I keep trying. I ‘attend’ tweet-ups fairly regularly, eager to share odds and sods, and to pick up a few bon mots, a few links to content, a few people to follow.

Yet, mostly, they leave me wanting. Maybe it is because I attend tweetups on topics on which I am already well-read if not an expert: #ESNs, #FutureOfWork, that kind of thing.

Attendees tend me just like me, it seems, with a sense of expertise, a sense of community, a sense of showcasing knowledge, and generally a good attitude. But where is the shizzle, the tangent, the breakthrough? Tweetups don’t get me there.

Instead, I dig around some of the thought leaders involved in the conversation, look for more in-depth meandering.

I had the idea tonight to go on a 6-degrees/links-of-separation journey around the web based on an ‘invitation’ to an IBM/Gigaom tweetup facilitated by Stowe Boyd.

@ThisMuchWeKnow I’m in #FutureofWork TweetChat w/ IBM right now. We’re talking about what workplaces will look like in the future. Join in!

— Samantha Klein (@samjoyk) September 16, 2014

Find some good #FutureOfWork schtick, and follow through 6 links, to see what I learned. Yet, having monitored several hundred tweets, there was precisely nothing of interest in it, other than well-intentioned sharing. I re-tweeted a couple of Vala Afshar and Boyd’s tweets about career advice for Millennials – mainly because I concur!

@stoweboyd that curiosity, self-reliance to learn and a willingness to change are the only things worth having. #futureofwork— Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) September 16, 2014

And that was pretty much that, 45 minutes of my evening spent, seeking.

I compare that to a few minutes of dipping into Tom Peters’ tweet conversations and there is no comparison – erudite, opinionated, to-and-fro, belligerent, angry, hopeful. Score!

It is highly likely that I am doing it wrong…or I need to experiment with tweetups about an emergent topic about which I know nothing other than I want to know more. What would that be…?

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