TweetCamp London 2009

On saturday we headed to Richmond, Surrey, to attend TweetCamp at the Gumtree offices.

WTF is TweetCamp?

TweetCamp is an unconference, a BarCamp focussed on, guess what, Twitter. We haven’t really discussed the topic extensively on these pages, but both Gioia and myself are happy Twitter users, as you can see from the sidebar here, on your right, and on the Twitter page of this blog. Our interest towards social networks, social media and the technologies that are around these. Twitter is one of the tools that interest us the most: as you know, we also organised AperiTweat, a Twitter-based meetup (aka Tweetup) inspired by the Italian Aperitivo.

Gioia @ TweetCamp

We never went to an event structured in this way, but it’s safe to say that we overall quite enjoyed the day. Morning sessions included rotating circle-meetings, followed by open discussions set up during the previous chats in the different areas in the offices (which, by the way, are stunning). We met our friends Carmen, Julius and Niamh, as well as new interesting people.

Discussions varied from what we talk about on Twitter, why we use it, and some meta-conversation on what we would like to talk about later in the day at TweetCamp. We engaged in a discussion on the use of Twitter in connection with events. But we could have picked literally anything else: from dairy products to twetiquette (Twitter etiquette, of course), from the future of podcast to Twitter applications. Lots and lots of interesting vibes fluctuating in the rooms.

One of the topics that seemed to be at the centre of the attention was the BBC Save our Sounds project, which is awesome. Check it out, also on Twitter of course. The attempt to make the paper-wiki work didn’t quite go as expected, but I’m sure it has good potential.

TweetCamp paper-wiki

After lunch and refreshments, other circle-meetings took place, and then we got interviewed by Julius for his Event Manager Blog on our experience at TweetCamp. You can find the video in his blog post on TweetCamp.

Only later we got to know that the fun started with drinks provided by one of the sponsors, but we had to leave towards Hampstead, where we attended the first of this year’s series of gigs within the English Heritage Picnic Concerts, with Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus, which you will know about in the near future.

A big thanks to Jon, Farhan and Desigan at TweetCamp for organising this.

All images courtesy of Benjamin Ellis on Flickr. You can see many more TweetCamp pics on Flickr.