Tweet Up February 26, 2009 at Panera in PiscatawayYesterday I attended my first TweetUp. What’s a TweetUp, you ask? Well, you know how I’ve been chirping chatting on and on about Twitter. And I blogged about connecting with New Jersey locals on Twitter. Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting these people in person: @rongraham1 @ScottBradley @JerseyBites @annie_lr @K9Confections @mikeconaty @Alig7 @SusanLevinson @liajen @Eva_Abreu (organizer of the event!) as well as Paul Grzella and Skip Hidlay of the Home News Tribune.
And if this isn’t enough, Scott Wyden (who wasn’t at the TweetUp) is working on a New Jersey Twitter List. Live in New Jersey? Go sign up on Scott’s list!
How can you use Twitter to connect with people live in your location?
One of the wonderful parts of working on this post is “meeting” so many different people who live near my home in Central New Jersey (mostly Central). Over the past two weeks I’ve “collected” these new friends (in no particular order):
Deirdre Breakenridge is President of PFS Marketwyse, a full service marketing communications firm and the author of two recent books, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and PR 2.0, New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. You can read Deirdre's blog, PR 2.0 Strategies.
Lori's Earth Friendly Products: Our mission is to bring natural, healthy, kosher products to our friends, and the world. We carry: Fiber Juice, other fiber products, Stomach Friendly Coffee, Garlic Spray, VitaTops, High-Fiber Pasta and Mac & Cheese, Soy Entrees and Textured Soy Protein.http://www.earth-friendly.com/
Marketer, video producer, web guy & rabid jazz fan, working with nonprofits & businesses to effectively use old & new communications tools. http://michaelconaty.com/
social entrepreneur, cause-related marketer, social media learner, direct selling executive, instructional designer, wife and adoptive mother, living out loud! http://liajen.wordpress.com/
It's all about having fun! Organizing Coach, Founder STO / Eva's Edict 5 Minutes #EE5, Speaker, Writer, Volunteer: Intergenerational Programs, Wife, Mom
How did I go about getting these contacts in Twitter?
1) I put “New Jersey” in a search column in TweetDeck and left it there. Each time I start up TweetDeck, I see more tweets about New Jersey. But truthfully, I didn’t find too many new people this way.
2) I asked people I already follow in my location if they wanted to be included in this post. I got much enthusiasm! Some of them suggested other people they follow who live locally. In general, that’s the best way to find new folks to follow; see who your favorite twitterers are following!
3) To make the contact more genuine, reply (use the @, as in @leoraw) to specific tweets to get to know others better.
4) Every now and then, look over everyone else’s tweets, find a good one, and retweet it! To retweet, put ‘RT @twittername’ at the beginning of your tweet. Retweeting is a great way to build community.
Update: I hope to meet a few of these “tweeple” (Twitter for “people”) on Thursday morning.
Note: to anyone in this post, feel free to DM or comment below any corrections, edits, suggestions.
Sky Watch Friday is a photo meme with photos of sunrises, sunsets, blue skies, gray skies, pink skies, dark skies and any other kind of sky posted by bloggers all over the planet.
OK, I lied. This first one isn’t in Edison. It’s on my block in Highland Park, but I want to learn the name of the tree that has these branches. Maybe in the spring when the leaves come back.
I took this photo yesterday at about 5:30 pm, when I was picking up my son from an after school program. The school, RPRY in Edison, New Jersey, is a Jewish Day School, so both the U.S. flag and the Israeli flag were flapping around in the sunset. Today they are probably flapping even more; the wind has been howling since this morning, and a poor woman in Mountainside, New Jersey was killed when a tree fell on her car.
This shot was take above the basketball court at the school.
Before attending my business meeting at Rutgers today in this building, I photographed a detail of the red brick building across the street (above photo, Winants Hall).
Do you think Rutgers chose red as their color so I could use their new emblem (the PR department had it redesigned last year) for Ruby Tuesday?
Sky Watch Friday is a photo meme with photos of sunrises, sunsets, blue skies, gray skies, pink skies, dark skies and any other kind of sky posted by bloggers all over the planet.
I took this photo standing in Highland Park looking across the river at New Brunswick last month in early December. I believe that steeple is in Cook/Douglass Campus of Rutgers (Voorhees Chapel?).
These last two photos were taken this morning. Much bluer sky, right? The above shows the contrasts of old and new architecture in New Brunswick.
This is Easton Avenue in New Brunswick, one block from the College Avenue campus of Rutgers University. I was visiting my favorite computer fix-it folks: Cyber Knight Computers.
My World is a meme played by people all over the planet. For more information and to see other places and wonders, visit My World.
There are railroad tracks on the edge of Highland Park; one could travel these tracks all the way up to Boston or down to Washington DC. Most of the trains, though, just travel between New York City and Philadelphia. You can see the train bridge in my post on the Raritan River. There’s a station in New Brunswick, on the other side of the Raritan, and one in Edison, but none in Highland Park.
You might able to tell why I bothered to head over to the tracks with my camera from the above photo. The land bordering the tracks is all nature: trees, shrubs, plants, dirt.
A path runs through the trees near the tracks, used by hikers and joggers.
This little evergreen bush was the only greenery I could find.
Chabad House at Rutgers will dedicate a new wing to the Mumbai victims.
In an article at MyCentralNewJersey, Rabbi Yosef Carlebach, the director and founder of the Jewish center at Rutgers University says:
“The attack last week was not only an attack on Chabad or the people of Israel but on every living being that believes in life, in humanity and decency.”
And his son, Mendy Carlebach, went to school with Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was brutally murdered in Mumbai. The article states:
“Even after he moved to India in 2003, we kept in touch via email,” Mendy said.
He said he last spoke to Holtzberg when they met at the rabbis conference in New York last year.
Mendy said Holtzberg told him of the new Chabad House that he had just purchased in Mumbai. “Gabby described it as an open house for Indians, Jews, everyone who could always come for a meal and a smile.”
It’s been a beautiful autumn here in Central New Jersey. The color is everywhere; I think the weather has been cooler and damper than previous autumns, and the trees are loving it.
These top two photos were both taken on my block. The one with the window is directly across the street, and the other, with the reds to each side and yellow in center, is looking down the block.
These last two photos were taken outside my kids’ school, which is in Edison, New Jersey, just over the border from Highland Park.
I really wanted to get a photo of Donaldson Park from up high. It is a big county park on the edge of Highland Park, and the Raritan River flows right next to the park. I couldn’t get the whole park, but I got a nice tip of it in this photo. It’s on the right of that white streak in the river.
In order to get this photo, however, I had to park my car on a side street near this busy highway, Route 1, which runs from Maine to Florida (I think). The bridge goes bump, bump, bump as all the cars go over it. I don’t think I’ll be venturing out like this again. I got too nervous from all the cars and bumps.
On my way back to my car, I photographed these pretty fall oak leaves.
How can you use Twitter to connect with people live in your location?
More links to beautiful autumn photos on Carmi’s 
