Around Tuesday, people started discussing a tweetup for Friday morning at the Shoal Point Moka House.  Yesterday, CHEK TV asked either Vikki Flawth or Tim Ayres (or both) if they could send a camera person to see what the heck we Twitter people do at our tweetups.   The answer was “ok”

Problem #1 – no clear organizer of event.  It’s a tweetup, for heaven’s sake.

People showed up at 8 am to a mainly empty coffee shop and made their way to the back corner.  By the time I showed up at 8:20, one person was already saying goodbye to the eight others gathered there.  Believe me, it was not a rowdy crowd, though certainly when you get 8 people at one table there is cross talk.  Eight gabby twitter people, doubly so.

Problem #2: Maybe the Shoal Point Moka House isn’t used to gabby people before 8:30?

At the same time as me, a guy from CHEK TV showed up with his broadcast-quality camera and a tripod.  No big lights, no boom mic.  He talked with Tim Ayers for about 15 minutes while the rest of us yakked away in the background. We couldn’t have been that noisy because we didn’t want to overpower the interview happening behind us.

Around 8:45, a man holding a “to go” coffee mug stands beside our table and asks who we are.  I thought he might want to join us, actually until I took a second look at his face and it was clear he was none too pleased.  He said he was OK with a group of people having coffee, but definitely NOT ok with the TV camera.

Problem #3: Yes, someone should have given the owner a heads-up about CHEK.  But that’s related to problem #1.  Perhaps we could have gone somewhere else.

Here’s the part I don’t get.  If I owned an establishment as large (and as empty) as the Moka House, I would welcome the free publicity.  Yes!  Come in and enjoy the coffee, the wireless internet and the room for socializing!  Business people with a penchant for sending each other tweets are welcome here!

We felt like we had done something very wrong for even being there.  And that’s where the bad feelings set it.

Hope that helps the people following the grumpiness on Twitter today.

Tweet This Post