. Supposedly there’s a nation wide iPhone shortage going on. I thought it was rumor until I went in 14th st and they didn’t have any. Do you think 3g is imminent?
great story. tina is the biggity-bomb.
oh yeah, i was one of the other guys. ;-)
Hey Sean, thanks for stopping by!
Tina’s site is currently assaulting my measly server with visitors. I had to toss on some caching because it started overloading the DB.
Today was hilarious. Looking forward to the next meeting
‘ebullient’, now there’s a word you don’t hear everyday…
I thought it only fitting to use an unusual word for an unusual encounter.
I’ll admit I did google the word to make sure I was using it correctly, haha.