RockUp: A return to something fun in the Rock

A few years ago a handful of people in Little Rock, who were mostly in the marketing and PR fields, decided it would be a fantastic idea to get together once or so a month and hang out. So in May 2009 at Sticky Fingerz the first Little Rock Tweetup took place.

Now I am not going to lie to you and say I was one of those original organizers, I came on at tweetup #2, but over the course of the next 2 1/2 years I joined in with a small team helping organize. What resulted was rather magical. A core group of people that swelled to well over 100 got together to visit local restaurants and bars. We had a few drinks, ate some good food, shared in a number of laughs, and occasionally helped out a good local cause or two. We at one point became one of the largest regular tweetups in the country.

Then life happened. A couple of our core planning committee people moved out of town, some of us had kids, and all of us got busy with life. We skipped a month, then two, and then it became that meetup we were going to plan but never got around to it.

I think if you go back and ask anyone who regularly attended these events it has become an unfilled void in their life. It was a great way to meet new people and visit with those you already know. It was an excuse to get out of the house and have a drink with friends. We became a bit of a family, although very dysfunctional at times.

I want to get back to that. I want to take the time to bring people together at local restaurants and bars. I am detaching Twitter from the name, it always was a barrier because people either believed we were a bunch of geeks (ok they were probably right there) or were afraid they were not invited because they didn’t use twitter regularly. So I am going to call these new events RockUps.

RockUp will serve as a place for Little Rock people (and surrounding areas) to come hang out and visit. I am making it a Rock City Times event because it captures what this space was always designed to do. Bring people together for a few laughs and help local businesses in the process. Our first will be on November 7th at the Pantry. I am actively working on a second one in January. The Pantry has some drink and appetizers specials lined up for us and I truly hope you consider attending.