So last week I spent a couple of days at World Travel Market at the ExCel centre in London. Surrounding the event were three Twitter-related tweetups (meet-ups arranged through Twitter). I went to two. The first was set up by Andy (@501places). Andy picked me up from the train station and dropped me back later. I met travel bloggers there and ate and had a glass of wine and it was lovely. The second tweetup I went to was at the Courthouse DoubleTree by Hilton. There was food, drink (cookies!). I saw some of the people I’d met in St. Albans and some new people. I had a long conversation with @axpet about India and I’ll be re-posting her subsequent post about the trains there on Friday.
I also finally met @jools_octavius and @TurnipRail, who were both wonderful human beings. Spoke to @irenep, who was about to get the train to Europe and asked to write a blog post which she did and I’ll also be re-posting. @velvetescape, @traveldudes, @kymri, @KCKiwiGirl, @IsabellesTravel, @pitchup and @abigailking were all lovely too (apologies for the repeated adjectives).
@kymri and I bumped into each other at World Travel Market and went to the Does Mobile Matter? seminar together, the sort of thing that happens when you’re backpacking.
There was a real sense of community and for a few moments London felt like a leg of a round the world trip. So thank you to everyone I met, for everything.
The contacts I made led to the discovery of #TNI (Travel Nights In) on Twitter. This happens every Thursday and was set up by zipsetgo.com. The premise is one place anywhere in the world is chosen each week, people tweet questions about said place, ten of the best questions about said place are chosen and one is posted avery ten minutes by zipsetgo.com. People tweet answers with the hashtag #TNI. I ‘met’ @TravelingWithS who posted the above photo and @donnadeau who tweeted loads of information about rail projects and Amtrack after I tweeted about proposed high-speed rail between what he calls ‘So Cal’ (Southern California) and Las Vegas. #TNI is great fun and a way to continue interacting with travel bloggers no matter where they are as well – as meeting new people.
