Strolled into Y Fuwch Goch (or the Red Cow as it’s also known) to join a random bunch of people the other night for Cardiff’s first Tweetup of 2010. A what? A Tweetup. It’s where people who are on twitter, meet up and have a chat about whatever they like. Might sound crazy, but it works.

We had IT managers, web designers, technicians, PR people, journalists, lawyers, politics students, university admin people, photographers and a hairdresser sat round the table chatting about random stuff. People who had only met moments ago were quickly engaging in conversations about diverse subjects, swapping contact details and coming up with ideas.

The power of social media was being put to good use in Cardiff, bringing people together to talk and connect. There was a good turnout to the Tweetup but the number of people who tweeted to say “sorry, can’t make it” shows that there is a growing community out there who are happy to leave their mobiles/laptops to one side and enjoy meeting random people.

The only criticisms of the event are that it’s on a Friday night, not the best of times to try and persuade people to come to a Tweetup – they are going away, already on a birthday night out, knackered after a week of work or various other excuses. Also, a topic could be nice. The Tweetups that I held in Preston had a civic topic up for discussion in the first part of the event and then it moved onto more socialising – but the topic helped as at least you got to meet people, share ideas straightaway and then had a subject to chat with random people about afterwards.

It’s great to see Tweetups happening in Cardiff and here’s to many more happening, along with all the other hyperlocal/social media stuff that’s happening in Cardiff at the moment.

So next time you see a Tweetup advertised, don’t be shy, get off Twitter for a while (if you’re not on Twitter, you can still come along) and you’ll be surprised who you’ll meet.

Image credit to markallinson

This post was originally featured on yourCardiff

Me presenting at Preston Tweetup

The first Preston Tweetup that I organised in March 2009 was filmed and now the edited video has appeared online. It shows how twitter users in Preston got together to discuss how the web could be used for the Preston Guild in 2012.

The Preston Guild is a big celebration that happens every 20 years in Preston, Lancashire, UK to celebrate the city, its organisations and its professions. Everyone gets involved, but the last time the Guild was celebrate – 1992 – the world was a very different place and the Internet was not as widespread as it is now.

The tweetup was hosted by myself, through Blog Preston, and had support from Stage 9 Marketing, a local marketing agency, and They Eat Culture, Preston’s arts organisation. The venue we used was the New Continental, in Preston, which has free wi-fi and great drinks.

The videos are in sequence as the night was in four parts, the introduction (from me!), the break-off groups coming up with ideas, the feeding back from each group and finally the summing up. It’s a great chance to see what happened at the Tweetup and if you’re planning to go to one, wherever it is in the world, it gives an insight into what it’s like.

Watch part one – the introduction to Preston Tweetup

Mine was ‘What is twitter’ overkill and who in an organisation should be doing the tweeting. On the twitter overkill questioned it seemed that if you’re not interesting when you tweet then anything is overkill, but if you are interesting then tweet away to your heart’s content.

Below is the slideshow of crowdsourced slides for the event, experiences of using twitter, questions and examples:

Congratulations to Rachel Beer for organising the event, it was a cool experience to be ‘tweeting from the sidelines’ as the discussions unfolded.

There’s a couple of great posts from Chris Brogan about using twitter and where to start in the world of social media, with some useful tips for charities.