Last night was Twestival 2009 in Minneapolis at local Sake joint Moto-i (and in 185+ other cities around the globe). Remember? I posted about how I was looking forward to this event a few days ago. Anyway, ZB and I decided to venture out and partake in the gathering of the “Twitter heads”. After all it was for a good cause and some home-brew Sake! What can go wrong with that concept? Other than a crappy internet connection or another nation-wide grid outage mishap. Nothing.
I’ll be honest. I was afraid my fellow twitter’ers would be comprised of a bunch of umbilical-attached-device-junkies, all hiding in dark corners, completely oblivious and disinterested in the outside world (kind of how I am most of the time). Instead ZB and I found ourselves amongst a great group of like-minded, interesting chatty twitter folks, all eager to converse, laugh, and enjoy each other with no obligations, ties or strings attached. We were all total strangers meeting in flesh and blood for the first time, but online, through twitter, somehow more like old family. O.K. That may be pushing it a bit… at the least, we were all comfortably connected by our digital addiction of the twitter platform and will all most likely be following each other soon.
When you really think about it. We Twitter folks are all very social. That’s why we spend the time to send out our daily tweets. These days, most of us are entirely absorbed by our day jobs (or absorbed in trying to find one). We spend a large percentage of our personal time with impersonal applications and machinery. Twitter gives us that quick 140 character “out”. For me, it’s like sticking your head out the window, just to make sure the wind is still blowing and the world is still turning. A digital smoke break, perhaps.
ZB and I left with a dozen or so new friends to follow, a mild Sake/beer buzz and an even better feeling about the Minneapolis twitter culture/community, and all for a good cause. Thanks to all the Minneapolis volunteers who pulled this event together. I hope to be on the list of volunteers next year.
I’ll update this post with post with a link to more photo’s of the the event on Flickr in the next day or so.
Here they are:
click here for Minneapolis twestival set on Flickr
