Category: Twitter

#TweetUpTheHague: Why attend and how to boost TweetUp success

It’s an omission that I didn’t post earlier about a TweetUp, especially since I attended my first Tweetup, #TweetUpTheHague no 1 already back in August 2009.

What is a TweetUp?
I like this definition of Paul McFredies of WordSpy:

A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service

I’ts as simple as that. No more no less.

My reasons to attend #TweetUpTheHague

  1. Even dogs do it 🙂 as you can see from the photo of Oppi, the dog of Eppo.
  2. On a more serious note: To satisfy my always present insatiable curiosity: who is behind that blog or Twitteraccount (like this post Twelve Travel Tweeps Twittering satisfies this curiosity).
  3. It is informal, small and casual. Networking is on top of the agenda. My first #TweetUpTheHague was very well organized by @koffiekitten and @SuzyOge It’s success can be measured by the fact that almost all attending this one are eager to meet again now for the second version. They even were so thoughtful as to provide TweetUp name tags.
  4. Like bloggers who blog frequently, tweeps who twitter frequently are outgoing people and fun to meet in person.
  5. At #TweetUpTheHague, a local venue with as only common denominator The Hague being the city where you live or work, you can meet a cross section of your fellow citizens. No matter what their status or occupation is. So you meet new interesting people. For me it is an easy way of connecting with people outside my hospitality niche and away from my computer.
  6. After the venue there is a common ground, because you know each other a bit better. It will make your future communications with those you’ve met more effective. You can help them more effectively if they have questions and they can help you more effectively if you have questions.
    With some of the people I met at the first #TweetUpTheHague I went to Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala here in The Hague, the WP Meetup in Rotterdam and the First WordcampNL in Utrecht.
  7. Why communicate in English? The reason is that many tweeps in The Hague are foreigners who speak Dutch with various degrees of perfection. So it is an opportunity for locals to meet fellow non local citizens and vice versa. But we also do talk Dutch at the event and sometimes Double Dutch:-)
  8. Also it offers an opportunity for non-tweeps to meet tweeps and learn what it is about.


Some success factors to boost a Tweetup

  1. Create a platform in the form of a forum and/or blog as anchor for the venue. For #TweetUpThe Hague number 2 there is now a blog at WordPress, aptly named #TweetupTheHague and a LinkedIn Event. But you can also do that on a Facebook page, a ning community or you can use twtvite or a similar tool.
  2. Proper nametags. How trivial they seem. For me as a photographer of events good name tags enable me to tag my photos more correctly and spread the word more effectively
  3. A good location to meet informally. The next #TweetUpTheHague is in the bar of a local hotel Carlton Ambassador that sponsors the snacks. Personally I don’t believe it is necessary to have WiFi access available as it only distracts people from really meeting each other. But if there is WiFi, you can rub it in to those not attending that they’re missing a good event.
  4. Don’t forget the after venue services: Document it, collect business cards, collect photos and videos about it and publish about it (what we all forgot in our enthusiasm after number 1, although the local paper mentioned it), and continue to maintain the contacts you like after the event.
  5. Success!

Hope to see you Friday for #TweetUpTheHague number 2.

How Tunnelvisionaries at Eurostar “Missed the Train” again


Two Eurostar Trains by Austin Evan on Flickr.

Just before I hit the warm sack early this morning it became apparent through Twitter that 4 Eurostar trains had become stuck in the Chunnel, the tunnel under the Channel between Calais in France and Folkestone in the UK.

Earlier this week there had been rumors of British train drivers calling a strike because of failing salary negotiations. I wonder if the two items are connected.

Three trains from France to the United Kingdom were involved and one from the UK to France. At least 2,000 people were stuck in their trains. Moreover after they were hauled out of the Chunnel,  some people even were stuck in a train in Folkestone for another 7 hours making their trip a 15 hr horror journey without being at the destination. The official reading is a failed electricity system because it was cold outside and warm in the tunnel.

