Years ago, it became apparent that I was most comfortable organizing events for groups and communities. I would join groups or help put together groups of people of similar interests and loved offering a venue for meetups. There was the Shanghai Book Club with City Weekend, the Book Exchange that ran on the bookcrossing principle, the Monday Evening Writers and the Shanghai Flickr Group. It was an awesome way to make new friends (really good friends like Emily Chu) have really interesting, animated, multi-cultural conversations. I would go to all the meetups and missed a meetup only when I was traveling. Then I came home to Manila and missed networking events and communities so much that I tried a thing they called, tweetups. I heard about it in Shanghai but at that time I was beginning to pack up to go home and spent more time in going-away parties. I thought of giving it a try. So Tweetup Manila came to be. It was so awesome to make new friends and find really old ones like Cels Esguerra and Chinie Hidalgo Diaz, during a time when I was trying to find my footing back home after being away for so long. It also helped me get to know an industry that piqued my interest but had no real concept of yet. I remember telling Tita Chit Juan that maybe I should just get into something like community building. Then I shrugged it off. I thought it was a funny notion -- making a term up and thinking it was some sort of occupation. That was way back in 2009. I have since become a community manager (apparently as corp comm in my 1st job, I was doing a similar thing with yahoogroups. haha!), a social media strategist, a member of so many communities, an attendee to innumerable community events and a host/venue for so many more community meetups and events. Tomorrow, it will be the 3rd Social Media Day in the Philippines and were celebrating it with a bang...well, more like a boom... #boomPH. :p It will be the biggest gathering of communities. On June 28, we will be ONE COMMUNITY of COMMUNITIES. And you know what...WOW. Yun lang. WOW. Over 2 dozen communities have joined #TweetupMNL in celebrating #smday. Along with a bunch of companies and partners who have always believed in social media and its communities and their advocacies. And lots and lots of volunteers! And we know that we will meet so many more who we would love to work with in the future. Because at TweetupMNL, we believe that people are intrinsically good. Were a bunch of strangers that come together and take each person at face value...WYSIWYG. Then together, we work toward a common cause - that of social media for community building and social good. :)
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:17:00 +0000
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