All I can really say is “Wow.” When the idea to host a tweetup had been thrown around months ago between @loritodd, @Heraldsports and I after I attended the @Sun Sentinel’s first #SoFlaTweetup, we were slow getting started but once the ball started rolling it only took two weeks to see the RSVP list on our twtvite explode.

We were slightly nervous about the attendance, hoping the casual nature of tweetups didn’t result in too many last-minute “I’m-so-swamped, can’t-make-it” replies. But Miami, boy did you deliver. The Miami Herald staff was thrilled to have been able to socialize and meet you all face-to-face, the people behind the voices in our paper and online and the readers who’ve stuck with us through challenging times.

You blew us away by making #HeraldTweetup such a fantastic success.

Most of the other tweetups (RefreshMiami, BarCampMiami) and meetups I’ve attended in Miami have been tech-based, chock-full of geeks and developers, iPhone geniuses and Web designers. The community is flourishing and it’s exciting that the barriers to hang and mingle with these sharp minds are few.  After a while though for us media folks it feels a little over our heads. I’m a tech-groupie, but I can’t talk serious shop with the talented geeks in Miami.

We hope to continue to host tweetups in the future as a vehicle for community interaction, uniting readers from all professions and backgrounds, and hopefully with changes in venue more readers from the tri-county area.

From our estimates about 150 of you fine folk were kind enough to spend your Tuesday night with us at Tobacco Road. You braved the heat, mosquitoes and a standing-room-only setup and for that we cannot thank you enough.

Please, please, please let us know if you have suggestions for future venues or ideas on what we can do to make these continually fun for all of you. Check out The Miami Herald’s South Florida Twitter Directory for more fun peeps to follow and keep checking it regularly, as the list will always be getting new names.

If you have photos from the event, we’d love it if you added them to our Flickr pool (thanks @loritodd!) and keep your eyes peeled for an event video on its way. We’ll tweet it at you.

Here are some of the shots from last night:

What bloggers are saying:

Carlos Miller on old media organizations with new media tricks

Miami Herald Tweetup at Tobacco Road – @ GoLiveMiami.com

Miami Herald Tweetup Round-up! -  @ holy crap my hair is on fire

So you’re a Twitter rock star with an impressive list of followers. You’ve got a killer score of 99.6 on Twitter Grader, you carry on interesting conversations with @reply after @reply and get retweeted a decent amount, too. All is well in your Twitterverse, except…

…none of it is doing you any good in real life. Close your laptop and turn off your iPhone. What happens to your Twitterverse now? Exactly.

GIVE TWEEPS A CHANCE

If for any reason you’ve been weary of making your way to a tweetup in your area, I beg you to get off your rump, take a shot of social courage and meet these virtual tweeps in reality. Sure, there may be a brief moment of awkward introductions. “Hey, so… you’re @johndoe…you look nothing like your avatar…nice to meet you.”  And even after that it may seem like there isn’t much to talk about besides the last four tweets you’ve read from each other or the hottest tweeted link of the day. This is not the case.

Your tweeps are more than handles and avatars and links and hashtags.  Because you share interests (Why else would you follow them?) and converse with them throughout the day, there’s a pretty strong chance you’d have a great time at the pub/bar/pizza joint shooting the breeze for an hour or two.  It solidifies the connections you are using Twitter to establish anyway and like any good relationship, it needs work.

It’s usually not hard to find tweetups since they are, of course, arranged via twitter and we spend a good bulk of our day there anyway.  If you are a casual twitter user and not an obsessed fiend, check sites like Meetup.com or Tweetups.org for local gatherings. Also search for local twitter accounts that announce tweetups in your area (i.e. @soflatweetup, @ftlaudtweetup, etc.).

RECESSION FRIENDLY

Believe it or not, it IS possible to have a social life without breaking the bank. Down here in South Florida we are lucky enough to have quite a few tech events/tweetups that have generous sponsors who will chip in for the booze and food.

This is in no way meant to promote twitter mooching. No one likes the guy/girl who hovers around gatherings just for the free stuff.

Last night at Boca’s First Pizza Tweetup, Tucci’s Pizza (@tuccispizza) in Boca threw in all the pizza (which, by the way, was stellar) if you paid for a drink. There was no shortage of food, the owners were grateful and by the looks of it everyone had a great time. Thanks to @lapp for coordinating and @oweno for the awesome video:

So go forth my noble tweetup scaredy-cats. Drop the anti-social front and meet the people who pleasantly distract you from work on Twitter.

