Overpass Experiences The Eric Wroolie Blog

The OxTweetup

The Tweetup in Oxfordshire went well the other night.  There were people from all over Oxfordshire and from around outside areas like Newbury.  I arrived a bit late, so got there just in time for "Monday Night is Pie Night" (how can an American not attend that?) and spoke with some complete strangers.

There must have been about 50 people there.  The demographic was mostly white and middle-aged and more affluent.  Watching the local tweets, I know that Twitter is a big thing with younger secondary school kids.  But this was not their scene.

The tweetup took place at a very nice restaurant called the Fallowfields Country House.  From what I gather, the owner, Anthony Lloyd, is very big into technology and twitter.  He blogs, tweets, and his restaurant has a nice website.  He is definitely using this social networking trend very skilfully.  I think his use of Twitter and blogging actually brings a lot of people to his fancy restaurant that would not travel out into this village regularly.  I, being primarily a burger guy, would not have entered such a posh looking place on my own, but will probably bring the family back to to this place often.  I didn’t get much time to talk to Anthony, but he set up a nice evening and has a beautiful restaurant.

I showed up a bit late to the Tweetup.  I was working later than I had hoped I would be, so I arrived at the tail end of the networking portion of the evening. 

The natural wall-flower in me fought to take over, but I took a deep breath and jumped into a group of people having a conversation.  This is always difficult.  At networking-type events, like seminars and stuff, there are usually clusters of people standing around and it always looks like half of the people already know each other (they don't— they are just better at introducing themselves than I am), so you don't really want to butt into a conversation.  But the alternative is to stand and pretend to be reading stuff on your phone.  So I jumped in there, "Hi, I'm Eric Wroolie.  I'm going to pretend I've been standing in your group the whole time and maybe no one will notice."  The conversation always goes to my accent— and that gives me something to talk about.   “Why would you move to move out here?” “You’re not Canadian are you?” “Well, you haven’t lost your accent at all.” When asked what I do, I tell them I'm a software developer (although I've read enough to know I need an elevator pitch for this moment --“I work with small to medium-sized companies helping them with outsourcing software development” — but it's too hokey and I won't do it). 

I met one dentist who is using social networking to bring in more business and it seems to be working for him.  I met a guy who told me he was a trainer, and since I used to work at Sea World as a kid— I assumed he meant animal trainer, but he assured me he taught sales training and presentation skills.  And, of course at this kind of event, I met other software people.

I sat down at a table with people who all knew each other.  They were members of BNI— a British networking group.  I attended a BNI breakfast meeting years ago, and was sure they were going to try to persuade me to attend another one.  I got the impression they attended a lot of these things all over the southwest.  But most of the people I met weren't career networkers, so it wasn’t so bad.

It was a nice evening.  The pie was fantastic.  I met some nice people.  Not one business card was exchanged—so it felt lower on the sleazy factor.  If you have a tweetup in your area, it might be worth considering attending.

Attending a Tweetup tomorrow

Tomorrow night, I’m going to attend an Oxfordshire Tweetup at the Fallowfields Country House near Abingdon.  I’m not sure what to expect, but I saw it was coming up and thought I would check it out.  A tweetup, as I understand it, is just a bunch of Twitterers getting together to meet each other.  I follow a few people in the Oxfordshire area (they actually help me by letting me know when the roads are bad or if there is anything interesting going on in the area) and it would be nice to meet them.  I’m not sure what to expect really, but it will be nice to meet some new people.

A few years ago, when ECademy was at it’s prime, I attended a local networking evening.  It was okay, but it was really a room full of people trying to sell themselves and their companies.  I never met so many life coaches as I did that night.  But it wasn’t awful—and i met some nice people who I spoke with afterwards.  I’m hoping that the tweetup is not so business-focused.

I’m looking forward to it.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  If you live in Oxfordshire and want to attend, the url to register for the event is here: http://twtvite.com/mkp8da

What Twitter is becoming

I enjoy Twitter.  It's easy to update.  The low character limit, rather than being a hindrance, encourages people to start using it who would never think of started a self-serving blog.  It's easy to put off a quick statement without having to think too much about it.  I find I update Twitter far more than this blog.

I'm getting lots of followers.  This is good for the ego until I look at who they are.  On any given day, I will get a few email like the following:

Now, I ask you . . . how can someone follow the status updates of over 1400 people?  How is it even possible?  Why would someone want to do it?

