So You Wanna Meet Up, Huh? (Review Writers Meeting In Real Life)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Review Writers Meeting In Real Life
Date:	05/05/07 (194 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Make new friends/contacts

Disadvantages: Could shatter some illusions!

It’s an interesting development isn’t it? You start writing on a review site and then before you know it people are wanting to know more about you and meet up in the flesh (as they say). These kinds of offline meetings tend to more popular on Ciao.co.uk that has a very active social side to it whereas Dooyoo doesn’t seem to be quite as outgoing. Notwithstanding, there is a history of Dooyoo meetings, mainly in London, over the years. That community feel is fired by the presence of Ciao guestbooks that spawn a whole sub-culture running underneath the opinions and reviews that get written and posted.

If a meeting with other members is what you seek then the satellite sites are a useful way of finding out what’s occurring. There are active threads at www.reviewwritersforum.co.uk and www.opinionators.co.uk as well as the usual fanfares on Ciao via either the community page or sections in the Ciao Café devoted to offline meetings. You can also read about previous meetings including who did what to who which are always hugely popular due the naval gazing aspect that goes with reading about these things. It’s the same kind of appeal as picking up Hello magazine although probably not quite as celebrity strewn.

So why would anyone want to meet anyone else? Well, these days meeting via online forums is very much the done thing. It’s almost accepted practice now to date via online connections and my last experience of this was sitting next to a girl who was flying all the way from San Francisco to London to meet her boyfriend in person for the first time. She was very nervous and was convinced that he was going to propose to her which is exactly what happened to a good friend of mine’s daughter who is now happily married to a chap from Detroit after having met and fallen in love online. Of course, this might be a bit much if you are just wanting to meet up for a chat with fellow writers! Alternatively, most people seek to find other like minded individuals, usually with something that they’ve discovered in common from their online ramblings. If you are particularly brave, you may even want to seek out those members who you don’t necessarily see eye to eye with and have a debate with them in real life!

What’s bad about meetings is, first of all, organizing them. Woe betide anyone that takes the task on as it’s a logistical nightmare to get a group of people to agree on a date, time and venue. Next up is the historically poor show rate. Lots of folks will say that they are going and then get cold feet at the last moment. As a rule of thumb, it’s expected that around 50% of people cry off before the actual day. The potential invasion of privacy is another issue as digital cameras are very popular at these meetings and you may not want your own version of the paparazzi publishing your mug online. Worse still, folks have a tendency to write about the gathering and either name and shame or infer certain things that may or may not be accurate. You can have your name stricken from the records should this happen as Ciao are usually sensitive to name-dropping or at least they used to be when I was a member of the site.

There are lots of good things about offline meetings. I’ve met some very decent people over the years, people I still speak to regularly now. I’ve been to meetings in Birmingham and Milton Keynes and the best do I’ve attended would still be the pub meet in MK which was well attended. The beer flowed, the chat was good and the people all very different. I enjoyed the meeting/s in Brum too. One was on a smaller scale but that meant that it was easier to get to know the people around the table and it never ceases to amaze me how wrapped up folks get in the sites that they participate on. Everyone has their own opinion and everyone can bring something different to the party. The larger meeting I went to in Brum was very well organized, lasted most of the day and involved a lot of members. I only made the evening part but managed to meet some people that I’d wanted to meet for a while but, sadly, missed others who’d left by then. Bah. Incidentally, many people stop over in a hotel to make the most of the night or if the venue is a fair trek (you get meetings as far away as Scotland, Northern Ireland and eeeeeeeven darn Sarf) and if you know of someone going who lives locally then I know a lot of folks who book a twin room and reduce their costs that way(possibly another way of "meeting" someone....erm....you know what I mean).

The advantages of meeting up like this include making new friends (and enemies if you aren’t careful), networking and even finding a partner that you subsequently end up going out with. I’ve seen (or heard) this happen on numerous occasions so if you are single then look out as there will be members seeking friendships beyond just chatting about review writing! For those people who are a little more discreet/demure then a viable alternative is to simply meet someone on a 1 to 1 basis and I’ve done this too although only once as it fitted in with where I was working at the time and no real hassle to meet up for a coffee and chat at lunchtime. Perhaps one of the most curious aspects of meeting folks is the difference between the mental image that you have built up about people based on their reviews and their behaviour online and the truth in real life. More often than not they are two completely different things and I’m sure that it’s because of the lack of inhibition when active online compared to the respect for convention when you meet people in real life.

For anyone wanting to know a little more about offline meetings then I hope this helps. If you want to meet other writers then it’s not difficult to find out where the next meeting is but if you want to preserve your anonymity (which is the Internet’s greatest asset) then that’s cool too. There are some interesting people out there as well as some out and out loonies!

Good luck and thanks for the read.

Mara

Summary: Offline meetings