This post was mostly written on May 3 after an evening of Ingress and socialization with the local Resistance but between my phone and the blog, it got garbled as a draft and lost.
Thankfully, I had a list of folks in-game names from Google Keep and it did its job and kept them for me so I can recreate this entry!
On April 29, I met up with a handful of Ingress agents to build a small Level 8 farm in the Children's Area at Golden Gate Park. We met at the carousel and since we didn't have enough Level 8 agents, we built a Level 7 farm and distributed Hint water redemption passcodes across a network connection.
After the event ended, I took a nice continued walk with gundamxx123 who I have a lot in common with. We both work in similar fields and "talk the same talk" and we both are really responding to the social aspects of Ingress.
As Level 8 agents, the game is no longer an attempt to grab action points. It becomes more about mentoring lower level agents and building farms. To build high level farms, you need a group of high level players. Even a Level 8 agent is limited to deploying one level 8 resonator on a portal. That means to build a level 8 portal, you need 8 Level 8 agents.
While walking with gundamxx123, we decided that for the next Ingress meetup, we wanted to do something a bit different. We wanted to organize an event where we all sat down and had a nice dinner and the farming and hacking and battling was a secondary event that occurred in addition to a nice meal where we could sit and socialize.
It didn't surprise me that I got an event invitation the next day for a dinner event at New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant along the border of Chinatown and North Beach, which also has the important attributes of a) being an active Ingress portal, b) being surrounded in close proximity by several other portals and c) able to host a big party of people at nice round tables.
When we initially talked about the event, gundamxx123 and I expected a handful of folks to respond and maybe a few would even show up. Even if it was just the two of us, we'd still have had a small dinner and farmed a bit.
We ended up with eleven people, two agents celebrating birthdays and a nine course meal!
Level 7 agents, Allissasaurus and Aleckazam, I had met before while building a farm at Colma Cemetaries. They brought along a friend to help celebrate Aleckazam's birthday but he was sadly an iPhone user. thecatspaws was also a Level 7 agent, reaching Level 8 a short time later and participating in a all-female Level 8 portal farming project on May 5.
The rest of the table was filled with seven Level 8 agents, one shy of being able to build a Level 8 farm. In addition to gundamxx123, we were joined by cynja, dikexin, zakuma, SwerveMMF and AndreRiskManager, a semi-retired agent who was also celebrating his birthday.
By the time the entire party had arrived, at least Andre and I were pretty hungry. Andre lead the ordering and we ended up with roast peking duck, hunan style shredded pork, Mongolian beef, Moo Goo Gai Pan, Black Mushroom with Green Vegetables, Chow Mein, baked clams in black bean sauce, sizzling rice soup, stir fried filet of rock cod, many pots of tea and water.
During our dinner, in addition to Ingress we talked about movies, with me sharing a registration link to a Star Trek screening for IT professionals, sports, other video games, smartphone deals, places to park in the city for cheap, two agents' upcoming wedding, Google I/O and several other topics. It was like having dinner with old friends except I'd only met three people at the table before and really only had a full conversation with one.
It was a great meal. We did a significant volume of item exchanges at the table and zakuma gave out 5GB Dropbox codes. That came in handy.
After around four hours of eating and socializing, the party wrapped up. I thought it was a great success. We dubbed the event "Operation Peking Duck" and joked that the next one should be "Operation Pad Thai". Eventually, we decided on Mission Bowling Club for our next dinner and a farm event and I would be planning that one.
That particular meetup is scheduled for May 21.
Once the party wrapped up, gundamxx123 drove us over to the Haight and we "said hello" to a small Level 8 portal farm that the Enlightened built while they too were having a bit of a meet up at Murio's bar. I was a bit startled when they came out and said hello right back to us, face to face. I met SFHandyman and was reacquainted with IPv6Berry, while others didn't introduce themselves but waved as well.
The very next day, I was hacking the high level Enlightened train car portal next to where I work when another agent noticed me and asked my agent name, I said eminus and he said, "Hi, I'm neo" and walked away.
A few minutes after departing I realized that neo was Niantic Labs' Product Manager, Brandon Badger.
The only other non-hacking Ingress activity I've had lately came on Monday, May 6, when I took BART from Millbrae and captured and linked up some portals on the BART platform.
My wife and I did have a Google+ Hangout with Resistance agent mistyayn on Tuesday, May 7 about a non-Ingress related project. It is cool how Ingress is bringing us into a whole new community of people and places we may have never come into contact with otherwise.
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