On my last night of official ‘work’ before going offline, I was able to meetup with Hawaii’s top bloggers, access this post directly (if you’re seeing this in a feedreader) to watch video.
Whenever I travel to a new city for business, I try to meet the local bloggers at a community dinner, I’ve now friends all over the world, and we connect on twitter, blogs, and social networks to keep track of each other. Ryan Ozawa (who has the only Hawaii licence plate “Blog”, see pic below), the community leader and early technology adopter helped organize this dinner of Oahu’s top bloggers. About 15 of us assembled at a local joint (I was the only tourist) and we had authentic food –minus the luau, dancing, or fire spinning. Believe me, this was a real treat for me. I’m not even going to link to the restaurant website as I don’t want to spoil it for the locals, but if you’re a smart web hunter, you’ll figure it out.
I spent some time with Welton, who lives in Waikiki, he took me to some local bars after dinner, (Ryan’s) and gave me the low down of life in Honolulu from a local’s perspective. Some of the guys were live streaming the dinner from their phone, a bit grainy, but you can follow in from this player. Check out the coverage from Ryan Ozawa.
Truly one of the most friendliest groups I have ever met, the Aloha spirit was really there, including receiving a gorgeous flower lei from Xapa.
The one thing I noticed is that when I’ve visited HK, Singapore, Portland, and now Hawaii for blogger dinners, the local tech community doesn’t get together as much in real life, they often need someone to trigger it forward. I certainly hope that this Oahu group can start meeting more frequently, and to grow their community. (Ryan Ozawa left a comment with more color around this, please read that below)
Ryan left his thoughts on his blog, and took a roll call of those who attended:
Burt Lum (@bytemarks) Cathy Chris (@techustle) Dave Zuls (@hawaiiseo) Ian Kitajima (@ikitajima) Jennifer Ozawa (@kilinahe) Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) Joe Philipson (@jphilipson) Jonathan Wong (@hawyn316) Kara Baker (@xapa) Lianne Kitajima (@lkitajima) Neenz Faleafine (@infinitypro) Roberto (@88hawaii) Ryan Ozawa (@hawaii) Welton (@welton)
Awww… Burt and I got cut from the video 🙁 … thanks for coming out though, it was lots of fun! Funny thing too we ate their last night and had the same waitress. She’s a kick! She told us that was the funnest night ever and is embracing everything we talked about.
Joe
I saw that too, wasn’t intentional
I had the flickr version, it cut off the video.
I put the BLIP version back in, you’re back in!
Oh correction… I guess it wasn’t done downloading or something 😉 I see me! Very cool. Thanks for coming out… oh and we do meet regularly and all of us are friends through twitter/flickr/blogging/etc.
I hope you guys send that video to our waitress, Marie. She’s really awesome. My wife said she was “cute” in the video.
Looking forward to coming back real soon.
That was so great! I’ll get the vid to Marie. We just went to see her last night.
Do you guys and gals know of anyone that sells Lau Lau to the mainland? I’d like to order some.
It was an honor and outright blast to host you, Jeremiah! Thanks for letting us kick-off your well-deserved vacation.
To clarify, there are easily half a dozen tech groups in Honolulu that meet regularly. But “bloggers” aren’t one of the more coherent and socially active ones. And the mix of folks that came to meet you was a whole new combination, focused primarily around Twitter.
If you want to talk about geeks meeting, it’s a pity you missed the Hawaii Geek Meet!
Laulau and Hawaiian food by mail? There’s only one name you need to know: Zippy’s!
Ryan
The pleasure was mine, seriously. Love that license plate, you’ve a lovely family!
Thanks for the clarification on the tech events, I’ll update the post.
Zippy’s looks interesting, seems a bit expensive, but ah the price of importing paradise.
Thanks Jeremiah! After reading your blog for about 2 years, it was a great pleasure to meet you in person. Thanks again for all the helpful advice.
Aloha,
Dave.
That is a great license plate!!!
Have you thought about the reason why bloggers don’t hold meetings regularly?
Could it be that their online community is enough to satisfy their social needs and in to get outsider like you into their community they need to hold a gathering?
Jeremiah,
As I mentioned before, the invitation is always open to you and yours. It was great to ride the Owyang wave that evening – good beginnings, good times.
Aloha,
NEENZ