Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

A tweetup in the making

It has been a long time coming, but I think we’re finally here. Fort St. John will finally see its first tweet up.  This is not an authentic tweetup like I am use to. This tweetup will coincide with this months Synergy Mingler, Synergy being a junior devision of the Fort St John Chamber of Commerce.

022710_CBC Craft Beer Tweetup 140photo © 2010 Margaret Demille | more info (via: Wylio)

The tweetups that I have attended and also had a hand in organizing are more like an afternoon with friends over coffee. We meet in a coffee shop one Sunday afternoon, so even minors can attend.

A tweetup is basically where you have the opportunity to meet those people you talk to online all the time in real life. It is basically a networking event, but I have found more friendships at these types of events than business opportunities.

Ironically before this event became a tweetup I was asked to speak about Social Media at the Mingler. Now I will be speaking to a crowd that might already be on twitter. We will see.

I would also like to have another tweetup, possible next month, on a weekend in the afternoon at a coffee shop.

I Know you Know – So Just say No

Recently we have been trying to promote a Tweetup, a gathering of local Twitter users, here in Yellowknife and it is hard to know if we are getting the message out there.

This is not a hit at anyone personally and this happens everywhere online.

I know that there are a good 50 people on Twitter in Yellowknife and we have tried to reach them all with the Twitter Invite. I don’t know them all, hell I don’t know many of them but that is the point of the tweetup. We have been promoting this particular event for over 2 weeks. There have many blog posts, tweets and ReTweets about it but only 9 people have RSVP’ed. Only 9. This doesn’t mean 9 are coming actually only 6 are coming. It bugs me when you specifically send out these invites to people and they just ignore them all together.

Let me explain how the invite works. You go to link, if you are going you click YES. If you are unsure if you will be attending you click MAYBE. If you are not coming you click NO. There is an option for everyone. So I don’t know why people think they should just ignore it as if they are better than everyone. I’m not trying to rant on anyone, but as someone who helps organize these events it is nice to have an approximate number of how many will be attending and to know that the word is getting around.

Just something I thought I would mention. No hard feeling Okay!

Yesterday had its excitment while I slept

Yesterday was full of 2 interesting findings, even though I slept all day.

The one thing I go excited about was some national recognition YkOnline received. Here is what happened. At about 6pm I got up and opened up my MacBook as I always do and checked my stats for both websites. When I saw that YkOnline had almost tripled the amount of hits it was normally gets I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was weird as the only post I had published in 5 days was about Yellowknife’s Twitter community and didn’t think it would get very much recognition and well I was right. As I scrolled down to see where the hits were being referred from I saw that most of them were coming from Miss604.com. If you don’t know about Miss604, you should check it out. Rebecca Bollwitt blogs about Vancouver and has become very famous do it, needless to say she is an idol of mine. So when I saw all these hits coming from her site, I quickly scrambled over there. I was delightfully surprised to read in one of her latest posts she linked back to YkOnline. Not only that she explained that we (as in Yellowknifers) have TweetUps and have a directory of all the Tweeps. I was so happy to see that not only YkOnline was getting recognized but also our Twitter community.

The other interesting thing about yesterday was what I found on my truck tires. Orange lines, could they be markings done by By-Law Officers. Read my post of YkOnline about what I think.

There you have it.

Just Confirmed it.

That I’m crazy that is. So not only am I trying to keep 3 blogs at once I made another Twitter account making that number 3 as well. The Bushman and Ykonline will be updated more frequently as I have something to say on about them both on a regular bases. As for the CanLiving one it will still be updated ever once and a while.

For those who haven’t ventured over to YkOnline.ca yet I’m happy to say the Owner of Javaroma commented on my WiFi post I made about the coffee shop explaining that he is looking in to bring back WiFi with more restriction so we don’t have a repeat. Check it out HERE

In other News we might have our first ykTweetup this weekend. It might be at the Yellowknife Trade Show. I wrote more about it HERE

Twitter a Yellowknife Tweetup with #yktweetup

The last couple days I have been annoying the wonderful twitter people of Yellowknife with this question. Which do you prefer for the hashtag (hashtag being #, and is used in front of key words for the Twitter Search) #yellowknifetweetup #yzftweetup or #yktweetup? After the first day it was clear no one wanted #yellowknifetweetup as it was to long. So I reasked the question with out that one. What I found got back was 5 for #yktweetup and 2 for #yzftweetup. So I am unofficially naming the hashtag used to refer to a Yellowknife Tweetup be #yktweetup. But just so where clear the # for Yellowknife is still #yzf and the tweetup # is #YKTweetup.

If you have no clue what a Tweetup is please watch this video and if you have no clue what twitter is Amy wrote THIS post explaining a little about what it is.

I hope to possibly set up a site where it will show the feed for #yktweetup so we all know when someone is planning or attending a Tweetup here in our little town.