Social Networking In the Real World

The morning after the night before…

Last night saw the second ever ConnectingHR “Tweetup” or networking event in Central London. The event was again organised by @joningham and @garelaos and like the first was a great success – both in terms of numbers and atmosphere. The event was sponsored by @courtenayhr

Over 80 people had registered for the event, and despite the searing London heat the majority were in attendance – and some that did not register!

The format of this was much like the first where most of the time it was free networking, with an informal “presentation” by our hosts (less than 5 mins) broke the pattern. This time the organisers did a couple of new things a tweet wall and they asked two of us to “lead” discussions:

• How to use Twitter for “virgins”
• How to get the most out of LinkedIn

I was invited to lead the session on Twitter and we had a small but vocal group of about 7 people. This was in a small way a leading to another event being planned… the Unconference in the autumn. This looks promising and I will look to both inform when it is happening and blog about it when it does.

TwitterWall

One new innovation at this event was the introduction of a “twitter stream” projected onto one of the walls in the room we were using. This was set to capture the #connectingHR tag. This had the impact of encouraging more people at this event to tweet ‘live’ than did at ConnectingHR#1. Was this a good thing or not? In many ways it was a distraction, however as the event is open to people not involved (yet) on Twitter it allowed them to see one aspect of the platform in use. The tweet wall certainly held attention at times and was itself the attention of focus on occasions (see http://bit.ly/connectHR2010

It all happened at a networking event

I found out about this on the twitter wall, and apparently (we were in a basement room of the pub near the toilets) and a woman walked into the room we were in (she had been drinking for some time) stood, wet the floor and walked out! I heard from another source that a pair of red knickers were seen in the ladies loos! so it all happens at a HR networking event! Needless to say most of the attendees of our event were better behaved!

Better Behaved – or were we?

One of the interesting things about twitter is the perceived anonymity and freedom it provides. last night I noticed on several occasions that some people had tweeted profanities and made (perhaps) inappropriate comments on to twitter using the hash-tag (#connectingHR). Twitter is an interesting environment, and personally I like to remember that whatever you put there is on the net for good. Any use of language etc will be there for people to see. If using twitter for business, what will potential customers thing of our “drunken” ramblings? or if an employer look at us as their next recruit…?

What makes this event special?

This networking event unlike many others has a great unique selling point – the majority of people that attend are “employees” – the number of “suppliers” is strictly limited. This means that it is a true social networking event, no sell, no pressure to sell. For those that are nervous or dislike “networking” (CIPD members look at this thread on networking for introverts ) it is the ideal environment to become comfortable just talking to with people.

A big thank you

I spoke to sooooo many people – new and old contacts, if you are reading this you know who you are (too many to list here) great to catch up last night – until next time in the twitterverse or at another #connexctingHR event!