I’ve attended a few South Florida tech events in the last couple months (BarCamp, WeMedia, SoFlaTweetup) and last night I was glad to finally add Refresh to the list.  Lots of familiar faces, both people I’ve met at other events and tweeps I met in person for the first time. Thanks to VOIS for the beer and munchies and to Alex De Carvalho (@alexdc) for coordinating.

I got to hear a bit about the concept of co-working, which was new to me, from social strategist and blogger Brian Breslin (@brianbreslin).  Freelancers and independent workers sharing a common space to get their work done, fully equipped with other like-minded brains to bounce ideas off of or swap skill-sets with. Like social media, with co-working, it’s not about the space but about the people you can work and connect with. Super cool idea.

It’s tough going to cool tech meetups as a member of the news industry.  Whether it’s the rough economic times that newspapers are experiencing so publicly these days or the general techy and social media interests that we all share, geeks at the three big South Florida newspapers have found some common ground and a sense of camaraderie (despite a Twitter #rivalry). When we add our organization to our name tags, it’s easy for people to assume we are all reporters, there only to scope out a good story for the local business section or whatnot, members of the media machine.  It’s easy to disspell this once we all introduce ourselves and get to chattin’. Most of us are in the online department at our papers, tweeting on our respective accounts and utilizing social media tools to spread our news online.  We’re tech-heads just like you all!

I know it can be frustrating when a grassroots tech community starts to blossom and flourish and little is said about it in the mainstream media.  When event attendance grows year-after-year and people start flying into Miami from all over the world (I saw Ryan Carson [@ryancarson] from the UK at BarCamp the day before FOWA), I can understand the notion that Florida might be developing its own version of Silicon Valley, and that’s great news. What is easy to forget (well, not for those of us who work there) is that the scope of what newspapers are able to cover is shrinking due to financial hardships. In tough times the bad news often takes over the good news.

I’d personally like to do a better job blogging and covering the geek get-togethers that I’m able to make it to.  I’m not a reporter or an official Miami Herald blogger, but thankfully I’ve got all the bylines I want right here.

PLUG #1: Please stay tuned to @MiamiHerald on Twitter.  We’re planning a tweetup. It’s gonna be SWEET!

PLUG #2: If you live in the Miami area, and want to kick some balls with awesome editors, designers, producers and writers who work at the Herald, start following @HeraldKickball and bookmark HeraldKickball.com.**  We meet every other Saturday at 12:30 pm at Margaret Pace Park on 18th and Bayshore Drive. Next game is April 4th, depending on weather. Props to Lori Todd (@loritodd) and Bill Passonno (@wcpassonno) for organizing and being kick-ass in general. The more the merrier!

**We are not officially affiliated with the paper, but it is the Herald that unites us, hence HeraldKickball.

Refresh pikchurs:

@loritodd showing her Times "T" tattoo to @enzobalc

Refresh Miami turnout

Although I didn’t have the chance (or the $$) to go to FOWA (Future of Web Apps), I had a great time last Sunday at BarCampMiami. For those unfamiliar with the concept of BarCamp (and no, it doesn’t involve mixing cocktails for tips), check out the wiki here. They sum it up like this:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

Greg Linch (@greglinch), student at the UM School of Communications, worked with BarCampMiami coordinator Alex de Carvalho (@alexdc) to bring specific sessions focused on news innovation tailored for us journos who were in the house. There were quite a few of us. I got to meet Twitter friends Danny Sanchez (@dannysanchez) of the Orlando Sentinel and Journalistopia and Mathilde Piard (@mathildepiard), Columbia J-School grad and web editor at the Palm Beach Post as well as a slew of other tech-minded smart people.

One of my favorite presentations came from Rick Martinez (@digx) of FIU about evolving news. “There is not a newspaper industry. There is a news industry” rang very true. Not sure why we cling to the print product with our cold, dead hands. That’s a different post.

Rick Martinez of FIU and Greg Linch of the University of Miami

I spent yesterday and today (Wednesday and Thursday) as a fellow at the WeMedia Conference at the University of Miami. My job as a volunteer was to twitter the breakout sessions with the #wemedia hashtag as a way for people who couldn’t make it to track all the good ideas being tossed about. If you follow me on Twitter (@malcolli), you can see a rundown of a few of the breakout sessions.

