Newcomers Night: Who Took the Cookie Platter?

Intrepid observer dvdmon made it out of last evening's Reston Newcomers Night unscathed. Here's his account:

Robin Smyers gave out door prizes to all the newcomers - a few Starbucks gift cards, pots of mums, and cool photo book of Reston nature I really wanted, but mostly Champs gift cards valued at "$3-$30" (I feel sorry for those who go there and get a whopping $3 off of their $30 overpriced meal).

There was a fruit platter, cheese platter and cookie platter. I got there a little after Robin started speaking so couldn't eat anything until after the presentation was done, and someone at the RA (maybe Robert Simon who attended and spoke briefly?) made off with the cookie platter before anyone could get to them.

The presentation included a video that was so memorable I can't recall almost any of it. All I remember was that it wasn't one I'd seen on the Reston website or their Youtube channel.

The room was fairly small but packed. Probably a good 40 or so people? They had said that kids were welcome but there were none.

As far as the makeup of the crowd, there were lots of couples, many newly married, at least one expecting. Robin Smyers actually had everyone say there name, where they had moved from, and where they moved to in Reston. I don't know Reston well enough but there were a few people who'd moved to the same cluster. But a huge chunk of the people (myself included) actually moved from Vienna. Wasn't expecting that at all! I thought we were going to be very unusual in that respect. A few folks were from other countries, a few had moved to Reston a year or two ago but came to this either because they didn't hear of Newcomer's night before this one or in one case because they were still learning English and wanted to come again now that they understood the language better. So I'm definitely coming back next year WITH my wife to see if we can get better swag!

Seems like a few folks were out of jobs despite just having moved and were asking the group to let them know if they knew of openings - not a good sign for the economy, huh?

The two things they seemed to be emphasizing a lot during the presentation were the new Nature Center and the Reston.Org website.

They showed off the new Reston magazine "prototype." It had actual pages of content.

You had us at "Champs gift cards."