Cinco De Mayo Tweetup

After being on the road for about a year, and still being on the road, it was not only nice to have a full week and a half at home but to actually get to go to an event put together by people I know. In this case it was the Cinco de Mayo Tweetup on Monday May 5th, my 2nd on that date, that was promoted by Sunny Hernandez @SunnyInSyracuse and Renee Benda @cusecomm. The event was held at J Ryan’s Pub, where I’d participated in a couple other things, including a previous tweetup.

The first guy to show up was Christopher Malone @Chris___Malone, and I know that because the 2nd and 3rd people to show up were myself @mitch_m and Kelvin Ringold @ kelvinringold. Eventually Sunny and then Renee showed up, and after that it was a slow and steady trickle of folks that came in, some I knew and some I was meeting for the first time. All of the people except for Kelvin I hadn’t seen in a very long time, so I was happy to be reacquainted with all my buddies and happy to meet new people.

Like who? It’s always risky when you start naming names because you’re going to leave someone out, but I’m going to do it anyway, since I’m still going to list everyone in this post somehow.

I have to start with the guy I thought was the most compelling person of the evening for me, Justin Piscitel @jpiscitel, who told a harrowing tale about being in a major motorcycle accident, his recovery, and his dreams of jumping out of airplanes and climbing mountains; wow!

There was Justin Ryan Lynch (imagine, two Justins in one place lol) @justinryanlynch, who I initially thought might be part of the restaurant but actually handles some of the social media management for Visit Syracuse, a site which helps promote the home city and has its own Twitter handle, @visitsyracuse. Later someone else showed up, the only person I didn’t get to personally meet, named Nikita Jankowski @NikitaJankowski, who also works for them.

There was Zainab Storms @blahnikbaker, a young lady who’s studying neuroscience at SUNY Upstate, a field I know is tough as my wife works in it. And Stef Noble @stefnoble, whose name I’d seen often over the years on Twitter but had never seen, and I only got to say a couple of words to her.

The final two people I’d never met were Mike Vormwald @vormwald, a software developer whose name I kept having problems pronouncing, and to whom I introduced myself as Busby Berkeley (Sunny would like that one) and Matt Wheeler @SaltCityFanboy, of whom I don’t remember what he does but I did introduce myself to him as James Earl Jones (inside joke that he didn’t question). Lol

The rest of the folks? Well, I had to reintroduce myself to Katie Krames @KatieKrames, who has one of the best smiles ever and whom I’d actually met during the big kickball game in the summer of 2011. And of course my buddy Kevin Magdon @kevinmagdon, who also writes on Twitter for the Doubletree off Carrier Circle (@SYRDT) and who gives me free cookies from time to time (shhhh…).

The rest of the gang were Teri @Mama_T_Says and Lorne @zbdaddy Coon, Frank D’Agostino @dagsly, and the soon to be wedded couple of Jenny @jennyshear and Josh @joshshear Shear.

It was a great time and the event lasted just over the 2 hours we’d allotted. You can look at how many people showed up to know that it was a great success. And I think I might be the only person who got out of there without imbibing an alcoholic drink; it not, maybe one of the folks here will tell me about it. I can’t wait for the next one… whenever I get back home again that it.