Tweet Up

TweetUp North at BT Convention Centre, 16 November 2009, originally uploaded by ACC Liverpool.

Life This lunchtime @ACCliverpool or the BT Conference Centre held their first Tweet Up North event and despite my misgivings that perhaps it was just supposed to be for corporate visitors, I went along. It's my first time inside the centre which is the heel side of the Liverpool Echo Arena if you look at it from the sky and pretend it's shaped like a footprint (no, not like Italy, that's more of a boot). The interior is reminiscent of Ethan Hawke's workplace in the film Gattaca, a giant glass atrium the size of a cathedral, which like a cathedral has a stone floor, wooden panelling and loads of small rooms leading off.

The Tweet Up was held in a mezzanine (pictured) which on the one side over looked that atrium and on the other offered a fantastic view of the Mersey and Seacombe beyond yet still managed to seem entirely intimate. There were about forty people, most of whom where indeed attending as part of their work day. We were handed a list of attendees on our way in and it's a three page mix of people faces and corporate logos. But there were plenty of familiar faces so I didn't feel out of it and a couple who knew me from my personal feed of @liverpoolblogs.

Actually, the meeting had the all the hallmarks of a good wedding; a fabulous (and I should add unexpected) buffet (tasty scouse, chicken wraps and mini-pasies), loads of people who haven't seen in a while and total strangers who are willing to chat and speeches. @ianfinch from @mandogroup talked about the corporate uses of Twitter in communicating the message of a company and joining up with clients and @alisongow from the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post talked about how Twitter allows them to properly communicate with the public.

All in all, a really enjoyable event. Not too long so that people weren't looking at their shoes too much, not so short that it wasn't worth the trudge up to the centre. On the walk back to civilisation, @LpoolChamber (hello Nick) suggested that I should take more advantage of these kinds of events, especially since @liverpoolblogs is a known experiment and people are increasingly interested in social networking. Similarly, Alison mentioned in her talk that companies should assign employees Twitter for the day to interact with their public/users. I'm increasingly wondering if it might be possible to find a new career somewhere in there. The professional tweeter.