With enthusiasm built up by the recent events by statewide groups, including the Social Media Breakfast NH in Concord and the inaugural Social Media Club New Hampshire get-together in Portsmouth, social media tweeps in Central New Hamspshire are coming together to start their own monthly Tweetups.
The first Central NH tweetup will be Tuesday March 30 starting at 5:30 at the Barley House in Concord across Main Street from the Capitol.
Drop-in to hang out after work with other area tweeps. “After work” is a different time depending on who you are, so if you can’t join the earlybirds at 5:30, that’s okay. We’ll keep the discussion going! Just give everyone an idea of when you’ll be arriving in a tweet with the hashtag #CentralNHtweetup.
Personally, I’m inspired by the active scenes in Portsmouth and Nashua, where local groups have long been active and helped build statewide events. Will there be a critical mass of folks in the Concord/Manchester area to support our own Tweetups? Between the government center of the state capital, the state’s largest city and their environs, I have to believe there can be.
Besides talking shop and starting to plan future monthly tweetups, I would like to find out what each of us wants to get out of a monthly Central NH Tweetup. What’s your vision? What can help grow the social media community here in the Concord and Manchester area? What can we Central New Hampshire tweeps contribute to the rest of the state? What should a tweetup not be?
Don’t wait for Tuesday–start the discussion in the comments and via Twitter, by all means! For my part, some of what I have in mind that I want to get out of a monthly Tweetup is:
- finding out what people are doing in social media in the area’s diverse range of industries — government, healthcare, education, technology, etc.
- learning from others’ real-life success stories and sharing my own
- finding out what challenges people are facing when trying to apply social media in their work
- learning about local resources, events, new tools and applications
- exploring creative side-projects in social media that aren’t necessarily work-related
- having informal discussions that lead to interesting projects and collaborations outside of the Tweetups.
What I don’t want:
- I don’t want a conference: no long presentations with slides, though brief, extemporaneous talks are cool.
- I don’t want rubber chickens. I don’t want a banquet, I want a beer! (Or a martini, or your beverage of choice.)
- I don’t want those of us who start the tweetup to think we own it. See A Group is its Own Worst Enemy, by Clay Shirky.
Looking forward to seeing you Tuesday!
(updated for clarity with deletions and additions)
Concord/Manchester-area tweeps starting #CentralNHtweetup http://j.mp/aLWfsu
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Added it to the All NH Calendar at http://bit.ly/allnhcal for you – don't forget to let us know when your events are so we can publish them there for all to see
@martywatts What do you want to get out of a #CentralNHtweetup? http://j.mp/aLWfsu #smcnh #smbnh
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Hi John. Thanks for posting this up here for people to chime in on. Some of the stuff I would like to hear about next Tuesday are how companies are dealing with employees who have their own substantial digital networks and what they are doing to either prevent (heaven forbid!) or encourage them to grow them and use that connection for the growth of the organization.
Sure! That's a great subject, and it is becoming a real recruiting and retention challenge.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how companies and organizations need to genuinely involve employees in the process of crafting a social media policy, and how, to be successful, the company has to communicate their policy in ways that build and reward enthusiasm rather than frustrating employees with legalese and many forms of 'thou shalt not.'
Concord has a tweetup now: http://tinyurl.com/y96utnp
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
John, You beat me to it. I was talking with Casey Chesh last night at the Nashua Tweetup about having one in Concord, at the Barley House. Good for you for getting this going. I think there will be interest
Great minds think alike!
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by johnmccrory: Concord/Manchester-area tweeps starting #CentralNHtweetup http://j.mp/aLWfsu...
Tomorrow’s #CentralNHtweetup 5:30 pm at the Barley House http://j.mp/aLWfsu
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