When journalists dance...

… the world is a somewhat bleaker place.

Brace yourself for these photos from the opening party of APME in San Jose this past Wednesday. You will want to drink your vodka straight from the dog’s dish tonight.

(Ed note: In a rare moment of reflection, photos were removed in case I need one of these highly-placed, amazingly graceful executives to hire me someday.)

Actually, I had a great time at the party. We returned to the scene of the crime, so to speak: the museum next to the Fairmont where we had our SNDSJ opening party. And, once again, I was a guest of the very gracious folks at the Mercury News. They're always talking about the DNA of the paper. They definitely have a strong hospitality gene.

No offense to this shindig, but the SNDSJ party was better. Last year we were under the tent out among the palm trees. This one was all inside the museum. You simply can't beat a tent. And while this bash had way more food (a gianormous pan of paella, reminiscent of the food stations at the bullring in Barcelona), it didn't have the same energy. There were a lot of long faces in the room, editors who had already been through the budget wringer and see it coming again.

I was talking with one editor who runs a medium size newsroom with a vibrant visual culture. He has lost 20% of his staff over the last five years and his recently departed visual leader will not be replaced. But he, like everyone else I spoke with, brightened up when we were either talking about:
A. the terrific enterprise stories they just published or were about to publish
B. the members of their staff who bring passion and personality to the newsroom and the craft.

Great journalism will do that.

But this was still a good time and no better time than at the end of the night at the live auction.

Matt Mansfield, who got me on the guest list (thanks, Matt!), thought it would be a good idea to check out the auction. A short silent auction, followed by a live auction complete with paddles you wave when you want to bid, this APME gig makes a chunk more money than our SND auction and we wondered if there wasn’t a lesson to be learned.

Here’s the simple secret to raising more money in Orlando: Get lots of editors on the upper end of the pay scale to come and aggressively liquor them up over the course of the evening. Hope one of them is tipsy enough to raise recklessly and heckle others, appealing to the competitive nature of this group. Before you know it, someone will have dropped a K for some Omaha Steaks and Maine Lobsters.

Me? I woke up with a lightly throbbing headache and tickets to baseball games in Milwaukee and D.C.

What the hell?