#Twitter Party

So, here's the deal: I dig technology, I use Google Docs every chance I get, I sling my iphone like a dusty western cowboy on the draw, I have every family calendar, school event and baby photo of my kids living somewhere in the cloud but I hadn't fully grasped the #TweetSensation...until now!

Twitter is like that first awkward college cocktail party. You walk in a gangly freshman not sure if you are dressed to impress and not totally sure how to start that first conversation. You told your friends to meet you there but the door opens up and at least in the beginning you feel all alone.

You enter the #Twittersphere Cocktail lounge and, at first, it feels like everyone is talking at once. There are conversations happening on your left, your right, above your intelligence in some and below your interest in others. Your head is on a swivel, you are only catching half conversations and wondering what the set up was to the punchlines that you are seeing everywhere.

At a regular cocktail party you can whisper to the hostess, "Excuse me, have you seen my friend," but at the Tweet-Party, anything you want to say, you have to climb to the top of the stairs and SHOUT IT OUT across the room from the banister.

That first tweet can be a little intimidating.

Then, just like that house party in college, you wander into that one room, that one corner of the backyard lawn or somewhere just far enough back from the bonfire between shadow and light: you find some people who are interested in the same things you are. A group of people, who, even though they are talking fast, and finishing one another's thoughts: you get them. The whole thing starts to slow down. You are hearing and seeing the conversation and you are rolling along when the room erupts into choral laughter at a shared experience.

It is never too late to try something new.