The other night I was lucky enough to attend the Pinterest Summer Celebration! There were about 120 pinners in attendance and it was held at their new offices in San Francisco. I heard about it on Facebook, they were asking pinners to create a video about how Pinterest has inspired them in the past year. I edited my already existing video from Tilly’s first birthday party and showed how I got most of my party ideas from Pinterest. It worked! I got an invite a few days later. (Here’s my submission, influenced by my “Tilly’s Turning 1″ Pinterest board.) They specified that I couldn’t bring any guests, so it was a little nerve wracking rolling up all by myself, but most people there were in my same shoes, so it wasn’t too hard walking up to strangers and introducing myself.
They had 4 activity stations around the room to help people mingle. First was a temporary tattoo station, then a stamp/postcard station, then an instax photobooth, and finally a mason jar terrarium station. Each was super cute and they all totally reminded me of crafts you’d see on pinterest. (Especially the mason jars, practically the backbone of pinterest DIY boards!)
The entire pinterest staff was there, about 60 people, so I chatted with designers, spam fighters, programmers, and community specialists about ways to improve the website and what types of things I use it for. I also met other bloggers, moms, nonprofit employees, and stylists! After talking to other people I discovered that most of the guests are “super-pinners” who were on an evite list based on their super high number of pins, in addition to their location being San Francisco. As it turns out, only about 20 videos were submitted… HA! One of the staff members even recognized me from my video.
The big announcement of the night was when Ben & Evan, the cofounders, made their welcome speech. They revealed the new pinterest app for android and ipad, as well as an updated app for iphone! People were downloading them as the speech was going, it was kind of funny.
All in all it was a fun, engaging night. It made me think about Pinterest in a different way – it’s about community and inspires people to actually step away from their computer and enjoy the world around them. It’s also about self-exploration. Have you ever scrolled through your pinterest boards and realized you’re really drawn to a certain motif and didn’t even know it? It helps people express themselves in a way that’s not limited to 140 characters, or any words at all, really. And it’s so dang pretty!
