Mixing and Mingling, Connecting and Camaraderie...The Holiday Spirit was in Full Swing at the NYC Holiday Celebration
12/04/2008
by Amelie Walker
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“What an amazing gift to the NYC tech community the NYC Webgrrls Holiday Celebration was. Amazing atmosphere, perfect ambiance, superb people, delicious food, great prizes and very gracious hosts…the perfect evening for Holiday revelry and networking…Thank you Webgrrls!”
Sarah Peterson - Web Developer, NYC Webgrrl

The anticipation must have been building and building because early arrival was on the minds of many of the attendees for the NYC Webgrrls Holiday Celebration on December 4th at Gaetana’s Restaurant in the West Village…”our 7:00PM event got started at 6:45PM” said Ruth Levine, the Webgrrls Coordinator.  “The great food and the really great raffle prizes must have provided serious incentive”. The NYC Webgrrls Holiday Celebration was a huge hit with well over 120 revelers reveling, mixing and mingling, conversing and connecting…new faces and very familiar ones.

To Success and Prosperity in 2009
Kevin Kennedy, Webgrrls International CEO, jump-started the festivities by offering a toast to “success and prosperity in 2009" and introduced the hostess of the evening, Nelly Yusupova. Nelly is the CTO of Webgrrls International, the NYC Webgrrls Chapter Leader and the Founder of digitalwoman.com

Nelly kicked the event into high gear when she stepped up to the microphone readying everyone for the first of many raffle drawings…raising her glass to give “thanks to Frankie of Gaetana’s for hosting Webgrrls for the last four years and a great big thank you to all of our sponsors” including NewTek, Trend Micro, Freshbooks, and raffle sponsors, Seagate, Logitech, Matias, Casauri,  and Mimoco. She introduced and thanked myself, Amelie Walker, and Kristin Vincent, the NYC Steering Committee members, for our support throughout the year and the three of us ignited the enthusiasm of the crowd with the first of many raffle drawings of the evening.

Winner, Winners, Everywhere...
NewTek representative Brenda Kato, after a few words about NewTek's latest offerings, drew the names of the first two winners of Mimoco designer flash drives to get the raffle off to the right start…and the winners were Sarah Haley of Bank of America and Lakeisha Yarde.

Saul Colt from Freshbooks was up next to draw the winners of two Logitech webcams and offer a toast…and the winner were Tamara Brown of Finra  & Roger Wu of Klickable.

There were raffle drawings throughout the evening and Nelly offered a toast on behalf of Trend Micro to “better Internet security in 2009 and beyond”. Nelly, Kristin, and I worked in tandem to give out the rest of the prizes for the evening…and the winners were: 

Michael DiBenedetto - Chat The Planet
Limor Elkayam - Rogue Media
Gil Margulis - TheWebisodes.com
Sydney Davis – Finra
Geri Dolan -  XO Communications
Kate Bolton - Garlik
Paula Cervoin - Relavis
Stephanie Cockerl nextSTEPH


The NYC Webgrrls Holiday Celebration might have been the event of the season if the feedback that we received was any indication.

“What a great event! Webgrrls International is a top-notch partner and a good friend”, said Saul Colt, Head of Magic with Freshbooks.com, “The Webgrrls Holiday party was Freshbooks’ first real exposure to the organization and we can't wait to get cracking on some more exciting partnering ideas for 2009”.

Maureen Isern, Owner & Producer of Moped Productions, LLC said, “This was a very friendly, outgoing group of people and I felt like the organizers were constantly ‘present’ – As a first-timer at Webgrrls I was impressed!  Thanks again.”

For all you NYC Webgrrls who couldn't make this year's festivities, we hope to see you in 2009.

Happy Networking and Happy Holidays & Happy 2009!

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