I went to the TriangleTweetup Thursday, it was a good time, but it reminded me of echos of the past. Specifically the First Tuesday events I used to attend in DC years ago. The crowd was a mix of technical literate people looking to network on a weeknight, add a bit of corporate shwag and free give-aways, finally a mix of short presentations. What bothered me by this analogy was that those events were powered by Dot Com Boom dollars, not people which this event seemed more based so perhaps the same rules will not apply. That said the whole concept is based on Twitter a company that has not managed to find a profitable business model yet makes my whole point a bit ironic but I am aware.

Last week's event was very successful, so much so that I think it's nearly getting to the size where it may stand in the way of it's future success. I stood in the area between the two rooms and the side room was so loud that after the first few presentations I couldn't hear a thing. I know I wasn't the only one. Likewise in a crowd of 100 people how do you know who you want to meet? Or how can you focus those conversations? Those are the points I'd like to cover.

First in regards of the excessive noise I am assuming Edge Office would like to continue to support these events. The key may be muffling the sound from the open sections between the rooms, perhaps seeing if some cloth banners could help. It may even be possible to get them sponsored by someone. Second, the live twitter stream should be projected on to the wall in the room so that the people there can see it. I know I tweeted about them being noisy, if enough people do perhaps some self-policing would occur. I could even see a function in having the live twitter stream being projected in all the rooms that way it could be a conversational back channel to let people in other rooms what interesting thing is going on in your room. There is a technology hurdle there obviously since I am talking about 4-6 projection screens but it might be possible.

Finding your way in 100, First Tuesday gave you a name tag with a color based on your work place. I forget the exact break down but I was in the other category because of working in the government at the time. It was handy though because you could in a glance see what sector people worked within. I am not sure how you would break it down at a tweetup because I saw programmers, news media, marketing, authors and publishers so a diverse base was represented. Perhaps 4-5 categories with a color based sticker for their niche.

Last to help direct conversations Edge Office had a number of smaller rooms, perhaps designating the rooms to specific topics. The topic rooms could change based on each tweetup. Perhaps one event could focus on different platforms for social media as example podcasting, blogging, etc. The next event might focus more on application based topics. You could always have the main room be general topic based conversations, but this might help people focus on something that they may enjoy.

While I don't doubt the sincerity by the organizers or the attendees, large event size may be a challenge to continuing a meaningful conversation. People don't scale. But if people can be helped by the organizers into finding the conversations they want to have, I can see these events having a value in the future.