A Dutch paper suggested this week that the operators of railroads in the European Alps, the Nordic countries or Canada would laugh their ass off when they would read what the Dutch railroad operators presented as excuses for trains not operating as they should. Now they can add Eurostar as yet another laughingstock.

Tech Crunch has a thoughtful article about it: As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter They could have used Twitter, but didn’t think of it.

The main fail is that they didn’t show any compassion for their passengers and also apparently didn’t think about the relatives of passengers who were waiting in the cold at both ends of the journey without being informed in one way or another. No news was provided. Management seemed sound asleep. Same attitude seemed have been the rule in the case of the train that had a truck on board that got on fire in September 2008.

Today all trains to and from the UK were cancelled.

Customer Service, Marketing and PR should have been be married into one voice Marck Pack claims and rightfully so.  Note I chose the same photo by accident before I red his post.

When I travel from the continent to the UK I usually prefer to travel by car an then tend to prefer a ferry above a cartrain through the Chunnel. Only the idea you can swim instead of being burried or chocked in a tunnel does it for me. But I have taken the car train a couple of times because my fellow travelers prefer a train over a ferry because they get easy seasick. What can you do…

I’m a bit focused on the Eurostar because of the ticket incident with the Thalys, the Amsterdam – Brussels leg of the Eurostar that I described last week.

Update
Dan Beck Daniele Becari, a frequent Eurostar traveler commented here: Eurostar PR Fallout

I was reading through @Coletteballou‘s tweets and found the following highly interesting observation:

Colette-Ballou---Claudia-Schiffer-got-out-before-the-masses
Now that is good PR: Apparently Claudia Schiffer got out of the mess before the masses…”Quot licet Iovi…”

Now more incidents showing the same attitude are being mentioned on several places.

Update 2 – Eurotunnel saved Eurostar???
@Railservice, a twitter account maintained by three Swiss Public Transport employees pointed me to the following harnessed Press Release where Eurotunnel claimed it had saved Eurostar:

Eurotunnel rescues Eurostar
Overnight from Friday 18 to Saturday 19 December Eurotunnel staff went to the assistance
of 5 Eurostar trains which had broken down in the Channel Tunnel, following technical
failures. These incidents were in no way due to the Tunnel infrastructure.
Eurotunnel staff:

  • Rescued 5 Eurostar trains which had lost traction
  • Evacuated 1,364 Eurostar passengers and brought them to the surface in Folkestone, Kent, using their own trains, where they were able to continue their journey to London
  • Towed 2 Eurostars to St Pancras as Eurostar did not have the means to do so themselves*

Pascal Sainson, Eurotunnel Operations Director, commented: “In very difficult conditions Eurotunnel made the decision to assist the Eurostar trains and their passengers. In order to conduct these operations in complete safety, Eurotunnel mobilised substantial extra staff and technical resources and also made the decision to interrupt its own services. Eurotunnel has done everything it can to resolve the situation”.
Traffic in the Channel Tunnel has been progressively returning to normal since 05:40 CET this morning.
In anticipation of heavy traffic this weekend Eurotunnel had already instigated its BAR Programme (Busy And Ready). In particular a fleet of snow ploughs and road clearing vehicles has been operating to clear snow from the terminal in Coquelles, France to reduce
the impact of the current severe weather in northern France.
Eurotunnel is however not responsible for the condition of the motorways.
Eurotunnel has put in place an organisation to help passengers to cross the Channel even if they arrive late at the departure terminal.
* Eurotunnel locomotives and Shuttles are prepared and maintained so that they are not affected by rapid temperature changes.

This at least teaches me that the car shuttles and the Eurostar trains are operated by two separate companies that I wasn’t aware of.

The final quote is the statement that has been haunting me all day today and yesterday: From own experience that the Swiss operate trains that enter tunnels that have extreme temperature differences with the outside. Frequently I have used use the Lötschberg car shuttle between Kandersteg and Goppenstein when traveling to the Rhone valley in Switserland. There It can be minus 10 or minus 20 Celsius outside, while the tunnel temperature is plus 14 to plus 16 degrees Celcius. In addition passenger trains from Bern to Milan used to use the same tunnel without these kind of things happening. I take it there is no difference since the passenger trains are now using the new Lötschberg Basis Tunnel as of 2007. Moreover they have many other tunnels with the same phenomenon…So I have a serious question about the Eurostar trains failing under these circumstances.

