(blog): Last Friday's #NYCMathTweetUp Meet-Up

As promised yesterday, more about my weekend meet-ups.

On Friday Night, a gathering of #mathednyc took place at the offices of Offices of New Visions for Public Schools on West 13 Street in New York City, dubbed the #NYCMathTweetUp. I'm not sure how the capitalization worked with hashtags. Prior to the event, I read that n > 30 had RSVPed, where n is "the number of people interested". However, upon arrival, I discovered fewer than that made it there on a cold night, but this didn't discourage anyone.

The icebreaker game started as soon as we stepped off the elevator and filled in our name tag. We had to pick another tag from the tree with the name of another guest. I thought to jokingly call these hashtags, but they actually contained our Twitter handles instead. The goal was to locate that person and start a conversation. I joked that I might find my partner, but she might excuse herself because she was still looking for her partner. And I say "she" because I did, in fact, locate @khatrimath before the evening ended. I didn't have many comments to make at that point, except that I thought that the two of us were the only ones with math in our Twitter handles.

Guests were asked to bring a math activity that we could try out. I promptly forgot all about that. Not a problem, however, because (1) David Wees @daidwees supplied us with a page of New Visions Math Tweetup Puzzles, and (2) we didn't actually do any. But that was fine, because the conversations were flowing nicely. (I even stopped talking long enough to allow other to speak... a few times, any way ...)

The one major activity of the evening (after eating too many sliders) was an activity entitled Things That Suck. As educators, we divided ourselves into three camps -- Totally Sucks, Does Not Suck, and Need More Info/Might (Not) Suck -- on each of several burning topics, including Homework, Regents exams and Professional Development. This last one being the reason I tweeted that the evening was "like Professional Development, but, you know, fun", and why the first response to that was "the kind that doesn't suck", by the aforementioned @khatrimath.

The evening wound down and the conversation continued at a local establishment a few blocks away, where the picture I posted yesterday was taken.

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Update: What the heck, I'll add a little about Saturday night, too. I was debating whether or not to add a little more about the Celtic Cross concert because the readers here are usually looking for mathy-geeky comics or math-education discussion. But I'm Irish, and I had a good time, so why not? It's not blog, right?

I uploaded a couple of videos to youtube. I'll link you to their cover of Little Talks, which I referenced in a comic last summer. Search on user cjburke23 to find a bunch more. It was a fun show, and I had a sneak peek at their playlist so that I'd know when to film songs I hadn't gotten before. Unfortunately, they strayed from the playlist a few times. After the end of the evening, the crowd was screaming for "One. More. Song. One! More! Song!", and they obliged (and even played two).

It was at this point, the lead singer, Kathleen Vessey Fee called me over (I was close to the front) and said, "Chris, give someone your phone!". Then she handed me the Cowbell and the stick to play it. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone well enough to hand over my videocamera (it's not a phone) who wasn't also dancing. The thing is: I knew that this would likely happen, given that it was a birthday night out for me, and this was secretly why I invited a bunch of people. So there isn't any video of it (not that I'm aware of), but I played along on the Black-Eyed Peas Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night, which then led into Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me.

It was at this point that the jaw of the young lady pictured below dropped halfway to the dance floor as did those of several of her friends, all of whom were surprised that I appeared to know the song and could sing along with it. So I got a picture with my first "groupie", Jill. The gentleman with her took it, so I'm safe. And it was about time we were introduced because she and her friends are regulars at these shows, and we've bumped into each other on the (very small) dance floor before.

So no math discussions that night, not even about the Guinness t-test, unless that was a taste test.

(blog): It Was a Meet-Up Weekend

Until recently, I had a lot of make-up weekends, lost Saturdays and Sundays were I made-up the backlog of work that I let snowball from Monday to Friday (or the week or weeks before). However, this weekend was a Meet-up Weekend, where I got to meet up with people I didn't know personally beforehand, but now I can say I have.

Warning: These meetups keep me out late -- not complaining. On the contrary, glad that I'm out of a rut. On the other hand, I haven't made up the sleep yet, so this is a short intro post, and the actual events will get described tomorrow. (No comic tomorrow, either. I haven't done one yet, and don't intend to in the next 20 minutes or so.)

Friday night, if you are a math educator in or near New York City and you blog, tweet or post anything about education, you should have joined us at the NYC Math Education Tweetup at New Visions for Public Schools. According to my email, about 30 people were scheduled to attend; however, I think the weather might've scared a few off. Likewise, parking in Manhattan (I took a train) can be a nightmare and finding the correct address was a minor adventure in oddly-labeled buildings. Again, I'll go into more detail tomorrow. I didn't have a decent camera on me, but pictures were taken, and I'm waiting for more to show up online or in email. One picture did show up at the "after-party" -- that's me on the right.

I got a little turned around in the village and thought I was heading in the correct direction for the train. I should've taken the hint when I was standing at the corner of West 4th Street and West 12th Street that something was amiss. I did figure it out, and eventually trains did get me home much later than I expected.

Unfortunately, my body won't sleep late once the sun's up unless it's extremely cloudy, so I lost a couple of hours. However, that didn't prevent me from joining Celtic Cross at a concert. (By joining, I mean that we were all at the same place at the same time.) The music didn't start until after 10pm. Funny thing, back in college, I never went to a late-night show like this. Now, I seem to do it every couple of months. It was an extra-special outing for me in that some family and friends were going to join me for a change to celebrate my birthday last week. Unfortunately, by showtime, every one of them had a legitimate reason for not being there. But I didn't care. I met other people, fans of the band, some of whom I've seen before, even if we hadn't spoken. I also found out others were having birthdays. At one point, three of us met and discovered that we were 30, 40 and 50. Unfortunately, one of us walked away before we could get a picture. I won't mention which it was, but here are the other two (me and Elizabeth).

I wore a red shirt to be festive for Christmas and all that, but by that part of the evening, it was too hot, so I wore it open. I got some compliments on the Celtic Cross design on my shirt, which has no connection to the band other than their name. (That is, their logo is different.)

Again, I can go into detail about the fun I had in a post tomorrow, but if you need to know why I like this band so much and follow them around, here's a little bit of a hint:

(me and Kathleen Vessey Fee)