My experience of the audition - Atlanta 12-14-05
My alarm went off at 4:00am. I was glad I quit filling out application forms at 11:30 the night before. I left Lawrenceville for downtown Atlanta at about 5:15am and ended up with a parking deck time stamp of 6:09. When I got inside the Merchandise Mart, I was kind of taken aback by the number of people already cued up inside. From what I can calculate I must have been the 98th in line.
Right away I started being friendly with everyone in my immediate vicinity. The people in front of me were from Arizona, and the woman behind me was from New Orleans. There was a guy from Houston TX, and Lansing MI. I tell you, if half the people who auditioned in Atlanta were local that would surprise me. But most of the people I talked to that day were very charming and excited as I was to be there trying out for American Inventor.
First there was the congenial small talk. Then there was the ice breaking questions. Then offers to share scotch tape and clip boards and scout out the location of rest rooms and xerox machines and then watching over each other's "stuff". Of course we all passed along information about what was happening and how things were being done. We got to see some classic cattle heard mentality at work as late comers surged in to press to the front of the holding area because they failed to realize that the number on the little tickets we all got when we came in were the order in which people would be seen by the judges.
With so much time to kill, we got to the "I'll show you mine, and you show me yours" stage. Everyone was quite nice to let me do my little performance time and again. As time went on, we joked around and tried our pitches out on each other. By the time it was time to go in and do our pitches, we were in full blown support mode for each other. And when it was over, we were all wishing each other the best of luck and hoping that we'll be seeing each other again. They were so nice to hang around with I didn't want to leave when I did, but I had a philosophy cafe to go moderate. Now we'll be keeping in touch via email.
I found the production company and their leaders, the producers, to be exceptionally wonderful. They were very respectful and seemed to be very caring. Though they have a t.v. show to produce, they seemed to not lose sight of the fact that we all have our dreams for our inventions on the line. So much so that it is very hard to gauge who did well in their pitches with their inventions and who did not, because the producers were telling everyone that they all did well and their inventions were very good. They just were so very pleasant about everything. One of the main producers even came right out and told the whole group that they should be taking advantage of the opportunity to network with this assemblage of inventors that had gathered there that day. She said that more than anything that was probably of most value. I couldn't have agreed more with that advice. That's one of the reasons I want people to find this blog, so we can stay connected to each other as a bigger inventors community.
I did a small interview with "Wired" magazine and a photo shoot for them. "Wired" is going to run an article in March to coincide with the show being on the air.
How did I do?
I was a bit nervous, even though I have told people about my invention many many times. I got a bad case of 20/20 hindsight on the drive home and kept thinking of everything I didn't say that I should have said. I just wasn't as smooth as I could have been if the enormity of the whole thing had not been in the back of my mind.
Right away I started being friendly with everyone in my immediate vicinity. The people in front of me were from Arizona, and the woman behind me was from New Orleans. There was a guy from Houston TX, and Lansing MI. I tell you, if half the people who auditioned in Atlanta were local that would surprise me. But most of the people I talked to that day were very charming and excited as I was to be there trying out for American Inventor.
First there was the congenial small talk. Then there was the ice breaking questions. Then offers to share scotch tape and clip boards and scout out the location of rest rooms and xerox machines and then watching over each other's "stuff". Of course we all passed along information about what was happening and how things were being done. We got to see some classic cattle heard mentality at work as late comers surged in to press to the front of the holding area because they failed to realize that the number on the little tickets we all got when we came in were the order in which people would be seen by the judges.
With so much time to kill, we got to the "I'll show you mine, and you show me yours" stage. Everyone was quite nice to let me do my little performance time and again. As time went on, we joked around and tried our pitches out on each other. By the time it was time to go in and do our pitches, we were in full blown support mode for each other. And when it was over, we were all wishing each other the best of luck and hoping that we'll be seeing each other again. They were so nice to hang around with I didn't want to leave when I did, but I had a philosophy cafe to go moderate. Now we'll be keeping in touch via email.
I found the production company and their leaders, the producers, to be exceptionally wonderful. They were very respectful and seemed to be very caring. Though they have a t.v. show to produce, they seemed to not lose sight of the fact that we all have our dreams for our inventions on the line. So much so that it is very hard to gauge who did well in their pitches with their inventions and who did not, because the producers were telling everyone that they all did well and their inventions were very good. They just were so very pleasant about everything. One of the main producers even came right out and told the whole group that they should be taking advantage of the opportunity to network with this assemblage of inventors that had gathered there that day. She said that more than anything that was probably of most value. I couldn't have agreed more with that advice. That's one of the reasons I want people to find this blog, so we can stay connected to each other as a bigger inventors community.
I did a small interview with "Wired" magazine and a photo shoot for them. "Wired" is going to run an article in March to coincide with the show being on the air.
How did I do?
I was a bit nervous, even though I have told people about my invention many many times. I got a bad case of 20/20 hindsight on the drive home and kept thinking of everything I didn't say that I should have said. I just wasn't as smooth as I could have been if the enormity of the whole thing had not been in the back of my mind.
posted by Steve at 5:47 PM
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