I finally got around to writing about last Thursday’s Tweetup in Geneva, IL. We were less than a quarter of a mile away from a section of town that they used to film part of the movie Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks.
Now this was my first Tweetup, so I only knew one person prior to the meetup. I wouldn’t have even known about it if it weren’t for Wendy setting it up and going the extra step of finding me through TwitterLocal and inviting me, among others. Anyway, Kim told me I was very high energy (I think that’s a kind way of saying I was talking the whole time). So I’m going to just give you a quick sentence or two about everyone that was there from my perspective so you see how much fun these things are.
(l – r) Wendy, Derek, Brad, Barbara and Jerome
Wendy is a great host and one of those people who is comfortable in any situation, whether it’s a business suit or jeans. She also wrote about the tweetup and has great pictures in this post [NOTE: this blog has since changed hands and although the article is the same, the authorship is attributed to Kelly McCausey, who was not in attendance that night].
Derek has three blogs, two of which update daily and the third weekly. We talked about consistency with the blogs and its hurdles and I have to I was impressed with his.
I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Brad, but I did find out that we live near each other, so there’s a good chance that we’ll run into each other at future tweetups so I’ll have another chance or two.
Barbara and I have a mutual friend, which lead us to discuss a lot of music and performance and its role in our lives and the mountains of Montana. She also does some work with (through? at?) the College of DuPage.
No matter what else, I’ll remember that Jerome rode his bicycle to the Tweetup from his job in Elmhurst. For those not familiar with the area, that’s about a 20-25 mile (32-40 kilometer) ride in traffic during rush hour. Wow, that’s all I can say.
I’ll try to keep Kim‘s short since I already know her and there’s too much to say here. A podcaster extraordinaire and unsung New/Social Media maven and Graphic Artist. Oh and my ride too.
Katie and Jeff
Katie was the sole civilian (Non-Twitterer) at the Tweetup that night.
Jeff, among other things, has a startup called Edmodo and a really great camera that had me drooling as well.
Unfortunately, there were two people I never got the chance to say more than hello to:
Carolyn and Karen, who wrote and has pictures about the Tweetup on her blog in this post. I hope I get the chance to change that at the next Tweetup.
So I learned more than I thought in a short amount of time about people I knew nothing of previously and that’s what’s great about the Tweetups. People with a wide vareity of interests and a common tool for communicating those interests. Putting faces on Twitter names and finding out what’s behind them. If you have the chance, catch a Tweetup in your area or the next one in this area. Sounds like we’ll be doing them at least on a quarterly basis.
Thank you Wendy for organizing and inviting and making it all happen, I had a great time.