NASAtweetup

So, this is kind of becoming a thing… 🙂

Field Trips for Grown-Ups

In January 2009, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California hosted a gathering of folks who follow its twitter accounts, and called it a “Tweetup”: Twitter + Meet-Up = TweetUp! The event was a success, so six months later NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC decided to give it a go as well, and NASAtweetups were born! I got to go to that one, and have since made quite a habit of it!

They really are like field trips for grown-ups. (Best field trips ever!)
“You get a tour, some presentations, Q&A time, and a goody bag! You learn a ton, see really cool things, make new friends, and generally have a freaking awesome day or two!”

Other space agencies started hosting tweetups, too, and now even private companies in the space industry have gotten in on the fun! Plus, herds of SpaceTweeps have been known to form their own events on occasions where there isn’t an official tweetup, or in addition to it for those who didn’t get in but still want to gather to celebrate whatever event it’s related to!

This past March (2012) NASA decided to open these events up to users of other Social Media platforms, rather than just Twitter, so they changed the name to NASASocial. So technically, there’s no such thing as a NASAtweetup anymore, but there’s no good catch-all word for the lovely and wide assortment of spacey tweetups/socials/spaceups/roguetweetups/etc. – and thus I have reclaimed NASAtweetup to encompass them all! 😛

If you’re a fan of NASA, space, or just awesome things in general, you want to go to one. Seriously.

Bookmark this link!