The Direct Marketer's Association (DMA) is coming to town! No, it's not as exciting as having the circus come to town, but you can still have a lot of fun. Their annual conference is taking place at Moscone Center, which means that after the sessions are over the attendees will be in need of a stiff drink.

The Thirsty Bear is a common hangout for conventioneers, so we'll be there to mingle with the same group of people responsible for junk mail, telemarketers, and unsolicited email. Your task for the night: schmooze anyone wearing a DMA conference pass and see if you can get their business card. We'll then pool all the harvested contact info and give them a taste of what they've been doing to us for 85 years (according to their version of trade-association history). Bonus points if you can get their hotel phone number, so we can give them a 3 AM call trying to sell them long distance service or subscriptions to 'Business Ethics Today'. Even if you don't feel like rubbing up against people from the World's Most Reviled Industry, you can still join us and brainstorm bogus email offers that we'll send to them for the rest of their lives.

If you want to come early, there will be people outside Moscone handing back unwanted junk mail to the attendees and performing other wacky antics. When things start getting slow we'll walk over to the Thirsty Bear for the second phase of our activities. If you're new to this crowd then look for a followup post to this group and we'll establish a way to identify us among the real marketers.

Tuesday, October 22
6:00 PM until 8:30 PM
The Thirsty Bear
661 Howard Street (at 3rd St) in SF

Muni: Lines 10, 12, 14, 15, 30, 45, 76