Always, Alli

In stark contrast to last year’s Postiecon, the Izea team decided to not host a fancy, good behavior event for the conference attendees. Instead, the conference ended with an Izea-style scavenger hunt.

If you are familiar with the company at all, you probably know Ted Murphy (Izea’s CEO) is really into the scavenger hunt as a form of team building, friendly competition, and a great way to hand out excellent prizes. Also, it seems his scavenger hunts are always a fast track to getting filthy.

Last night’s Izeahunt was no exception.

When we went through Izeafest registration, my friends and I formed a perfect team of five (me, Colleen, Deb, Cass, and Marisa), the Power Peeps. We signed the liability waivers and strategized how to best go about the hunt. Having Colleen and Deb on our team was key because of their competitive streaks.

However, because of people backing out, Izea had to switch it up and ended up forming teams of four (or less). Colleen, Deb, Marisa, and I ended up on a team. Cass was on Ted’s team. Drew, Allison, Lisa, and Christine made up another team. I’m not sure how many teams there were total and who made each one up. But I do know there was a team with John Chow, who we trash talked quietly. Or maybe it was just in our heads. All we knew was, we Mommy Bloggers wanted to beat John Chow.

Each team had an Izea employee as a “guide” and official picture/ video master. Ours was David, an Izea employee who we love and know well. We received a bucket of goodies (which had to be worn or used during the hunt) and a list of tasks and objects to get points.

When the signal was given, we started in on gathering objects (racking up the points that way) and getting the required pictures. A lot of our time was actually spent in the Grand Bohemian in Colleen and Marisa’s room. We took pictures, scoured the hotel for things like a bar of soap and a plastic fork. We sighed when we realized taking the toilet seat out of the bathroom was probably bad form, and went without those points.

The final task was to make a human sundae with one of more team members, which consisted of shaving cream, marshamallows, and chocolate syrup. Ted Murphy likes to make a mess.

Being in my delicate state, I was given the absolutely fun task of twittering the entire hunt. (Hey, I also took pictures!) I have no idea how many points it was, but apparently other teams were seeing my tweets on their phones and I was interrupting their ability to tweet at the same time. Excellent strategy on my part, if you ask me.

The final meeting place ended up on Wall Street in downtown Orlando. Open bar and appetizers for all, while we waited for over an hour for the points to be tallied.

The evening also consisted of an Izeafest cakeplow, another tradition for Izea employees and their conferences. (Also, very messy.) I did it last year (it was my birthday!) but this year I refrained. Still, seeing Loren Feldman get the plowing started early by shoving Ted’s face into the cake was hysterical. Then seeing Ted Murphy chase Loren Feldman (who can jump a metal barrier pretty fast) was absolutely side-splitting.

Finally our friend and Izeafest organizer, Ashley, came out and announced our group won the Izeahunt with the most points. I shrieked when he handed me my $100 Home Depot giftcard, the best prize I have received in a long time. And it was a most excellent way to end the conference.

Technorati Tags: Izeafest, Izeahunt, Orlando, Izea

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Entertaining Alli, Traveling Alli . 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.