All A'Twitter: Social Media Opportunities Sync In at Tosa Tweetup

Fingers and thumbs flew furiously over smart phones Tueday night as 122 area business owners and enterpreneurs got together to celebrate social networking at an event dubbed Tosa Tweetup 2.

Convened at Cafe Hollander, 7677 West State St., the Twitter-fest featured plenty to eat and drink, with the popular Village restaurant also handling the catering. A sampling selection of beers, wines and liquors was provided by area producers and distributors.

The Tweetup also happened to be the venue for the launch of Wauwatosa Patch.

But the main purpose of the evening was to put experts and proponents of the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare face to face  – and phone to phone – with business people who might not yet be so savvy but are interested in learning the possibilities. The event was jointly sponsored by the Wauwatosa Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Cellular.

"My favorite piece of it was getting the message out and bringing all these people into the heart of the Village," said Meg McKenna, executive director of the Tosa Chamber. "We had a lot of people from all parts of Tosa but also from beyond, from the four winds. These are people who have ideas, and they're big ideas.

"We had people there who had only tweeted once, or didn't even have an account," she said, "but they were people who might have thought the train was leaving the station without them, and they wanted to get on board."

McKenna said that Twitter had matured in much the way Facebook had from social networking to business networking, and that she felt it was part of her job to share it as a teaching tool.

"It shows there are no flies on us," she said. "We've had people who have joined us in preference to other chambers because, they said, 'You're on Facebook and Twitter.'"

Milwaukee beverage distributor Capitol Husting provided wine for the evening, Great Lakes Distillery offered award-winning Rehorst liquors, and beer was poured by Beechwood and Beer Capitol distributors.

Conversation was the order of the night, and hands reached into pockets for the exchange of business cards on a regular basis. But just as frequently, contact information was exchanged electronically as new friends and woud-be followers pulled out phones and exchanged their information electronically – even though they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

Not everyone was perfectly equipped for the moment; a reporter at the event came home with one contact written on a scrap of paper and another penned on a bar napkin.

"Hey," said Michael Glass, author of that note and owner of the mobile carwash business TriKleen, "some of the most successful business plans ever started on napkins!"