Can We Tweet Up?

The other day I decided to step out of my comfort zone. Dip my toes in the pool of a face to face social gathering. I do not do well in big crowds and with meeting new people. Ok, I know you are sitting in shock and are taking another sip of coffee just to clear your vision to make sure you read that correctly. Is this the same Ruby that goes to wineries and small local shops and posts all sorts of photos of herself in crowds?? Oddly enough I do just fine at wineries (can you guess why? *giggle*) and shops, well, I also do fine with just one or two people. It is going to a place where I am forced to walk up to a group of strangers and start a conversation. My life is not all that thrilling, my knowledge of a vast amount of subjects (unless it is housewife duties or shopping) is not limitless...I always figure what would I have to say that others would wish to listen to...YES, again, you read right, here I am a blogger and post about all sorts of subjects and rather well from what I have been told...but this social gathering was filled to the brim with business professionals and promoters. I was 100% out of my element on any level. However I had a goal, and so I decided to reach it I had to dive in. I wanted to promote my daughter Rebecca's artistic talents and perhaps open a few doors to further her career. Goodness knows if I am not great in these situations she is worse!

All dressed up and ready to go!

We arrived to the local Nugget Market, yes the same one my youngest daughter Angel works at. So that added some comfort as she would be there and we would know so many of the people working. I was also very fortunate that a few of the people there were people I was already friendly with on Twitter. This was a tweet up. What's a "tweet up" you may ask. Well often there is social tweet ups, where friends on Twitter come together to meet,there are blogger tweet ups, where obviously bloggers meet face to face and this was a business tweet up. In an nut shell, it is where people that use Twitter as a form of furthering their business or brand via social networking meet up.

The lovely store my daughter Angel works out, also where I spend quite a bit of time at...this of course is a stock photo, it was not raining.

The organizers of this "tweet up" were the creators of Placer Business TweetUp ( Placer is the county I live in) Here is what they say about it on their Facebook page. 

Placer County's Fastest Growing Social Media Business Community

Company Overview	We are The Placer Business Tweetup Community: Come join us! You will meet, connect and be supported by other Placer based businesses using social media strategies and tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to grow their business.
Description	~ FREE to attend. ~ Leave your powerpoint presentations and flyers at home. ~ Join the conversation ~ Focus on how you can help others, let the rest happen.

Ray Young, Josh Unfried & Christine Young of Placer Biz TweetUp

Now again I do not have a business, and indeed I did get a few odd looks from people when I said that I was a blogger and not a business owner. I quickly said I was there to help promote my daughter and her business(her Etsy shop counts right?)and that I also on a regular basis as a service to the area I love, promote small local businesses such as mom & pop shops, wineries...that was a in with professional promoters...at least my big toe was in the door.

After filled out our name tags,introduced ourselves to Josh(mentioned above), paid for our flight of wine and grabbed a bite to eat. At first we stood in the corner and chatted with people we knew from Nugget, but then we got a bit more brave. After re-filling our empty glasses we ventured out. There was so many people it was truly hard to know where to start. We tried to make eye contact with some to perhaps see if they would say hello. After several failed attempts, so many seemed to already know each other and huddled together, there were some wonderfully nice ladies and gentlemen that took the time to speak to us and truly even seemed interested in my blog as well as Rebecca's art. 

Here we are chatting with one such gentleman(well what you can see of him), believe his name was Derek. I am afraid I talked his ear off ...my nerves either make me quite shy or far too talkative.

The local paper was there, from what I understand my photo was taken and we just may make the paper!

As you can see people were tweeting at the tweet up, we all wore our Twitter handles on our name tags so people could connect/follow right away.

This is Danielle DeBow, publicist for Nugget Markets. Such a lovely lady inside and out. Stylish too! We have chatted on and off for well over a year now on Twitter.

Josh welcoming all of us there and then he handed it over to...*see continuation in a minute....

Rebecca and Bruce Schneider,a local business consultant, one of the very nice gentlemen we met that night listening intently to Josh.Pam McCoy,from Coldwell&Banker out of Folsom Ca., who we chatted with as well; behind Rebecca entering in another tweet from the event.

*Continued...John and Lane Giguiere of Matchbook Wines. We were all amused by the lively tale of the history of the name and of course the wines...which were very good by the way! In the back ground is Eric and Tom, co-workers of my daughter Angel

  

There was a bottle up for grabs, we did not win, but will be buying!

We managed to make a few great contacts for Rebecca(thanks Josh who pointed us in the right direction)and we may even have a showing lined up for her at a local non-profit coffee shop here in Roseville! Future job ops were discussed and purchases of her art for private display as well. So all in all it was quite successful and even a little exciting.

Several of the great people that were there. Wish I was better with names! BUT you see the tall gent in the purple?That is Dave Cox, he was the one chatting about future job ops for Rebecca! Of course there is Ray Young and Danielle DeBow in the photo.

I guess sometimes going outside one's comfort zone works out in the end...have a feeling this was a great beginning to opening many new doors for Rebecca and maybe even myself! I know there are such things for bloggers in our area too, but usually in Sacramento and at night. I will keep hoping that there will be one in Roseville (it would be so fun!),as I do not drive very far away from home and especially at night, I will sadly not be attending one anytime soon.I do think that I may go to the next "Tweet up "...it happens once a month and lucky me, it is in Roseville again. Wonder if I can convince Rebecca?

What are some way's you step out of your comfort zone? Did it work out better than you thought? 

 *Some photos & Placer Biz logo taken from the facebook page of same name(link within blog post). Twitter bird logo found on Google and rest of photos I took.