Organizing a Release Party in 30 Seconds

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, a.k.a. Hardy Heron, was announced available last April 24. A day before that, just out of somewhere in IRC, Jerome suggested having a release party. Within ~30sec, I agreed without thinking. All I knew was that there hasn't a release party for a couple or so previous releases and I wasn't able to attend any before--so I was excited to attend one this time. Knowing how busy Jerome and many of the fellow Ubunteros in IRC were, I decided to step forward to at least make it known that a release party was in the works. I left an email in the ubuntu-ph mailing list, and hoped that the others would join the bandwagon. I simply wanted to start it after all, then let the community drive itself. To my surprise, the community did work by itself. The idea was echoed in the forums, and was frequently talked about in IRC. Cool. Now I'll just have to wait for a week and see what the people have come up with so I can just jump back in. The party was scheduled in May 2, about a week after the release, and the meeting place was set to McDonald's in El Pueblo.

The week passed and the day of the release party came. I checked the mailing list, the forum thread and IRC for updates and to know who will attend and how many. Looks like a lot are attending, I thought, now to check on Jerome. My xchat tab for #ubuntu-ph was highlighted blue, which means my name was mentioned in a post. Unfortunately, something came up in Jerome's side and he won't be attending the release party anymore. To add suspense to it, it began raining hard at Jucato's place and the condition made it harder for him to get out. Without the Ubuntu members in the party, I thought it's gonna be difficult. With nobody to lead the pack, I just had to count on spontaneity and the flash mob thingy that Jerome kept on insisting.

At that point, a couple of hours before the meetup, I felt gloomy and thought that we won't have a successful release party--being too spontaneous and with no plans at all. I hoped the attendees didn't expect too much. Suddenly, a voice in my head said, Just do it! I had to take responsibility since I raised it in the community first. With that pressure taken into account and the encouragement and positivity of the voice in my head, I quickly prepared the iso's for the burnfest and packed some other stuff to share. A few minutes later, it was mentioned in IRC that Jucato was on his way. Good news, he decided to attend. But he'll surely be late because of the terrible traffic at EDSA that time. So, off to El Pueblo I hurriedly went. There were lots to assemble, there were lots to get to know.

"Let's do this!", I thought aloud as I got out of the office building.