ACT I: The Bald Man and the Challenge

I was introduced to Twitter by a preternaturally energetic bald man named @adambroitman. At the time he was Director of Emerging and Creative Strategy for Morpheus Media, before moving on to Director of Strategy at Crayon. He’s now Partner and Ringleader at Circ.us.

As a friend of @MaryroseWagoner, Adam was speaking at a PRSA luncheon on social media a few years ago, and he was incredibly nice, genuine and excited about the future of this medium. At the end of his talk, he encouraged the entire room of public relations professionals to create Twitter accounts. He challenged us, in fact, as communicators, to put Little Rock on the Twitter map.

So, I went right back to my office that same day and did exactly that. I opened a Twitter account, I mean. The rest wouldn’t come until much later, and as it would turn out, people I hadn’t even met would be responsible for meeting that challenge.

See, up to this point in my life, I was happy to remain relatively anonymous. I had a small circle of friends, many professional colleagues and an unlisted phone number. You could say I was more guarded than an iPhone prototype on a Saturday night, but that would just be mean. Putting myself out there, online, for Google to index and for all the world to see really made me nervous.

What if I said something stupid? I would most assuredly say something stupid. Whoever penned the words “Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” had never signed up for a Twitter account, I was sure of it.

But I wasn’t about to back down from Adam’s challenge.

So I took the plunge. I followed @adambroitman and a bunch of other people, including @chrisbrogan and @cc_chapman and @steverubel. I followed people all across the country, like @Scobleizer and @jowyang and @charleneli. I followed @TechCrunch and @SocialMediaClub and @Mashable. And I listened and learned from these folks and many, many others as I tried to understand this new form of communicating and connecting.

ACT II: Kind of like Magic: The Gathering, Except with Less Black

Fast forward a year and hundreds of (probably stupid) tweets later, and I still knew only a handful of local people on Twitter. Then something happened, some critical mass of adoption, participation and planetary alignment, and when someone said “Tweetup” out loud one day, the local Twitter scene blew up right before my eyes.

I watched as @LT created a hashtag, #LRTweetup was born and people came from all corners, excited to meet other local people on Twitter. Natalie ran to fetch nametags. We peeled them with glee and wrote our usernames in Sharpie marker, tittering at the complete silliness of it all, and we descended upon Sticky Fingerz like a parliament of geeky rooks. It was, in a word, awesome.

While Natalie and I may have started this hot mess, it was people like @tsudo and @alextcone and @bryanjones and @jgreghenderson who jumped in and organized us, blogged us, scheduled us and pushed us toward our first official charity event, Twestival. It was people like @amybhole who offered us @capitalbargrill and special blue drinks. Then it was all the rest of you, who came out despite your fears of what you might find.

And let me tell you, I am so glad you did.

ACT III: Only Fools Fall in Love with Hashtags

Watching this community grow has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

I’ve learned that #printlives. I’ve learned to #passonthegift and #taketimetogive and #reachoutandread. And I’ve learned to follow #ARwx at the first sign of bad weather, a hashtag deserving of its own theme music and tagline: “Come with me if you want to live.” Say it with the accent. It’s fun.

You all amaze me with your talents. I learn something from each of you on a daily basis. Your funny, endearing, ever so smart and generous words encourage me to keep writing, after suffering a case of burnout so severe I had to change careers. I watch you take care of each other and support each other. And you continually inspire me to be smarter, nicer and braver today than I was yesterday.

Really, what more can you ask from a group of total strangers you met on the Internet? We’re incredibly lucky to have been here in this moment, to see this unfold in precisely this way. It speaks to the immense power of this medium we share, and to our limitless potential as human beings to accomplish so much more together than we ever could alone.

I’ve learned from all of you to keep opening my mouth, stupid or not. And if that makes me a fool, or a geek, or a nerd, then I’m certainly among some of the best company I’ve ever known.

#thankyou #lrtweetup