Twitterland Is Full of Goodness

Over the weekend, I was in New York City where I finally got to meet up with fellow travel writers and talk shop at a “tweet-up.” For the uninitiated, a tweet-up is a meet-up whereby Twitter is involved as the coordination tool. Indeed, almost all of the travelers I met with I had gotten to know via Twitter – through conversations and links to their writing and/or blogs. The tweet-up was the first time I met any of them and it was a fantastic experience, confirming my belief that social media is an awesome networking as well as friend-making tool. So, to continue the love fest that was the travel blogger tweet-up, I thought the only logical thing to do would be to say hello (via link juice) to my new friends:

Laurie de Prete of Scene by Laurie (@scenebylaurie). Being an NYC expert, Laurie picked the bar – Destinations on Avenue A – and tweeted up a few of her contacts in order to make it a fun happy hour. Thanks, Laurie!

Annemarie Dooling of multiple endeavors, including Frill Seeker Diary. I actually met @travelinganna in line at the TBEX conference in June. But we didn’t have a whole lot of time to chat. I’m glad we finally got to.

Readers may known Tom Johansmeyer (@tjohansmeyer) from this blog. I actually came to know the Gadling writer from his tweet on #twethics, which I quoted in my article On Freelance Writers and Junkets way back in October 2009. Among all those I met last week, I’ve probably “known” Tom the longest thanks to my RT of his tweet. Isn’t it cool how Twitter works? By the way, Tom’s personal blog is Enter the Mind of a Migrant Blogger.

I don’t remember how I came to know Jeannie (@whereisjeannie) of Somewhere There is Jeannie, but she has been a great buddy on Twitter. Equal parts sweet and sarcastic – we got along well in real life, too.

I met Craig Zabransky of Stay Adventurous (@stayadventurous) briefly at TBEX – he had the vuvuzela. Nice guy and fun blog.

I hadn’t heard of Adventurer Insider (@adventureinside)before this tweet-up, but Eric (I didn’t get your last name – yet) set me right. His site looks especially promising for gear reviews and adventure travel how-tos.

I had seen @travelogged around Twitter for a while, but had never really checked out the site behind the handle. Liz Borod Wright, editor of Travelogged.com, turned out to be a sweetheart and her site is gorgeous, full of travel tips from all over the globe.

If I’m not mistaken, Abby Tegnelia (@abbytegnelia) of The Jungle Princess and now Editor-in-Chief of Vegas Magazine was in town visiting like me. She was sitting about as far away from me in our group circle, so we didn’t get to strike up a conversation. But, girl, your shoes were fierce! Also, I want to go to Vegas – help me get there soon! 🙂

Finally, on the way out, I met Gregory Andres, known on Twitter as @culverlake. He arrived late, I left early, but we realized in our introduction that we had indeed met over Twitter – he had re-tweeted me the week before after a #TNI conversation. Since our end-of-night encounter, I’ve checked out the Culver Lake Posterous and it’s great – many drool-worthy posts about NYC food trucks. Yum! I can’t wait to continue our conversation.

Ah…but that’s not all! While I met up with the above fine folks on Thursday night, I met up with two other lovely travel bloggers the following day:

Spencer Spellman (@spencerspellman) lived up to the hype: sweet, charming, southern. I had heard that Spencer was at TBEX but didn’t meet him there, but he and I have had numerous funny conversations on Twitter over the summer. Spencer’s personal blog is The Traveling Philosopher, but you’re just as likely to find him blowing up on Tumblr.

And, speaking of Tumblr, that’s where I first came across the rants and musings of Alisha Miranda (@makeshiftalisha) on her This is Alisha Tumblr. She often refers to herself as the Ambassador of Awesomeness, and I couldn’t agree more. This chick is in her early 20s and already seems to have a lot of things figured out, such as drinking me under the table. I know she’ll go far in whatever she does.

Kids – it was great! Let’s do this tweet-up thing again real soon. And let’s invite even more folks to join us!