Excuse Me, There's A Tweet In My Beer
Last Wednesday a crossed another boundary of geekdom and went to a tweetup organised by @ Ale_2point0 at The Rake. To all intents and purposes it was a whole load of people who generally worked in social media based fields drinking beer and chatting about random things, so not altogether that geeky.
It was a bit networky in places, and there were certainly a few people who seemed to be there primarily to make contacts to further their careers. To complete the effect there was even a guy from virgin media there so everyone could worship his feet. I would have coped with them all if one of them hadn't been quite so insulting about my disinterest in networking towards the end of the evening.
There were lots of other nice people there though, which probably explained why, when I'd planned to have a quick pint and come home and pack for the weekend, I ended up staying out until gone midnight. It generally didn't even occur to mention usernames in the conversations, so I've no idea who most of the people I talked to were on twitter.
I know I met both halves of @ Ale_2point0 (as they were organising it), @ ewebber (as I was already following her as ldnshopfronts is cool), @ bureauista (as she worked in something vaguely educational) and @ radiokate (as she was in Cambridge at around the same time as me and we'd had that small world, mutual acquantances thing).
All in all, I had mixed feelings about the evening, as it was quite social, but also a bit too networky. Probably, not surprisingly really given how twitter toes the line between social networking and commercial advertisement. However, it was generally fun, so I'll probably go to another one, if they ever occur on a free evening again.
It was a bit networky in places, and there were certainly a few people who seemed to be there primarily to make contacts to further their careers. To complete the effect there was even a guy from virgin media there so everyone could worship his feet. I would have coped with them all if one of them hadn't been quite so insulting about my disinterest in networking towards the end of the evening.
There were lots of other nice people there though, which probably explained why, when I'd planned to have a quick pint and come home and pack for the weekend, I ended up staying out until gone midnight. It generally didn't even occur to mention usernames in the conversations, so I've no idea who most of the people I talked to were on twitter.
I know I met both halves of @ Ale_2point0 (as they were organising it), @ ewebber (as I was already following her as ldnshopfronts is cool), @ bureauista (as she worked in something vaguely educational) and @ radiokate (as she was in Cambridge at around the same time as me and we'd had that small world, mutual acquantances thing).
All in all, I had mixed feelings about the evening, as it was quite social, but also a bit too networky. Probably, not surprisingly really given how twitter toes the line between social networking and commercial advertisement. However, it was generally fun, so I'll probably go to another one, if they ever occur on a free evening again.