Indianapolis Tweetup
I had the opportunity to spend my evening with a group of Twitter fans here in Indianapolis at the second Indianapolis Tweetup. The event was held at a coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in Indianapolis (across from the Indianapolis Library) called The Abbey. Nearly 20 Twitterers were in attendance. Other than @stevillama, who I met at the BlogMob, I hadn’t met anyone else prior to this event. It was great getting introduced to new people. At the same time, though, through The Amazing Power of Twitter™ it felt like I had known some of them for a while.
With most folks we talked about twitter, of course, but here are some highlights of conversations I had:
I grabbed some dinner with @axlconn and @ellen5e, and we had a conversation about Macs, Photoshop and GIMP.
@stevillama and I talked about the origins of @y0mbo, using usernames and pseudonyms online. We decided there wasn’t much point in using a pseudonym anymore unless you have a really common name. I still will keep mine, just because its always unique and I’ve been using it for years.
I took some serious ribbing from @axlconn and @douglas_vann for being a .NET developer. I decided it was time to learn an OSS programming language just so I can mock it properly in a public setting.
I met @neutralangel who told me he’s getting a degree in computer science (or something like that), but that his true passion is photography.
I talked with a bunch of people about the practicality of following a lot of people on Twitter. I talked about my rule of 50 followers (which I abandoned after meeting a few fellow Indy Twitterers that I wanted to add). I’ll probably keep a nice balance of following 1 person for every 2 people following me. I just don’t understand the concept of following 12,000 people. You can’t possibly get to know that many people.
@axlconn and I talked about screencasting. I had tried out Camtasia and wanted to find out what he used. Camtasia, it turns out. I mentioned I was doing a screencast of how to sign up for Flickr so they could see my private photos. He pointed out I could generate a unique URL to a photoset and send that to friends and family without the hassle of having them sign up. These are the great reasons to have Twitter friends and getting together with geeks!
@drthomasho and I discussed Comcast, Hamilton Telecom, laptops, desktops, iPhones and tablet PCs. Sounds like he’s pretty happy with the tablet he got (and at a good price).
@stevillama, @ellen5e and @axlconn discussed the merits of backing up video to DVD or hard disk. I was in the middle of this conversation but didn’t really have a much to offer. I didn’t realize hard drive space is still cheaper than other media. It made me reconsider backing up to DVD ROM.
I met @edsai and we noted the missing presence of @douglaskarr, the guy who is into everything. @douglaskarr was one of the first Indy bloggers I started following, and I haven’t had a chance to meet him in person yet.
@edsai, @gregorlove, @neutralangel and I talked about a number of different things, such as vine, @garyvee and @twittermethis. @twittermethis is a Twitter-based trivia contest that actually pays the winner of a round $5 via Paypal. It sounds pretty cool, and I followed the game to see how it goes.
Apparently there was an after-party at @gregorlove’s house, where the remaining Tweetup folks played WII late into the night, but I took off around 9:30. All in all I enjoyed the tweetup and look forward to the next one.
One Comment
- gRegor said: