MegaTweetup Hosts Social Media Community & Organizers
December 10, 2010
Next week sees the 2nd annual MegaTweetup organized by Joselin Mane on Thursday December 16th from 6:00pm to 10:00pm.
Joselin Mane is well known around the Boston social media community for managing the BostonTweetup, a website and twitter account that catalogs the calendar of social media events in the Boston community. Joselin isn't just the host for the Boston social media community but regularly attends many events throughout the week. I caught up with Joselin recently as he prepares for the event next week and asked him some questions about how he put the event together and the results he expects to see this year:
John Cass: How did you come to organize it?
Joselin Mane: I went to the MITX interactive awards, there were a few hundred people there. Outside the venue I met someone I knew, who then met someone they knew, and within half an hour there was a large community talking together, whose only connection was social media. Everyone was from different industries and professions.
So I tried to imagine an event that allowed all of the event organizers for different industries in Boston to be showcased. People who were in social media, and people that have never been in social media. Doing a show case of all the best and brightest in social media in Boston.
John Cass: What were the lessons learned in organizing the MegaTweetup?
Joselin Mane: Don’t put your event at the same time as another event. I go to 2-3 events a day, I’m constantly networking.
Start supporting people before the event. Organizers of events rarely support other events. While my strategy is to promote other events.
Do offline what you do online. It's fundamental to social media, follow other people, contribute to their blog. This can also happen with offline connections. The more you support other people, the more support you will get, because you are really supporting the community.
When approaching a company, instead of saying would you like to sponsor, I ask how can we best show case at the event? We provide ways for everyone to contribute:
1) Sponsor, 2) raffle, 3) media partner.
Sullivan Tire provided a card for every attendee.
John Cass: What were the results?
Joselin Mane: 400 people attended last year, MegaTweetup was the largest tweetup in Boston history. Getting back to the dot.com days.
This year we are going to have a social media control room that will analyze all the data.
People made a lot of business connections, we are reaching traditional media, as well as new media. The Boston Globe is covering the event this year.
John Cass: What can you expect from the next Megatweet up?
Joselin Mane: This year I'm doing a lot more work done before the event, rather than after. We created a separate twitter account from BostonTweetup, we have a social media command center. There will be awards out for the most active person on twitter, working with radian6 and tweet reach to determine who. We are also putting together two case studies, a quick case study immediately afterwards, and then a longer case study on 3rd January, on how to leverage social media for events and fund raising. It’s a fund raiser for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Thursday December 16th from 6:00pm to 10:00pm at the Microsoft NERD center in Cambridge, MA. The Hashtag is #megatweetup