Stoke-on-Trent Tweet-up: Tonight at the Moat House 31st Jan 2011

Here's an update for everyone who's interested in the tweet-up set for Monday (January 31) at the Best Western Moathouse on Festival Park.

The event will run between 6pm and 9pm and aims to allow people to do two things:

a) meet-up
b) make things happen

I'm specifically trying to structure the event - which currently has 93 people signed up - to help individuals and small firms to achieve
these aims.

There will be a section of the community that just want to meet up, have a few drinks and socialise and that's great.

But I also want to push the idea of using the combined talents of this diverse group of people to deliver regular projects for the good of the community, and which The Sentinel could report on.

After all, I've found it is possible to make 'things' happen very quickly if the right people are listening on Twitter.

So could you all be thinking about small-scale community projects that could be tackled with a few hours work/goodwill from the community.

For example,

1) Help a group that wants to carry out a litter-pick on a community estate
2) Provide the equipment/workforce for a school project
3) Gather the skills of technically-minded people together to start
useful/entertaining services online

For example, the weekly WhereinStoke online photo competition: http://staffordshire.thisisblogging.co.uk/2010/06/25/new-photo-competiti...

or Stoke Traffic:

http://dor.ky/projects/stoketraffic

For business, I'm keen to use my experience as business journalist and The Sentinel's former business editor to help the hundreds of small
firms to network and hopefully generate new orders/contacts etc..

Without giving away all the details, I'm planning to start proper at 6.15pm once everyone has grabbed a drink. I plan to give a short talk
- 10 minutes maximum - before splitting the group into two.

There will be two 30-minute sessions to allow the business and community groups to introduce themselves and bring up any ideas they
have.

After that, I'd like to wrap things up to allow everyone to enjoy some of the hospitality provided by The Sentinel and the Best Western
Moathouse and allow people to continue mixing.

One last thing. As I said, I would ideally like a regular event with tangible benefits for Stoke-on-Trent. So if you've got any ideas for
things the group could do, how it should be run, let me know.

Here's a quick message for those who can't attend: I still need your help and your ideas.

The key to the whole idea is that speaking to someone on Twitter is as easy as knowing their handle (username).

Even though the event will come and go, the key is to come up with ideas for things to do after the event, particularly things that will help the community and things that The Sentnel can report upon.

In order for that to work, it's important that people are willing to sign up to support the community. Turning up on Monday is great, being