Moreover. When I find the quotes regarding prior incidents with poor communication again I’ll repeat them here.

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on December 21, 2009 at 12:20 am

Twitter and the Lawsuit Happy Landlord

Lawyer in Court
Among today’s Twitter trendy topics I want to share this little story with you:

An ex tenant in Chicago twitters about a bad experience she had with a Chicago based Landlord. The landlord sues her seeking $ 50,000 in damages.

The Chicago Sun Times came with the news. Mashable picked it up.

The sheep in Twitterville are deeply upset about the Landlord who allegedly commented “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,”

Now, again according to Mashable, the Landlord comes with a press release:

For Immediate Release
July 28, 2009
The following statement can be attributed to Company X [name deleted ed.]

The response to our libel lawsuit has been tremendous. We would like to take this opportunity to clarify some confusion concerning the circumstances surrounding our lawsuit against Mrs B [name changed ed.]
I would first like to take this opportunity to apologize for tongue in cheek comments that were made previously regarding our approach to litigation. This statement is not in line with our philosophy towards property management and was taken out of context.

I need to set the record straight on a number of issues.

The facts that gave rise to this Twitter lawsuit were discovered in the course of due diligence relating to a class·action lawsuit first filed by Ms. B. [ed.] relating to alleged Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RL TO) violations. It is our position that this lawsuit is completely baseless and was waged merely as a pretext to address an underlying disagreement that Ms. B. had with regards to her apartment. This is a classic example of tenants trying to manipulate the controversial RL TO for their benefit.

No mold was ever found but her unit was one of several that experienced an overnight leak during roof repairs in late March 2009 caused by an error made by an external contractor. At that time. we immediately contacted all affected tenants to assess and resolve any reported water damage that occurred during these repairs. Ultimately, all tenant grievances were quickly and amicably resolved, except Ms. B.[ed.]

She moved out of her unit on her own volition June 30, 2009 at which time there was no evidence of mold in her apartment.

On June 24th, much to our surprise given her previous silence. Mrs B sued X, and we are currently defending this claim which. again, we believe has no merit. In conducting our due diligence into this matter, we identified B.’s [ed.] public Tweet regarding mold and acted to protect our reputation just as we would for any other related comment made in a public forum.

As you can imagine, allegations of mold are taken very seriously by our organization . We are proud of the fact that Company X [ed.] is recognized as one of Chicago’s premiere apartment leasing and management companies because we understand the importance of quality customer service and a well·maintained living environment.

We look forward to presenting our side of this matter before the court and putting the unfounded accusations of a single, former tenant behind us so we can focus on continuing to serve our more than 1,500 existing tenants throughout the Chicagoland area . ~

So there is more than just a claim for one tweet…. However it is once more a warning sign:

Be always careful what and how you communicate on the world wide web: The lady in question will shed some tears as well as the Landlord who made the “tongue in cheek” comment…. same counts for hotel reviews… I’ve read already about a case in Florida about a hotel suing a reviewer because he had insinuated the hotel was gaining from improper guest behavior (Unfortunately I forgot to jot down the corresponding links)….

Latest edit July 30, 2009:

Originally I had embedded a scribd version of the press release as provided by Mashable. However in checking my code at W3 org I noticed the scribd embedding code created a lot of errors while I have enough eroors to cope with already…. Now I copied and pasted the original scribd file.

Does Time (or Steven B) "Get" Twitter?

time-twitter-cover
Steven Berlin Johnson (@StevenBJohnson) tweeted that he wrote the cover article for Time How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live and the tweet Iphone photo goes on the Time’s cover. He blogged: Me on Twitter on Time on Twitter.

Probably this is a step further in getting Twitter more mainstream attention.

