As planned at their talk the day before, Ze Frank and Jonah Peretti brought two groups together on Saturday Night. The Circles and the As fought for dominance at the Stag’s Head, trying to drag as many friends as they possibly could.

Of course, what with me being on the O team, we won. (I kid. I kid. But we still won.)

Then the real fun began. Ze and Jonah started handing around little sheets of paper. We were all instructed to write our first initial on it, and to get into words. Madness broke loose. Charly, for instance, managed to be the “C” in Carpe Diem, a much more impressive word then my humble “Places”.

Once that was all over and done with, the real work started. People started heading into the bar to get drinks, and the socializing began. Armed with my trusty glass of Very Expensive Coke, I started wondering around with Alan, Charly and John (the last of whom had managed to turn up JUST after the whole letters thing ended).

We had some very interesting discussions with Ze, on the topics of legalizing illegal drugs, the differences between the Irish and American education systems, and prostitutes. It was pretty awesome, I must say.

As I was leaving, I went over to Ze and Jonah to thank them again for the past two days, both of which were wonderful, and lets just say that you will be hearing a bit of Ze soon over on View From The Quad.

Tags: flashmob, Jonah Peretti, Ze Frank

So I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Ze Frank and Jonah Peretti’s talk at the Science Gallery entitled GO VIRAL from the wonderious Darragh Doyle, one of the friendliest people in the Irish Blog space. And trust me. They are a friendly bunch, all in all.

So, I head into the Science Gallery to meet Alan Costello and Darragh, and get stopped by an official looking man in a white suit with what seems to be a metal detector. He asks me to please stand up against the wall, and starts scanning me, beeping every now and again. He then shines a bright light into my eyes, and begrudgingly says “Please walk this way, sir”. I head into this clean-roomesque tunnel, to be handed a face mask, a little baggie containing the programme of events and a little microchip which the white-suited person behind the table claims will begin to flash if I contract an infection spreading around the exhibit center. if I get this infection, I must move immediately to the disinfection area on the second floor. I am also instructed to avoid any people with flashing tags. Next to the disinfection area there was a map showing all the various connected tags. Quite interesting stuff.

So it was a weird day. What can I say?

Anyway, soon after all this, we started filing into the auditorium to see the big show.

It started off with Jonah Peretti giving a talk on his website, Buzzfeed along with his various forays into viral media, including accidentally becoming the spokesman for an anti racism movement along with an anti sweatshop movement. One of the highlights of his talk was a simple demonstration of viral activism in the real world. Mormonism. The idea behind this being that since every single Mormon must spend two years of his/her life converting others, the religion spreads like wildfire.

Many other interesting topics were brought up by Johna, such as Big Seed advertising, his foray into viral marketing with the Huffington Post and his various theories on advertising, such as the one of Mullet Advertising. (Business at the front, party in the back!)

Once Jonah was done, Ze Frank, self professed fame whore, came on-stage and started speaking on the 8 moments which made him realize much an emotional effect he could have on people over the internet. I’m not going to go through all the moments here, but check out his site for more. You might loose a few days in there.

Oh, also, I bought some Chlamydia.

Tags: Alan Costello, Jonah Peretti, marketing, Science, Social Media, Viral, Ze Frank