Limerick Twits: Be Serious and Do Something
A few months ago, I surfaced the idea of organising a Limerick Tweetup. I helped to pull together the first Dublin one and organised the second one, so I know what’s involved. I believed that organising the first Limerick one would be similar.
Alas, no. After initial expressions of interest, only two people seemed seriously interested in attending. Seriously, two people. That’s a sad reflection on my home city. Yes, Limerick is a smaller city than Dublin. I don’t expect the same level of attendence at a Limerick Tweetup as I do for a Dublin one, but I’m not prepared to put the work into organising another one for the city if there are less than four locals who want to come along. Tough. You guys are well able to mobilise for OpenCoffees etc. If you want a Tweetup, be serious and do something about it.
EDIT: Just to make it very clear. I’m cancelling the planned Limerick Tweetup for this coming Sunday, January 6th.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:36 am
I think the OpenCoffee crew is more techsocial than chatsocial which could mean the dozen coffee attendees wouldn’t normally go for light social meet-ups. That, plus the fact that regular readership has not returned to their message queues might partially explain why there’s a lack of interest. In my case, I have to get two projects off the ground before anything other kind of meet-up can get onto my calendar.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Sorry to hear this didn’t get traction Alexia. I must admit it’s not really my cup of tea but I would have expected you to get plenty of interest anyway. Fair play to you for trying but why cancel?
When we started ‘geek meets’ in Limerick a few years ago, before OpenCoffees, it was usually just Conn, Bernie and me and sometimes only two of us. Week after week after week. But we decided to follow Dave Winer’s advice and stick with it,… blogging about each meetup and posting photos etc, until such time as people started feeling they were missing out on something. Eventually people got curious and started coming along. And when OpenCoffee was launched the pump had already been primed so we just changed our name.
So, why not go ahead with the Tweetup even if it’s only 3 of you? That’s still a bigger group than we used to have in the early days of our ‘geek meetups’. Take photos, blog about it, tweet about it and then do it all again in a months time. People are usually slow to commit to anything new that takes any amount of commitment but by going ahead with it ‘with or without them’ and growing organically, they’ll eventually just have to go along.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I only became aware of it at the end of the holidays and was initially tempted to drop along even though I’m only tangentially getting into twitter nowish. Then given recent events I thought I might better give it a skip until things have blown over. So I guess I would still be interested but not so soon…
January 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
@Bernie: That’s not true in my experience. The core of the Dublin Tweetup family are Dublin OCC members. They have come to both the first and second Tweetups. Re: message queues, I have blogged, linked and microblogged the event looking for feedback, recommendations and to gauge interest before Christmas, so that excuse doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, Bernie.
@James: As much as I like coming back to Limerick as often as I can, I won’t be able to do this again and again. And why should I carry the can here when people like idea of the meets, but couldn’t be arsed to even sign up and say they were coming along? The Dublin clan are far more progressive in this regard and at the end of the night there’s always a pile of suggestions for the next one. Re: being to slow to commit, isn’t at that at the crux of the techsocial wasteland that is Ireland.
@Daniel: There’s no bad time for a Tweetup, Daniel. It’s just a group of people meeting for dinner. I’ll be looking closely at the Limerick Twitter clan to see where this goes and if they manage to organise Tweetups in the future.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Oh Boo hiss! I’m dissappointed to hear you’ve had to cancel it! I was really looking forward to it.
If there are any takers for an informal meetup for dinner tomorrow I’d still like to go. Are you around Alexia? Seriously if we could just get 4 or 5 I’d still interested. Any takers?
January 4th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
@Anton: I won’t be be around tomorrow. Going back to Dublin. You could take this question to Twitter, Jaiku and your blog.