The fine folks at Yahoo threw a small reception on Sunday at the French Quartier, a nice jazz restautant nearby. Prabhakar Raghaven, now head of Yahoo Research, used to work with a number of folks now at MSR-SVC, and so a few of us who were about tagged along. The folks we met from UMD were also there, as was another fine CMU student (go plaid!) and a woman from Northeastern who has the distinction of having had her luggage lost two SIGIRs in a row — but apparently the emergency shopping trip worked out OK.

Some of the Yahoo folks invited us to go to a club a few doors down. It was a fun club with people dancing and drinking… all on a Sunday! The only minor snafu came as we were trying to leave. After the band finished its set, we took off… but you pay to get out, not to get in. So we’re trying to get everyone together so Stephanie, who was organizing the event for Yahoo, can pay for everyone. We managed to get almost everyone out, but 3 cards didn’t scan (they’re like parking cards from a pay-as-you-exit parking lot). So Stephanie paid again, and when one didn’t scan, started giving the guy at the door what-for. Next thing you know, they’re all working, and we’re out of there. Fear the irate redhead.

Anyway, while the press out there likes to point out to how companies like Microsoft and Yahoo are aggressively competing with one another, which we are, it’s actually nice to take a step back and realize that we’re all good people with a shared passion for technology, and search in particular. Yeah, we’ll be back at each other’s throats next week, but for now we can talk to each other as people.

BTW… it’s Day 2, and I still haven’t seen anyone from Google…

This entry was posted 2 years, 11 months ago on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 11:56 pm and is filed under MSN Search, Trips and Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.