Miss Nicole Jensen

Local radio station b105 has organised for a party at the newly-rebuilt Victory Hotel for Brisbane Twitter users who register with them. This would be all fine and dandy if they had done a bit of research first.

I have been an active Brisbane Twitter Underground Brigade (BTUB) member since around August of last year. We have held at least monthly or fortnightly meet-ups in Brisbane under the intention of being purely a social group. There are hundreds of BTUB members and we regularly hold events for up to around 50 to 70 people at various venues around Brisbane, most notably The Ship Inn.

Not only has b105 refused to do any homework on the existing  lively and loyal Twitter locals, they also have tomorrow’s Vic tweet-up on the exact same night as BTUB’s Kevin Rudd’s Stimulating Package party, as arranged by myself and a friend, Michael Meloni, pretty much weeks ago after the previous BTUB was another success.

I write about Twitter quite often because I am not afraid to admit the wonders it has done for creating and connecting communities. Friends, business associates, families and more have connected 140 characters at a time since Twitter launched, and the 2009 explosion of interest in the online network has meant vast corporate activity, much to the mixed response of Twitter users.

Now whether or not b105 did not know how to search Twitter, Google “Brisbane Twitter” or even read some of their followers who are active BTUBbers, they have committed a rather obvious event management mistake; jumping into the bucket with competitors. Not holding your event on the same date as immediate competition is something they do not even bother to teach you in basic event management school because it is so damn obvious!

Secondly, not approaching anyone from BTUB for a bit of research was also silly. Trying to appear to their fan base as the thought leaders of a Brisbane tweet-up is extremely foolish. Surely there is no bureaucracy in BTUB, only more active members, and no clear forefront member to question, however this is no excuse for basic research on your target market. Numerous BTUBbers have contacted b105 in order to educate the radio station on the current local Twitter community, but I would like to know if anyone has heard any replies of yet.

I look forward to seeing how tomorrow night pans out.