rjamestaylor said: A tweet-up is an event to have 140 char conversations face to face with expectation that some personal DM’s will follow.

Much has be written and said about “how to tweet” (my favorite being Paula Berg’s advice on how to get started: “Lock yourself in a room with a couple bottles of wine and start doing it” – heard at a private talk she gave in Spring 2009) but not as much on how to “tweet-up”. A tweet-up is a Twitter-oriented / announced meet-up. Pretty simple. It can be announced by something as simple as posting a venue and date to meet or can be organized with fanfare and aplomb, but the purpose is to bring people who otherwise meet by tweet to a face-to-face gathering.

Yet the tweet-up is not the end goal. At a well attended tweet-up there is little time to have in depth conversations or to establish lasting relationships in the usual two hours allotted for such events. What, then, is the goal of the tweet-up? To establish enough of a connection with people of interest to develop lasting, personal connections — real-life “Direct Messages”, if you will.

The rapid pace and brevity of tweet-up conversations are akin to the 140 character conversations held on Twitter itself. Yet, like as on Twitter, people will follow other users met online and then be able to engage in DMs or email exchanges off-line. The tweet-up should be seen as an opportunity to find interesting people to “follow” in real life and have those longer, more intimate personal (or business) discussions. Bring your business cards, mix around the room with people you don’t know and be ready to make new or stronger connections.

With this expectation in mind it’s time to head for the next tweet-up!