Remember that first tweetup?
Here we have @sizemore speaking about why he organised the first London tweetup. I will upload some of the other interviews soon but I’m just checking the player embedding first
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Geneva Tweetup during the LIFT09 Conference – Who’s Interested?
One of my biggest frustrations at the moment as a user of twitter is that I can’t meet with the people I chat with on a regular basis. As a result of this I am trying to find as many Geneva based twitter users as possible to organise a tweetup.
There are two options, the first is to do it at the same time as twestival but that is one event that I personally want to have nothing to do with. I was disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm that people at that event had for twitter. As a result I would prefer not to repeat that experience.
What has been suggested by Sandrine is a tweetup at the same time as the LIFT09 conference is taking place in Geneva.
For those that are not familiar with LIFT09:
Lift09 (Geneva, 25-27 Feb. 09) will look back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration themed around a simple question: “Where did the future go?”
This means that quite a number of the social media scene, innovators and more should be present. As a result it will be more practical for those living in other cities.
At the same time Geneva is an international city. From the airport down to the Palais Wilson on one side and the UN plage on the other you have a multitude of International organisations. It would be an interesting opportunity to see how the International community could use and take advantage of such a simple yet ubiquitous form of communication.
If you’re interested in this event just leave a comment below with your twitter username and let’s see what we can organise. You may also want to join the Switzerland tweetup group on facebook
Zurich twitter dinner and the Inauguration in Geneva
For the moment I am planning on going to Zurich for the twitter dinner. It’s the first Zurich twitter event I go to and it will be interesting whether I need to speak swiss german or whether my English and French will help make conversation a little simpler.
I don’t exchange messages with many Zurich twitter users so it will be quite different from the London events where I had exchanged so many messages. There’s another one in a month’s time in Paris although with the label I don’t enjoy much. I like the word tweetup because you have to smile to say it.
Video of the event may arrive online.
As a side note I should be going to one of the Geneva Inauguration event to get some footage of how the international community/facebook users of Geneva react to the event.
On twestival
The first tweetup I went to saw a crowd of no more than sixty people. The twestival had many more. Enough to fill the Doon club. So many new faces but not many new people to follow. It’s fun to see how big the London twitter community has become.
The usual people were there, sizemore, loudmouthman, documentally, danacea weaverluke and a few new faces like digitalmaverick, amandita, Poppyd and a few more people. Some video was shot of the event but I’m not sure by when they’ll go up. There was no wifi so no opportunity to do some live streaming.
At the same time I’m thinking it’s time for a plurk up of the same scale, since for the moment there are so few people.
Now it’s time for Tuttle.
Yep – ten thousand tweets
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at a milestone point, ten thousand tweets on twitter. That’s After less than a year of using the website. To me it’s replaced the university bar for two reasons. The first of these reasons is I’m now a graduate so there’s not much point in going to that bar anymore. The second reason is the organic way in which you create a network of contacts.
When you first arrive in twitter it’s a scary place. You see thousands of 140 character messages arriving every few minutes and it’s a time consuming to find the people that you find interesting. There’s the notion that you “follow” people. It’s used to describe the way in which you listen to what they have to say.
As you listen to this conversation you see that one person talks with another person and over a period of time as you follow the conversations so you get to see who the participants are. Over a period of days or weeks you’ve got several dozen people you’re following. That means that you’re now able to have many conversations a day. It’s just a question of how much time you’re willing to put.
In this respect it’s like university. There are two ways you can treat student life. You can be an Honours student with very few but good friends or you can be a high achieving student who’s created a network of hundreds of friends. I chose the latter option. I could go into university any day of the week and it would take an hour to walk from one side of the building to the other because of all the friendships I had established there.
It’s the same with twitter. The more time you put into twittr the more you get out of it. The fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo take the time to follow and listen to people on twitter tells you a lot about the types of conversations that are occuring.
The first two individuals take a huge amount of time to talk with people on twitter and it’s a really great tool to see what’s going on, in fact so great that I no longer feel the need to read as many RSS feeds or listen to as many podcasts, simply because I’m participating in the conversations before they become even blog news.
There is another aspect to twitter. When you’re on twitter you may be behind your computer, having never met any of these people in person and so it’s really strange to use twitter. It’s thanks to Sizemore organising the London twitter meetup a few months ago that I started to see Twitter in a very different light. It wasn’t just a website. It became a means by which for me to create friendships online before bringing them into the real world. Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble and many others do the same.
On the lighter side there’s the flirty side of Twitter. The social media make flirting fun. Quite a few times I’ve created nice friendships with girls and as a result had 2-3 hour conversations via IM, Video webcam and more. It’s a way of life for a new age in human interaction. A year ago I would meet people in person and when they moved to another country the friendship would go online. Now it’s the reverse and that’s what I enjoy so much. That’s why I don’t feel it’s an addiction. Does it sound like I’m an addict?