This week, I explore my experience with Tweetups in preparation for our Pt. Pleasant Tweetup this Saturday, March 27, 2010 at Rockn’ Joe’s in Point Pleasant Beach. Featuring Kindred Soulmen, this tweetup is also a fundraiser for Passionworks in Brick, NJ.
Urban Dictionary, that bastion of virtual definitions, states that tweetups are
A gathering of nerds attempting social contact, likely for the first time. Usually disintegrates into everyone running to the nearest computer to type to one another.
Now, I’m proud to be called “nerd”, and trust me, my classroom is the mecca of high school nerddom, but I wonder, don’t we all have smart phones … and is a tweetup really that nerdy?
To answer the latter question, I’ll explore my own experiences with tweetups & nametags with a nod to a marketing genius:
LIKE A VIRGIN: The first tweetup I attended took place on September 3, 2009 at Basil T’s in Red Bank. @currycolleen and I got this going in a very informal way, and @hellopresto hooked us up with the venue. Approximately 15 twitter users showed up for a glass of free beer and (more than likely) to meet the people in real life that we met on Twitter to ensure we weren’t talking to, well, nerds with no social life. I’d already met @EatontownBB at this point (the rock star of the Jersey Shore twitter culture), but had yet to experience the energy of @shoreflicks, the PR knowledge of @LKCoach, and the photographic genius of @navesink. Below is a pic taken by @navesink that night:
VoxPopNJ 