My presentation last week of TwiTerra at the NY Tech Meetup went very well. A PDF of the space in which the presentations are given is here, and thanks to @jprytyskacz for linking it. I think people enjoyed my presentation, and I had good conversations with several people about Twitter and other technologies at the IAC and especially at the bar where everyone went to meet afterward.

This NYTM was the first one organized by Nate Westheimer, who was sworn in at the beginning of the meeting by previous organizer (and Meetup.com co-founder) Scott Heiferman. Here’s a video of the ‘ceremony’, and if you watch carefully you’ll see that it’s my MacBook that they used :)

The event got a fair amount of press, and here’s a collection of the articles that mentioned my project:

• Built on Twitter at the New York Tech Meetup on Advertising Age
• Cool things powered with Twitter on Connecting not Schmoozing
• Heiferman Swears in New NY Tech Meetup Organizer on NYConvergence
• NYTM #49 – Inauguration and twitter Apps on the blog of Sanford Dickert
• NY Tech Meetup – January 2009 on Whitney Hess’ blog Pleasure & Pain
• Just An Online Minute… Hi! My Name Is… What? My Name is… Who? My Name is… Tech Meetup on Just an Online Minute

In addition, lots of people were posting to Twitter during the event itself:

• “‘Twitter brings the world together’ #NYTM” – @ksowocki
• “Mapping retweets on a globe / #NYTM” – @JamesBruni
• “Twiterra. See how how Twitter triggers connections around the world. Cool, but dizzying. http://is.gd/c5dU” – @pleeds
• “TwiTerra shows geographical influence of tweets and retweets – http://bit.ly/QdH6” – @frank_dobner
• “RT@twiterra: More info at http://twiterra.com Follow me to be notified when this Twitter bot goes live!” – @jprytyskacz
• “I recommend f @nytm and @twiterra were at #NYTM tonite.” – @jprytyskacz
• “Twiterra. See which conversations have the biggest reach.” – @mrduane
• “#NYTM With rate of adoption at current levels, Twittera could be very cool when more Twitter users outside US. Now seeing isolated examples.” – @mcaldecutt
• “Next up – twiterra – I blogged on this from the ITP show in Dec. – cool app follow rts around globe” – @kdtalcott

Whitney Hess (whose blog is linked above) live-tweeted the whole event, and these were the ones that were specifically relevant:

• “#nytm Tonight’s theme is “Built on Twitter” featuring @StockTwits @ShortyAwards @CoTweet @TwiTerra @Klout @Shakeshack< /a> @Botanicalls” – @whitneyhess
• “#nytm Steven Lehrburger of @TwiTerra is up now, showing how retweets span across the globe. Pretty sweet. Just saw @alanataylor RT @ mklopez” – @whitneyhess
• “#nytm @lehrblogger is using the NASA World Wind libraries to create it. @innonate asks why we care. “Exposes people to new ideas”“ – @whitneyhess

Also, if you happen to find any photos or video of me presenting on Tuesday, *please* send them to me! I was too busy worrying about other things, and half forgot to ask someone to take a couple photos, and half assumed there were enough cameras in the room that it would happen on it’s own. I haven’t been able to find any yet, so let me know if you do.

For my second project for the 4-in-4, I decided to fly to California so that I could be there to present TwiTerra to the monthly meeting of the Bay Area Scala Enthusiasts (BASE) at the Twitter offices in San Francisco. Jorge Ortiz (the friend who has been teaching me the language) was planning to present it anyway, but I decided that it was worth it for me to be there in person. Since I only have one day for each project, and since I need to be here on the other days to do other projects and help coordinate, I’m going to be gone less than 24 hours. I’m looking forward to a longer-than-five-minute discussion of the project and its implementation, and I’ll post again afterward.