Shavapalooza, Milwaukee: What Your Father Didn't Teach You About Shaving

After presenting at Merz’s The Great Shave in Chicago, the second stop of my speaking  tour was the Stag barbershop in Milwaukee.  A couple months ago the owner, Jess, had seen a twitter comment from me about the planning for the Chicago trip and that I may try to make it up to Wisconsin, where I was born and raised.  Jess contacted me and suggested that as long as I was going to be in the area that I should do something similar in Milwaukee and offered her shop as the venue!  Coincidentally Jess also knew Andy with Onmilwaukee.com, the outfit that’s helping me out with Sharpologist, so it seemed like destiny.

The Venue

Stag Barbershop is obviously a lot smaller than Chicago’s Palmer House but the crowd was no less enthusiastic!  In fact, in some ways it was a more “important” audience: while most of the gang in Chicago were traditional shaving “aficionados,” a lot in the crowd in Milwaukee were using mainstream products and having trouble with their shaves.
And Jess knew how to treat her audience well too!  She catered in food and drink, and everyone got a “goodie bag” of merchandise and coupons.  There were also door prizes for random ticket-holders!
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The Event

The event started out with a meet & greet with food & drink.  After everyone was comfortable I started talking about the concepts and skills needed for a good shave.  Rather than describe it I’ll just show you (apologies for the video quality: I was using my old camcorder):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HACBApOlUjY
After the first part of my talk we all took a break then Jess took over to discuss how to talk with your barber with some tips on getting a better haircut.  Unfortunately my little camcorder hocked up a hairball at that point and I didn’t record it.  Luckily one of the audience members had a camcorder of his own.  Here is the raw video of that part.  Then I came back to do a demo shave like I did in Chicago.  The raw video of that is here.
Everyone seemed to have a great time!  A fair amount of the audience lingered after the “official” end of the event to mingle and ask more questions.  I think I made a few converts!
Afterwards Jess, the OnMilwaukee gang and I went to a local restaurant and reflected on the day.  We all agreed that it seemed to go pretty well.  But by mid evening I was pretty wiped out so my wife and I bid our farewells to the rest of the gang and we turned in for the night.  We stayed at the Pfister hotel, arguably Milwaukee’s most historic and sophisticated hotel (courtesy of Stag, OnMilwaukee, and the Pfister)!
EDIT: I forgot!  I was interviewed for a local media website before my presentation began.