It does seem a bit odd; meeting each other in real life after an initial online contact. It does happen quite often anyway, already since the first chat groups there seems to be a need to meet ‘the other’ in real life. This is how the first ‘internet meetings’ started. While internetting was for the ‘geeks’ at school, some 10-15 years ago you were even more frowned upon if you were meeting those internet people offline as well. Even today online communication is sometimes met with disbelief, but as more and more people have been using the internet it has started to become normal to have online friends. Using this momentum, the internet meeting is starting to break through , maybe as early as this year. This development is not only fun and entertaining; it is also a good way to make contact with consumers, customers and business partners.

Even though internet meetings, even large gatherings, have been there since way before Twitter, it seems to be Twitter that is driving the ‘meeting’ to a new level. Just this year it seems to get to a point where it’s really popular. In Holland there was a Twitterdisco, and a crowd-sourced Twitterparty already. And of course there was the ‘Twittershizzle’ party that I helped organizing as well. Of course to me personally it is this last one that is closest to me, but it’s also the event that got me loads of reactions like ‘we should do this more often’ and ‘will there be spinoff Twittershizzle parties’?

Drink turning into event

Drinks, ‘open coffee’ and other events organized via twitter, facebook and ning are, in my opinion, just the start of things to come. There is a demand and more Twittershizzles or whatever you’d like to come up with will be there soon. But there will also a larger demand for more specialized gatherings, dedicated to making new useful contacts. These won’t be like one of those ‘networking drinks’, just some sort of generic presentation about something or a large sponsored event. These will be different; a mashup of all these, informative but ‘fun’. Currently there is a development in the direction that I named earlier; the offline consolidation of knowledge and contacts by a central ‘actor’ that knows how to find the right people from the online social networks: commercial dating. (On which I wrote an article that for now is only available in Dutch on Bijgespijkerd.nl here)
Yes, of course these are offline events, but it’s setup will make it have similarities with the online social networks. Selected on a specific target group (maybe just ‘self-selection’), but open, honest and with a focus on sharing information and knowledge.

The role of the mediator will play an important role in this second form; the organizing of specific network events, whether you call it commercial dating, or not. I assume a lot of readers will be able to give me several examples of this already. There have been countless examples all over the world of interesting events, in Holland there are “tweetups” and things like “Mobile Monday”. However, I think we will see in the rest of this year that organizations will plan these type of events more on their own to attract a specific audience of consumers, reviewers or promoters and get these all together in a fun but (commercially) useful way.

Maturity

Press conferences, première nights and other presentations which we’ve been familiar with for quite some time, will be changed or altered to a real ‘twitterparty’ or similar event, for like minded people or converted to an event where knowledge sharing will be the key. Essential in this, perhaps not so apparent, renewal of events is the connection to ‘online’ communication-wise during and after an event and the collection of knowledge online to make sure you get the right people there to begin with. These little changes in meeting could mean the ‘meetup’ will start to reach maturity in 2010.

This article is based on a longer article (in Dutch) that I’ve written for marketing blog Bijgepijkerd.

It is often said that the key to ‘how social media works’, or at least how you can gain inlfuence as an actor in social media is staying honest and true to what you believe as a person. (ie: don’t try to operate as a typical company) Although one can certainly make arguments against that, I do support the notion that an open and honest approach is appreciated by many. This is true in real life, but even more so online, where hiding ones true intentions can be a lot easier.

Thus, when it became apparent that the Dutch ‘twitterer of the year’ election was set up by a advertisement agency people began to criticise they way this was set up. Of course it didn’t take long before freelance journalist Bert Brussen announced on twitter that he would take care of organising something more fun. What followed is an example of a typical social media effort.

This is how Twittershizzle got born; an effort to do something fun for twitterers (or ‘tweeps’) that was more than just meeting up for some drinks. You could call it crowdsourcing, but maybe that doesn’t do justice to how these kind of things usually work. With Bert’s following on twitter he quickly gained attention and a buzz of enthusiasm was spreading through the Dutch twittersphere. With friends and colleagues from the Dutch weblog deJaap Bas Paternotte and Levi Boitelle agreeing to help the event was taking shape.

As part of the deJaap editorial board I was happy to do my share in making this event a success. It wasn’t a complete smooth ride, but we all know our fair share of how things work online, so in the end we got it together. Staying true to what we thought would be fun to do, not thinking too much about marketing practices we managed to get it done; #Twittershizzle the Twitter event was born and would take place on the 9th of February.

Word about this event spread quickly, and set up as a free event with artists and musicians participating for next to nothing it became quite something. There was a stream from ‘Ted’, there were paintcartoons, there were writers, there was beer and there was more beer and sigarettes.

(CC Photo by Anne Helmond)

I’ve been setting up meetings for more than 10 years now, from get-togethers in the local pub to lectures, but this was something unique indeed. A nice 300 active twitterers from all kinds of sub groups in the Dutch sphere showed up, along with newscrews from papers, radio and television, trying to see what this could possible be.

Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with organizing something and making a profit out of it. But especially online people want to participate, not just be bothered with offers or things that they should really buy in to. Or as Bert Brussen puts it:

beware of stains on your purple pants

Personally this all is what I love the most about the internet. You get together with long-time online friends, strangers and everyone in between, while others are still trying to grasp what this is really about. Yes, “the internet really is my thing” and I love every second of it. What’s next? I can say a new Twittershizzle, and plans for international versions of this type of event are uttered, so we’ll see where we stand, tomorrow, next month, next year. And never forget that it’s you, it’s me, it’s us all together making fabulous things happen again and again, sometimes failing miserably, but always creating something beautiful. I hope this will come across on television as bright as I feel it now.

Of course most of the postings about Twittershizzle are in Dutch, but you can search by Hashtag if you’d like and pictures can be found here or here. A nice linkdump with even more and some (Dutch spoken) videos is here on Mark Hulstein’s blog.