I get two or three of these type of followers a day.

I'm also seeing a lot of articles on the web titled "How to increase you followers in Twitter".  It's like the new SEO.  There are people now calling themselves "Social Media Consultants".

I suspect that people follow thousands of people so that those people will in turn follow them.  It makes sense I guess-- you send more mail when you want to get more mail.  However, there is just something spammy about this.  Maybe they are looking for the top spot in the Twitter stats.

Twitter is not like Facebook where you have to give permission to people so they can see your status.  You can search all tweets (unless the author specifically selects to option to make it private)-- so there is no reason to follow 14k or more people. 

A few years ago, I kept getting contacted by SEO charlatans saying things like "I can get your company in the top 10 on Google."  It was a ridiculous statement.  I asked if they knew what my business did or what keywords I wanted, but they didn't. 

I now soon expect to be told, "I can get you 20k followers on Twitter. "  But who wants that?

Healthy Skepticism about the net

Back in 2000, while I was working for a small dot com in Reading, someone asked me how much I bought online.  As the office geek, they assumed I sat at home ordering things from boo.com or any of the other online retailers who participated in the early online gold rush.  I told this guy that I don't shop online-- I don't trust the online retailers.  I can still remember his response "Isn't it ironic that our web developer doesn't trust the web?!?"

I didn't trust the web.  More accurately, I didn't trust all web developers.  Back then, everyone was rushing to build an online store and no one was investing heavily in security.  People could literally hack into other people's accounts by playing the query string on the url.  I want to give these people my credit card info?  Back then, some high profile breaches made a lot of people stay away from online shopping.

But everyone has come around now-- including myself.  Online retailing has proven itself far superior to bricks and mortar retailing (Royal Mail and other shipping companies seem to be the week link in the chain).  I couldn't imagine not having online banking.  Still, I mainly stick to the large retailers (like Amazon) or anyone who uses PayPal--minimising the exposure to my credit card number.

Back in 2000, the public was still skeptical about the info they handed over online.  They are definitely not so skeptical anymore.

But social networking is the other end of the extreme.  I guess I'm a fan.  I blog, I like to tweet, I have a Facebook account (although I don't use it as much) .  It is a lot of fun.  I have to admit that there is something exciting about adding some transparency to your life.  It could be that no one wants to know anything about me, but if they did it's not hard to find out.  It feels honest to put yourself out there for who you are.

I have an online identity.  But that's my decision.  I can't make that decision for my family.

Back to trusting the net -- I don't mind uploading some pictures of myself to Facebook or this blog, but I don't include pictures of my family or personal information that doesn't belong there.  I see too many people who post (potentially embarrassing) pictures of their kids or spouses online.  This is weird at best, scary at worst. 

Sure, it might not seem all that bad to post some pictures online of my small kids doing something cute.  Our kids are the biggest part of our lives, so we want to share that.  Why not put them on a pedestal?  There's nothing wrong with that.  But, kids grow up and have to create lives of their own.  They will become independent individuals who will create their own stories and identities. 

As the expressions goes, "Google never forgets." None of us had "Google baggage" to contend with growing up.  When I was feeling awkward in social situations in elementary school, at least I didn't have to contend with the fear that someone could Google me and find that picture of me dressed as Batman when I was 5.  I don't have to worry about someone finding an online comment made by my parents 10 years earlier that I had a bed-wetting problem and asking the online community for advice.  As far as the other kids in class knew, what they saw is what they got.  I made my own social mistakes and learned my own social lessons.

I know that Facebook is closed and that you invite people into your world.  People can only see your profile if you allow them to.  Everyone can't Google you and see the pictures you post-- you need to give permission.  But we are still putting our safety back into the hands of developers.  We are relying on the promises made to us by a company in 2009 that may change by 2014. 

There was a story by BBC News last week about sites that store copies of deleted photos after you delete them: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8060407.stm

I'm not saying that all this is bad.  It's just different.  Maybe this is a rebellious luddite streak that I've been suppressing for the past decade manifesting itself.  I mean, no one should expect the kids of today to grow up in the same conditions we grew up in.  Their world is different.  But, I just think we need to think about the consequences of our online actions before leaping in. 

So, in the social networking hype-- just like with the ecommerce hype of a decade ago, I'm skeptical.  I value the identities of my family members far more than I do my credit card info.