#DaveWeek Wrap Up

"Whoa, you guys are overwhelming me, and I'm not easily overwhelmed" -David Locke

I could easily say the same thing.  I am not often surprised, I rarely overreact, or get too excited.  But this week there was a surprise around every turn, and it was definitely exciting!

Two of my friends, Lauren and Elyse, hadn't seen me in a while.  So on January 7th, Elyse wrote that the next week would be dubbed Dave Week.  Lauren added that maybe we could even get #DaveWeek trending.  I agreed, and #DaveWeek was born. Little did we know what #DaveWeek would soon become.

Sunday night we got together for dinner.  It was nice to eat and play games.  There were about 8 of us, and it was a great time.  At the end of the night we planned what we wanted to do each day.

Monday: Half off appetizers at Applebees.
I showed up at 9:00, and met my friends there.  They also invited a few people from their ward and it was fun to make a few new friends.  One of the guys walked up to me and said, you are @downrightdave?  It is a real pleasure to meet you!  I felt like a celebrity!  I got home around 10:00 and started getting ready for bed.

I checked my Twitter account, and it was going crazy!  Somehow all of my friends, and many more, had started tweeting funny things, and adding #DaveWeek onto the end of them.  It began to go viral in SLC and made it all the way to #1.  (Trending basically means that a group of people, within a given area, and given time, are talking about a particular thing.)  So between about 10:00-Midnight, more people in SLC were talking about #DaveWeek than Alabama, LSU, or anything else.

Tuesday: Jazz game
You can read all about this day here: http://www.downrightdave.blogspot.com/2012/01/daveweek.html
It was easily my favorite of all the days.  Since social media was a key ingredient to #DaveWeek, it was kind of funny that the people who got most excited, and that we got to meet, were the media people.  One highlight was when David Locke recognized me, even though he had never met me in real life before.

What began as us finding cheap $5 tickets, that were on the very top row, turned into a series of miracles. Security let me go onto the court, we got our picture taken on the halftime set, made it onto the background of the postgame, and got pictures with both the TV, and radio announcers.  Plus the following morning David Locke gave #DaveWeek a shout out on his podcast.

#DaveWeek also trended in SLC for the second night in a row, making it up to #3.  It even went national, and international.  Although those tweets would not have helped it trend in SLC.  It was amazing how many people were joining in, asking what was going on, and wanting to be a part.

Wednesday: The Chocolate
Since the point of this week was because Lauren and Elyse wanted to see more of me, most of our activities did not originally include large groups of extra people.  It became obvious that a lot of people wanted to be a part of it, wanted to meet me, and were just looking for crazy fun things to do.  So we devoted this day to them.  The Chocolate did a great job of making it special for us.  They even sent out this tweet earlier in the day:

We had a great turnout, and I was really impressed by their delectable desserts, as well as a really well run business.  They will definitely be included in future #daveweek plans.

Thursday:  Bowling
My roommates and I are in a bowling league.  So between that and watching some great TV shows, like Parks and Rec, I enjoyed a more relaxing day with two of my best friends and my brother.  I love doing crazy  and random things, but I also like to just chill at home sometimes too.  This week was tiring, and it was nice to unwind a little bit.

Friday: Dinner at Cafe Paesan, Shirts
One of our friends who had contributed quite a bit to getting #DaveWeek trending hadn't been able to make any of our activities.  She threw out the idea of meeting at Cafe Paesan for dinner, and so we did.  After dinner four of us went and made #DaveWeek shirts.

Saturday: Movie, Dinner, and Broom Hockey
The three of us went to go see a movie.  After, Elyse made us a delicious dinner and we went to her YSA ward activity, broom hockey at 7 Peaks!  We had enough people there for two games, and the people we brought with us were enough to make up one team.  Team #DaveWeek may not have won, but we had a ton of fun!  It was nice of their ward to let all of us join in and play with them.  They were super nice, and I quickly made friends.  It was just what a YSA activity should be.  I also ran into some old friends that happened to be there that night.

Finale: Sunday/Monday
Since Sunday was more of our planning day, and today was a holiday, we kind of extended #DaveWeek a little bit.  One of our friends happened to be in town from Las Vegas for the weekend.  We weren't able to meet up with him on Saturday, so I had thought I wouldn't be able to.  Late Sunday evening, who happened to show up at my house, but him and four of my friends!  We decided to go to iHop, (ha ha, I had to leave that after I wrote it) and spent our early Monday morning enjoying a lot of laughs.  Seriously, anything is funny at that time of night.  It was a great finale to a truly amazing week.

I woke up ready to relax when my mom called and asked if I wanted to go to lunch with them. I did so, and then we went bowling.  It was nice to have some family time after running around like a crazy person all week.  I was a little tired of eating out, but I will never say no to someone paying for me to eat.  After bowling I came home, ready to start that relaxing I had looked forward to.

So immediately my phone rang, and several of my life long friends said they were going to the grand opening of Buffalo Wild Wings.  There was an hour wait, so they put our name down, came over to my house and hung out for a while.  After 45 minutes we went over there, and waited another half hour or so.  It was super good, and I expect it will get my friends up to Lehi more often.

Tonight I will conclude the festivities by doing my favorite thing, playing basketball.

It has been a crazy week, and even though it is over, it seems like my life will never be the same.  It is amazing what a simple idea, some initiative, and the world's greatest friends can do.  We have already started thinking about next year, and fitting in everything we thought of that didn't fit into this week.  If my calculations are correct, this weeks activities included 39 specific people, plus all of those at the ward activity, in the bowling league, Jazz media, plus whoever comes to basketball tonight.  There were still many more I wish had been a part of it, and many who were at more than one activity.  #DaveWeek was used over 600 times on Twitter, trended twice, and will be something I will never forget.

All of this was done without any personal invites, just through the use of social media.  Thank you to all of you that took interest, came to the activities, and made me feel like I was King of the World!