It’s amazing to see people from so many different types of organizations (Journalism, non-profits, startups) collaborating on how to use media to innovate and better their futures. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

Brian Storm of MediaStorm

David Liu, CEO of TheKnot.com

The #WeMedia buzz began almost instantly around the Twitterverse in the morning intro session as awards were given to Game Changers in the realm of advancing media. As a political nerd, I was a tad (ok, maybe more than a tad) devastated that Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe wasn’t in physical attendance to accept his award. Twitter, ZeFrank and others were honored. Go to the web site for a better rundown.  The twitterers in the room started to slowly emerge and the convo took off.

Because I was there as a volunteer twitterer who was encouraged not just to tweet a play-by-play but to add my voice to the mix, I made a point not to hold back. Granted, the caliber of participants was very high and I wasn’t sure how much value they would see in tweets from a 22-year-old recent college grad 3 months into her first newspaper gig, but I found that the presenters appreciated the instant feedback and honesty.

During a social media session with Susan Mernit (@susanmernit), formerly of AOL and Yahoo Personals and fellow Twitter-holic, she was using her BlackBerry to scan our tweets since she knew that some of us were actively tweeting the session. Hats off to her. Perfect example of a how Twitter is a tool and not just a silly site for sharing what you had for lunch. I sent out a tweet saying I thought the session was a little too basic and she jumped right in and got the ball rolling to get to the higher-level stuff (like Facebook Connect, which I’m trying to get really familiar with).

Susan Mernit (left) and Rebecca Watson of Real Girls Media (right)

On the downside, I had over 200 tweets over the two-day event, which wouldn’t normally be on the downside except that I do have some followers who I bet were completely overwhelmed and annoyed by a long stream of #wemedia, #wemedia, #wemedia.

This makes me rethink an issue that came up a few months ago about whether or not to split up my tweets into two accounts; one for Mallory Colliflower, the conference-attending working professional and one for Mallory Colliflower, the chick who checks icanhazcheezburger multiple times a day, swears from time to time, likes to share music and stay in touch with friends.

More importantly, because of the buzz and conversation about the WeMedia conference we were able to generate on Twitter, #WeMedia trended in the #2 spot twice during the conference. Quite a feat if you want people to be talking about what you are doing and saying.  I managed to be the top trendsetter for the #WeMedia hashtag and had the second-highest number of retweeted posts, behind Tom Kennedy (@tomkennedy), multimedia editor and consultant from Arlington, Virginia.  More stats here.

Was my mission accomplished?  I give a confident ‘yes.’ Between Greg, Mathilde and another Columbia graduate Veronica Zaragovia (@verozaragovia), we managed to provide a service to the media-minded who couldn’t make it to the conference as well as meet and connect with people who had similar and differing thoughts on what was going on in front of all of us. In regards to that, the bloggers over at the WeMedia page have done an excellent job summarizing and analyzing all of the discussion that took place. I won’t try to duplicate what they’ve already done so well, so head there for more.

Big ‘thank you’ to the organizers of the event, particularly Chad Capellman (@chadrem), WeMedia’s web producer and to Greg Linch for inviting me to join the team. I was thrilled to meet all of the people that I did and hope to hear more from and about them in the future.

If you’re a fellow-geek and you DON’T watch “Attack of the Show” on the G4 channel, then you might as well be surfing the net on a dial-up connection.  It’s a 60-minute news-style show that dishes on all things technology, computers, gadgets and video games, with a dash of wit,  a sprinkle of comedy and a couple of hot hosts to garnish it off.  It’s basically everything you’ve already read on the blogs today, compacted and humor-fied for TV.  Nonetheless, it’s a very entertaining show with a kick-ass Web site to boot, and I seem to always get some really surfable and share-worthy links after each episode.

After last night’s Blog Watch segment on street artists around the world, I looked them all up and found some awesome stuff I wanted to share.  So if you’re into stuff like grassroots artists making a statement by creating beautiful peices of art out in public for everyone to enjoy, or just appreciate utter coolness, check these out…

Banksy

A graffiti / stencil street artist from the UK who challenges society and politics using his artwork.

www.banksy.co.uk

Rinpa Eshidan

A group of performance artists from Japan who treat their paintings and pieces as ever-evolving living things.  They’re known for their time-lapse videos of themselves repainting a single space several times over.

http://rinpaeshidan.jp

Wooster Collective

A blog that collects the freshest street art from famed graffiti artists all over the world and delivers it speedily to you.

www.woostercollective.com