Launch Week 5/8/09

Apparently F1 Rocks went live and dangerous this week and was unleashed upon the world. Hooray for us. I’d always assumed that launch events and press conferences at glamorous hotels as seen in the newspapers were quick and easy to organise, but our astoundingly devout and thorough, yet ad-hoc approach, put the ‘ic’ in ridiculous, and has left me exhausted and looking like a thinner, mulleted version of Skeletor (well, I am Master of the Extranet Universe I suppose).

So we worked silly hours on the weekend (much to the dismay of the security guard who refused to be bribed with pizza and just wanted to get home to his wife and kids), until midnight on Monday before the launch, and those lucky enough to have Blackberrys were probably squinting furiously at them in the red morning light as news of yet another alteration to the logo broke from Asia. As someone who watches disaster movies and imagines themselves being awesome in high stakes peril, I always figured I’d find my niche when under siege. I genuinely enjoyed the manic days, whether it was my over-exuberant explanations of Subway’s condiment range to those in the office who were new to the sandwich phenomenon, breaking a string on a priceless Gibson Les Paul delivered to the office for the launch and stuffing it back in the case hoping nobody would notice, debating the best choices for a fantasy football team for the new season over takeout Pad Thai and beer in the boardroom or stealing paper bags from the cafe to load with goodies for the world’s press to take home with them in a spectacularly low budget solution to a branding oversight, I definitely ended up with enough material to write a genius sitcom about office life. Oh, wait.

The nemesis just walked into a pillar. I’m grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat with a warm bowl of cream in front of a hot fireplace on a winter’s day…

The launch went well enough to facilitate some kind of celebratory drink or two, and to my surprise this meant making my wide-eyed private members club debut. Distressingly, having not been briefed that this could be a location, and having not been dressed up to attend the launch as I was manning the office, I was less than impressively attired in my homemade ‘Jigga-what’ T shirt (a supposedly ironic play on a Jay-Z song title as I’m not a fan of hip and hop music). I stuck out somewhat amongst the shirts and jackets, but put it behind me long enough to mistake Fearne Cotton for Katherine Jenkins, and then proceed to play it cool by continually trying to catch her eye over the top of my champagne flute, which as I discovered is the worst of all beverage containers to try and hide behind. For some reason I go to pieces when confronted by famous folk, like the time I gushingly invited We Are Scientists for dinner and cocktails at a cross dressing Dutchman’s house.

Anyway, I need to get back on it, there’s a legion of new staff who are outshining me a little too thoroughly and I need to compete on an activity front, especially as I can’t contend with their clean cut crisply pressed shirts..