L to R by Twitter Handle: @alexshebar, @katiberz, @socialgumbo, @geekjames, @hrmargo
Five days ago I had the pleasure of meeting a small cross section of Cincinnati’s Twittersphere. The good folks at Take The Cake Cafe hosted the gathering which was organized by @takethecakecafe / @geekjames, @rainie1u, and @simpleton001.
Back home in New Orleans there is a lot of face-to-face interaction amongst local bloggers, tweeters, etc. It’s something I have not had much chance to do since I moved up here,and with Take the Cake around the block from our house it was nearly impossible to miss.
The thing that is really great about this sort of gathering is that you already know something about the people you are meeting from their output online. When you start off with acknowledge of a person’s character at the outset conversations develop rapidly.
People started drifting in around 1pm and in short order the front of the Cafe was filed with milling people. Every once in awhile the door would open and someone would look in with a questing glance and tentatively ask “is this where the twitter people are?” Yes, my friends, yes it was.
It was great to meet @redshoegirl finally. I had several interactions with her over the net when my wife and I were preparing to move up here. We had a great talk about the pro side of social media, trading thoughts about ROI and communicating how social media works to clients. I really enjoyed the conversation, she is quite intelligent and a bundle of energy.
Also got to chat with @alexshebar, a young journalist with a pretty impressive resume. A real good guy with a some real energy to his conversation as well as his writing. Witty guy. Talked with him and @katiberz for awhile before going down a tangent about music with @fadi_elkhaja. That talk led us into the street where we could indulge our nicotine habits while passing my iPhone back and forth to share music. He’s a really interesting guy who is originally from Lebannon, it was interesting comparing our former homes.
@hrmargo seems to be just diving into social media, but doing so enthusiastically (which is important). We actually talked a bit about teaching and video conferencing. Funny thing is I discovered later she’s a Xavier grad, and I co-teach a periodically recurring Skype Class at Xavier in New Orleans.
@urbancincy and I talked a bit about New Orleans. He has an interest in the study of cities, and he’s been down there before. I can’t wait to pick that conversation up again over coffee or a beer. @recycledbin and I had just enough interaction to find common ground on green topics. Sorry we didn’t chat more this time around.
@simpleton001 was running things and he and had little time to converse. We did talk a bit about my background and the events of the four years since Katrina and the levee failure. Another conversation I look forward to continuing.
All these and other short conversation were packed into about 2-3 hours worth of time. Even after so brief and interaction I feel more like I actually live here now. Digital connections spawned real world interactions which in turn introduced more people into the mix both online and off. It is a cycle I’ve seen in action a lot over the past few years, a cycle that seems to be continualy accelerating. Finding people with common interests in a new city was always a hard thing in the old days, now it’s as hard as a twitter/Flickr/blog search.
Want to start your own tweetup? Here’s the page on Twtvite for the Take the Cake event as an example. Twtvite is a free ad useful tool that allows you to organize, share tweets about it (via hashtagging) and generally make it happen. Go ahead and set up your own, the service is free. Bring some face to face time to your twitter based social circles.
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Aw, well thank you for that nice bit of complimentary text to start my day. It was good meeting you too for sure and we’ll have to talk again soon – possibly at the next Tweetup, wherever and whenever it may be.
Enjoy Cincinnati. I’m also a foreigner (originally growing up in Massachusetts), so if you ever need some suggestions for new and interesting things to do, I went out of my way to find them when I came here. They do exist, I promise.
-Alex