Hash TweetupGoa: The buzzword for a cause

11Jan10

The first one that I know of and been part of; in Goa.

So this ain’t a detailed description. Better ones can be seen here and here. I ended up reaching late, despite having left for office 3 hours before. As I was dead tired with hardly any sleep, I went to hostel to see if I’d get to meet my juniors and yea to rest a bit if possible. Well didn’t get as much time to rest, but got loads to learn from my immediate juniors who are now employed as well about their projects and the tools they used. Although of the two juniors, one was quite vocal about the technical details that made it sound all the more interesting, the other fellow was much more reserved. 10-0 sort of.

Eventually I ended up staying till 16:20 and yes even that was way too much time to reach the tweetup venue which was nearer to university than Panjim. Yes, I’d work in Panjim and when I’d driven all that way, I thought of making the best use of it. Not taking into account the lack of parking space at any time of the day in Panjim, followed by beating round the one-ways took away almost all of the remaining time till 5pm, when I started off through the slow evening traffic to Miramar.

I’d recognized Snehal (I felt and later confirmed) and then Fred as he was sitting a little inside. Then as I took my seat, trying not to fall off the raised floor, introductions were underway. I’d often hate my bad hearing for this, but I more or less got all the real names correct, if not the twitter handles. The turnout was umm..1…2…3…mmhmm….14 people IIRC. of which 13 were present for almost the entire duration of the discussion.

The two things that I feel were key to a good tweetup were a reason and majority participation. To be at a meet for a reason is more important than the cold eskimo I ordered (nah, its just a cold coffee model with exorbitant brand value). Although I was not clear of it before being there and for me a “meet and greet” was a fair enough reason too. Well, the tweetup was the first of many to come uptil the Twestival Goa event for which various plans were being discussed. Various requirements and solutions were being discussed. A notepad and a pen were being passed around as people began to follow suit or sweat their heads, tax their brains (how do you tax something that’s below taxable threshold?) and scribbled their suggestions on to the notepad. Majority participated vocally. There of course were some noticeable individuals and they were so in a positive way. Their inputs really helped a lot.

As we concluded the event by 7pm, I helped some of the attendees who had a plan to walk back to Panjim bus stand to get their ‘hopefully available’ 7:30pm ‘last bus’ (most ridiculous part of buses in Goa…including private). Awaiting an invite to the twestival goa team collaboration workspace. I’ve my own wave going till then.

Filed under: off-tech   |  5 Comments
Tags: TweetupGoa, Twestival, TwestivalGoa, twitter