I always feel like I ought to try to make it out to these “Twin Tech” events for professional reasons but dear God, if an evil genius designed a venue with the goal of driving me to shoot myself in the face, they’d come up with something like this place. Would anyone with a scintilla of actual taste or style really be caught dead at a place tacky enough to explicitly remind patrons they should “dress to impress”? Just looking at the Web site makes me want a shower. If the target crowd for these events is 1,500 people who can walk into this joint without suppressing a gag reflex, at least I can be confident I’m not missing anything.
Addendum: Yeah, that last line was unfair: As organizer Peter Corbett notes, there are only so many places in DC that can host 2,000 carousers for an evening. My snark is aimed at the venue, not the event.
As long as I’m amplifying, though, let me offer up a more general rule of thumb: the Poochie Principle. The Poochie Principle holds that the extent to which the marketing material for a place or product feels compelled to browbeat you with assertions that it is “sophisticated” or “cutting-edge” or “stylish” or “hip” varies inversely with its actual manifestation of any of these traits. Note that the single most common place to find 3 or more of these adjectives in conjunction appears to be in condo listings.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Peter Corbett // Jan 5, 2009 at 2:11 am
Hey Julian,
I hope you won’t let you impression of a venue’s marketing approach deter you from gathering with the core group of technology innovators in the capital region. Lux Lounge caters to a young, urban clientel typically and they’re into the whole “dress to impress” thing.
Twin Tech is a difficult event to find a venue for, and my only other options for a crowd this is are really boring, traditional places like hotels and meeting/conference spaces. I don’t want to hold Twin Tech in a place like that for fear that it would lose its energy.
I hope you’ll surpress your gag reflex long enough for me to buy you a drink my friend. If you do make it to Twon Tech III please find me and say hello!
Peter Corbett
2 Psyche // Jan 5, 2009 at 3:06 am
As somebody who has been involved in organizing these sort of events, I second Peter’s assertion that it’s really hard to find venues for events like these are aren’t either boring, tacky, or prohibitively expensive.
Peter, did you check out any of the Smithsonian museums? Many of them have spaces available for events – I was involved in organizing one at the Newseum for a telecom crowd that worked out well.
3 Julian Sanchez // Jan 5, 2009 at 3:21 am
Yeah, sorry, the last line was unfair; I meant to snark at the club, not really at TT. I do actually intend to swing by one of these soon.
FWIW, I’m all in favor of dressing well. On a random Friday, I’d lay odds against finding many people who know how in a place that unironically self-describes as “cutting-edge, stylish and hip.” There are never enough LV logos to smother the BeDazzler within. But I assume TT will exhibit a radically lower gauche quotient.
4 Peter Corbett // Jan 5, 2009 at 11:18 am
@psyche did you pay to rent the space? TT has to run lean as all the money raised in sponsorship gets spent at the bar. I wonder if a Smithsonian museum as a venue would be better than the nightclub vibe…
5 Dave // Jan 5, 2009 at 12:43 pm
You are not excited about special guest DJ Samantha Ronson? I feel like I don’t know you anymore.
6 That Fuzzy Bastard // Jan 6, 2009 at 10:51 am
The Samantha Ronson thing is probably the single most offensive part of the club’s website (and that’s a stiff competition). Booking Ronson is fine—I’m sure she’s a perfectly fine DJ. But to put the picture of her with LiLo at the top of the page—not even LiLo watching her perform, just a big pic of ’em together, in case anyone both doesn’t know and would be inspired to see her by that, well, that’s just icky.