I’m very excited to be attending the Tampa TweetUp this Saturday night (1/17/09) at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry. Billed as an unstructured evening for
…other local Tweeple who enjoy Twitter, blogging, and all that is social media for an evening of drinks and great conversation. Enjoy a night out of the office or home, Away from your computer, to dork out with others who share similar passions of social networking and have a few drinks.
Not only is this a chance to socialize in person, MOSI is opening up the top of the IMAX dome, giving us an “exclusive 8-story high, 360 degree view of Tampa” (hopefully I’ll be able to get a few good pics), the museum will be introducing their Virtual Ambassador Program. From what I gather of the details of the event, MOSI is developing a viral marketing program by giving bloggers and social media persons some swag, including:
- One year free membership to the museum
- Free ticket to every IMAX film opening from January - June 2009 (excluding special engagements)
- Free ticket to Body Worlds 3 and the Story of the Heart opening January 22, 2009 - The Original Exhibit of Real Human Bodies.
in exchange for a “6 month commitment in helping raise community awareness online about the museum, Body Worlds exhibit, IMAX, and other MOSI offerings”. I have every intention in participating in the program, as I’d certainly enjoy attending events and exhibits and then blogging/Twittering about them afterward.
In regards to the TweetUp itself, ever since attending BarCamp Orlando, I’ve wanted to connect with local bloggers and web geeks like myself. To that end, I’ve failed, as scheduling conflicts prevented me from attending BarCamp Tampa, as well as a few local blogger meetups. However, I swore to myself that this year I would make a concerted effort to be available for these events, as well as actively help foster more of them. I read with envy tweets from people in places like Philadelphia and Orlando who are connecting in real life with other bloggers and developers. I don’t want to wait until I’m in a different city to meet and connect with folks who live down the road.
Though I don’t consider myself a big “social networker”, I do love me some Twitter, and certainly understand their place in today’s web. I am actually taking my first steps in embracing a broader view of social networking by integrating some of the features available in Facebook Connect into a site I’m developing for a client. I’ve got a long way to go, but it’s certainly been an enlightening process, and has undeniably changed my attitude towards sites like Facebook in that just because I personally do not participate in a particular network, it doesn’t mean the network has no value. That said, I don’t think I will ever say the same thing about MySpace.
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Ryan Wade of http://ryanwade.com/
Hey Michael,
I’ll be there tonight too … looking forward to meeting you.
-Ryan
Posted at January 17, 2009 on 3:52pm