Let me start out by saying thanks to Josh Carrico (@sigpejedi) and Julia Gorzka (@juliagorzka)  for organizing another awesome event. You guys make it happen! To The Florida Aquarium, they deserve a hap tip for letting us twitterers have free run of the facility.

If you’re wondering what a tweetup is, well in its simplest form its a meeting of people.  People that have adopted to twitter as a way of connecting to others in the social web.  In case you haven’t heard, and you live under a rock. The web we once looked to for information has evolved into this amazing social space.

Our local channel, Fox 13 ran a story on the local tweetup scene the night before the event. A special segment was aired during the 10 o’clock news. A record crowd of over 250 people gathered at 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon

If you have not been to the Aquarium yet. Make plans now. There is lots to see and do, as soon as you walk in there is a sting ray petting area. A variety of rays and small leopard type sharks? that will swim right up to you. On this Saturday afternoon, it was a welcomed break from the development work of jobshouts.

From the start, this event promised some excitement as a couple of  tweetup resulars would get to swim with the fishes. Another brave soul could even dive with the sharks. Yes real live blacktips, whitetips, and I even think I spotted a blue shark. Blue sharks are not known to be social creatures.

Sharks!

I would have to say that @dandye is a rather brave lass. Swimming in the coral reef shark tank takes a bravado not found in many men. Even with the ‘body guards’ hovering over his position; there were a few times when a shark came a little too close for my comfort.

Even though there were about 10-12 sharks in the tank, they seemed slightly disinterested in the divers and pretty much swam about at their leisure. The sea turtle seemed to take a rather sporting interest in @dandye and was prodded away from him on a couple of occasions.

All in all it was a great turn-out that spoke volumes about the effect social media and twitter is having on communities across the nation. Next up I hear that the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, has requested to schedule a tweetup at their facilities. I have been to the Dali before it moved from the Bayfront location. Promises to be a fun time. Indeed!

One thing I think about is this. If these tweetup’s keep attracting so many people, at this pace we may need to find a larger venue to accomodate everyone. At some point there may be 500 people. Can you imagine that? I can, it is called social media for a reason.

So don’t delay, jump on board the twitter train. Come out to the next tweetup. Stop by and say Hello to myself or one of our many twitter friends. You won’t be sorry you did, Scouts Honor!

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