Tweetworks

BBQ, Beer, Pool, Live Music and Great Friends

Thursday night people from all over New England decended upon Firefly’s BBQ restaurant in Marlborough, MA for a great night with friends. The evening proved that people will travel for a cool event and that it is absolutely possible to host a big tweetup in the burbs.

A huge thank you to Hung Pham for bringing his musical coolness to the evening. He was fantastic. I highly recommend you consider him for your event. I know we’ll have him back.

Lessons Learned About Hosting a Successful Tweetup

• Venue – Choose a venue where you can have exclusive access to the space if possible. It was real nice having the private room where everyone knew that the people they were mingling with were there for the same purpose.
• Do More Than Drink – Enjoying some recreational beverages is great but that will only bring out so many people. Having an interesting dining experience, an activity (pool) and even some entertainment (live music) really helps to bring people out and keep them engaged. It will also get people talking about the event and help you bring a big crowd to your next event.
• Watch the Noise Level – Having live music or a DJ is cool but remember, people are there to network and socialize so be sure they can hear each other.
• Promote the Event – Use a service like Eventbrite to encourage people to register ahead of time. It also gives people an opportunity to see who else is coming, get detailed information about the event (like directions), and gives them a website to share with others. I also used Twitter (through Tweetworks), Facebook and LinkedIN to get the word out. Luckily, Eventbrite has a built in feature to cross promote your event on all these tools.
• Take Pictures and Video – People like to see how the event went. Be sure to take pictures and video.
• Cell Signal & WiFi – If you are hosting a tweetup it helps to make sure the venue has a good cell signal and maybe WiFi available. While it can be a good thing to have people not staring at their iPhones, people have grown to expect to be able to live tweet, Twitpic and Qik from Tweetups.
• Holidays – I completely forgot that April 9th was Passover. Whoops! We missed out on a good sized Jewish crowd.
• Late Hours – The venue closed at 10:30 and while in the grand scheme of things this was fine I got the feeling that some people would have liked to stay longer. Next time I’ll look for a place open until midnight.