Also, Amanda and I bought a house (on East Frederick Street) and are in the process of renovating the bathroom in preparation to move on June 20th. That has us pretty busy in the evenings and on weekends.

And then of course there’s the CHL, CWL, and LYP. More on all of those later.

I’ve just updated the Lancaster Twitterati list on this blog. It seems to be the most valuable and most popular content I am able to provide, so I made it a higher priority to update that list than to write a new entry. I added twenty new tweeps, updated information on six, and removed seven. If you go inactive for two months or more, you’re off the list until you become active again. That’s the best way I know to manage the length of the list, which now stands at 117.

If you’re a Lancaster County resident on Twitter and would like to be added, just e-mail or DM me (contact information is to your right) with your real name, location within Lancaster County, and any thoughts you have on a brief bio.

Lancaster, PA tweetups are on a roll

The twelve of us were Jeff Geoghan, Kate Peteritas, Jeremy Walter, Bryan Coe, Jeff Rumm, Chad Hamilton, Shanelle Lee, Max Phillips, Paul Stoltzfus, Ryan Shen-Hoover, Joel Walker, and myself. We all made it out at 7 a.m. or so for some breakfast, coffee, and conversation.

For me, it was the first time I met Chad, Bryan, and Ryan in real life. We’ve been following each other on Twitter and Facebook for several months, so it’s great to bring it full circle with a little face-to-face time. Good guys, all three of them. Chad was officially the youngest adult at the tweetup. He’s a student at Manheim Township High School and spends part of his time studying graphic design at the Lancaster County Career & Technology Center.

This is the fifth successful tweetup we have now had in Lancaster since we began six months ago:

• Apple store opening at Park City mall – Sept. 20
• Paul Rothrock‘s birthday pub crawl down Plum Street – Sept. 27
• Ice skating and chilling in the skybox at Clipper Magazine Stadium – Jan. 23
• Breakfast tweetup No. 1 – Feb. 24
• Breakfast tweetup No. 2 – March 11

There were other attempts, but I haven’t verified that any of them were well-attended enough to be considered bona fide tweetups. (Please fill us in if I missed any.)

To get the scoop upcoming tweetups, keep an eye on the Lancaster PA Tweetups group on Facebook. Planned get-togthers include lunch, late-night diner run, Saturday morning coffee, and who knows what else.

A couple people suggested that we have nametags next time. Paul threatened never to return if we crossed the line into having a sign-in sheet, though. What should we do for our next tweetups?

It answers the question “whom should I follow?” when someone from the area gets on Twitter, and serves as a quick reference for visitors when they’re in the area and are looking for ideas of what to do (or who simply want to rant about our weirdly-named towns).

If you’re on Twitter and not listed, let me know and I will be happy to add you to the list. And, please share the list with anyone who will benefit from it. The URL is  http://danielklotz.com/lancaster-county-twitter-users/.

By Flickr user Jeff_Werner, under a Creative Commons license.

Established organizations are preparing to follow the lead of these individuals. The United Way, the Lancaster County Community Foundation, and a number of churches are testing the waters and preparing social media strategies. Even county commissioner Craig Lehman is on LinkedIn. Businesses are diving in, too—NxtBook Media is a powerhouse in this area. Most downtown cafes have Facebook pages, and this trend is spreading outward across the county (see the blog of Becky Garvey, whose Pushing the Envelope stationery boutique is in Neffsville). Kae Wagner (at NorthStar Marketing) and myself (at The Chamber) have had no shortage of business people asking us for specific advice, in addition to “what’s this all about?” questions.

OK, so it’s being used. But is it being used in ways that matter?

Yes, it is. Established leaders (individuals and organizations) in Lancaster continue to be slow to catch on, but social networking is becoming a power onto itself that will soon be impossible to ignore. Plus, its popularity is making it a great tool for learning and for keeping an ear to the ground. As I write this, Dave Conklin (ProspectMX) is live-tweeting highlights of a Jim Collins speech from the Inc 500 Conference in D.C. Just now Samphis asked, “Why is .pdf the standard for documents? The files are huge, clunky and difficult to use for things like books.” Within seconds, fellow twitterers pointed out that if the files are huge, there is a problem (such as OCR—optical character recognition—being turned on), and also explained the value of the pdf standard.

And that’s just Twitter. MySpace continues to be a major force in the local music scene. I estimate that an average of ten local events each week are promoted and organized on Facebook. (An accurate estimation?)

What’s next, then?

What’s next is for social networking to move beyond its current local core constituencies. We will see the average age of local Facebook users continue to climb. The number of professionals on LinkedIn will continue to grow exponentially, since its value increases with every additional local user. The microblogging of Twitter will attract more people who want to maintain contact with a broad network but do not have the time to write full blog entries. We we also see the rise of the social networking professional as a consulting gig to serve local businesses.

As the demographics of social network participants shifts to resemble the real world more closely, more real decisions and consensus-building will happen via social media. I believe that is inevitable. Do you agree? Or do you think the future importance (and current relevance) of social media in Lancaster is much more precarious (or far less serious) than I make it out to be?