The Time June 15 issue will reach the news stand on June 11, 2009. For a couple of days the coverage it gets on Twitter is Ah Maa Zing. In that respect Time did “Get It”. Here is Steven’s first Tweet: Roughly counting the twitter search “How Twitter Will Change the Way we Live” brings a good 1500 tweets and counting in just 2 days. It even hit the top 5 for a short time. One should notice that currently 1500 is the cap of the Twitter Search API. As comparison: I’m just writing this during the third set of the Roland Garos French Open finale of Swiss Roger Federer against Swedish Soderling. After Federer wipes Soderling in three strait sets from the center court the French Open search hits the 1500 cap in just over 20 minutes…

But does Time “Get It”, or does it merely piggy back on Twitter to get some attention in these dire economic circumstances for the printed media?

The reason I’m asking this question is that I have read and reread the article and was not overly impressed.

In short Steven:

  1. Explains a bit about Twitter and their founders
  2. Attended a congress where there was a life tweet screen (been there, seen that)
  3. Mentions the recently added search function and how this could be an antidote to Google
  4. bla bla about third party tools
  5. more bla bla
  6. and concludes with this quote: “There’s a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring. The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are ” millions of us ” sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.”

Inspiring? Actually not so much. Why didn’t he get a bit more personal? How does he keep up with his followers? How did Twitter change his life? apparently not at all.

I checked out Steven a bit: His first tweet was this one: Hello Twitter. I come in Peace for all Mankind and has since (Oct 2007) produced a mere 470 something tweets….a mere average of under 1 tweet a day. with 670K followers he seems to be a sort of celebrity by himself. However: He doesn’t seem much of a connector. So I’m asking: Maybe they chose the wrong person to do the cover story?

I checked a WSJ article from him. That gives a way better insight about Steven. He loves books more than everything else.

Maybe this is only about my own amazement about how much coverage all this gets… What would you say?

Update: Uhm Noticed a counter error that says there are 16 comments but I do see only one

The Spread Eagle Hotel in Jedburgh, Scotland (Scottish Border)

The Spread Eagle Hotel in Jedburgh, Scotland (Scottish Border)
The Spread Eagle Hotel in Jedburgh, Scotland (Scottish Border)

Hm they should post more and better photography Cheesemonster posted a nice one on Flickr.

I’m always insatiable curious to know how fellow hoteliers “Do it” or “Get it” and am always pleassantly surprised to find one who clearly shows some similarities to my own ways of “Doing it” of “Getting it”.

Off course I found The Spread Eagle Hotel via Twitter where I’m hanging out a lot lately. Some claim too much, but I have the strong feeling that with Twitter we will be seeing the Internet change on a scale comparable to how searching the internet changed with Google and how operating a PC changed with MS.

Back to the The Spread Eagle Hotel:
I was searching Twitter purely by accident for Happy Hotelier, not my ordinary search which is for HappyHotelier which enables me to review my various communications and found this tweet:

One Empty Sink, One pint of Farne, One Happy Hotelier 😀 which catched my eye.

A couple of days later I asked John (@mrjcampbell) for the full url of his wee hotel which he gave to me: The Spread Eagle is a small family-run and family-friendly hotel in the middle of the High Street in Jedburgh.

John’s Bio on Twitter says: Used to work in television but now own a wee hotel in Jedburgh Scottish Borders. John and Lorna live on the premises and will be delighted to welcome you to Scotland’s oldest continually-licensed hotel.

Then I find John’s blog: From the Spread Eagle which relates the day to day problems an average hotelier faces. The format of that Blog is exactly what I have in mind to combine with my hotel site.

Here are some sailant observations:

  • They started a new life as a hoteliers. Like we did.
  • Started with renovating a hysteric historic place to make it usable as a hotel.
  • John Twitters very correctly. Doesn’t merely shout about the next best business deal. I believe I Twitter correctly.
  • John shows even more of the day to day work than I usually do, but his blog has exactly the format I have in mind to create for our hotel.

I certainly will visit them again and go through their content and hope John and Lorna can learn a bit from me (time to translate my Enter09 presentation) as I can learn from them.