1091

The most closely guarded secret in the city of Toronto yesterday had to be:

“Where is twECOO?”

It started as a concept about a week in advance of the ECOO Conference.  At the OTF event, @brendasherry, @peterskillin, and I just happened to, in conversation, wonder if we could arrange to have a little get together of people who had Twitter accounts.  So, a concept was borne.

It was right about that time that Twitter had incorporated the concepts of lists.  So, I wondered if I could build a list of people who might be interested in attending.  I let the world know in a blog post on November 6, inviting anyone who would be interested to indicate their intentions by completing this Google Form.  From the info there, I created a new list on my profile called ECOO-Twitterers.  The list grew to some 44 people.  An invite was also sent out on Twitter and it was properly re-tweeted so that the word got out.

With all this planning in place, the only remaining question was where do we hold this?  I knew, but there was concern that if we just Twittered it out, that the secret location would be flooded.  But, how do you let people know?  There was a plan to meet at the “meet and greet” session but not everyone was there.  Hmmm.  Those of us who were, knew and eventually got the key and headed off to the location, Room 1091, and waited.  It was kind of like waiting in a phone booth.  Then, Peter showed up and we decided to go for it.  It started with just a single message “1091″.  There were a couple of DMs sent to people that were specifically asking.

It truly didn’t take long.

Within 20 minutes, the place was full.  Most of the 44 showed and a few of Peter’s friends where there and knew they had to be Twitterers and created accounts on laptops and Blackberrys and iPhones on the fly.  There were little learning meetings as people got to it and learned all of the ins and outs.  It was great.  I put the question to @courosa and found out a bunch of information about the University of Regina.

The rest of the group was terrific.  Discussion groups just kept popping up as we solved all of the problems of the online world.  It was great to meet up with @rdelorenzo who couldn’t attend the conference but dropped by on his way home.  I’m not quite sure where he lives but his stories of traversing the freeways to and from work gave this non-Torontonian a sense that it wasn’t exactly in this neighbourhood.

We had some informal meeting of folks from the PLP Ontario network.  @courosa had indicated that he wanted to meet with as many of us that he could.  So, we did a little networking based upon that.  Rob and I had a great idea as we chatted about the Ontario Meetup series and Alec was approached to see if he would host an online session as a followup to his keynote address today and he agreed.  Look for times and dates to be announced shortly.

It was a great evening with learning and people connecting online and face to face over and over again.  Lots of pictures were taken; I hope that @windsordi posts her papperazzi efforts for all to enjoy.  The rest of us were using our portable devices to do the deed.  It would be nice to have a flash!

At the heart of all this though was the power of networks, networking, and communication.  The network was the thread that bound this group together to the point that they just wanted to follow through and meet.  It was the network that got the word out and achieved the desired results within minutes of determining that the location was going to be revealed.  It was the network that allowed us to reveal that closely guarded secret.

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