Twitter, Discovery, a Pig, and Me

@meryl333

Yesterday I realized again how completely changed my life has been by social media.  I spent the entire day (outside of the dog walk) with people I did not know before Twitter, who I now consider dear, close, cool friends.

I drove into San Francisco for Chris Heuer‘s 40th birthday party, a pig roast. I met Chris and Kristie, founders of Social Media Club, on Twitter.

Now let’s remember: 1)I grew up in New York City. We didn’t know where pigs came from. Perhaps it was the petting zoo at the Bronx zoo? 2) Our family was Jewish, and didn’t eat pork 3) My mother didn’t cook.

So when I heard that Chris was roasting a pig for his birthday, I decided it was worth a trip to help him celebrate.

As I was heading out of the house, I saw a tweet from @meryl333, a woman I follow on Twitter, apologizing for not being able to come to another event, Shel Israel’s Twitterbash, which is today. Since I had been looking forward to meeting Meryl in real life for a while, I decided to reach out and ask her if she wanted to have coffee on the way to the Heuer’s.

She said yes, and we met for a cup of tea in a glorious place, Emporio Rulli, that I never would have found had I never found her.

After the tea, me and my trusty GPS made it over to Casa KrisTie, where a whole group of people–most of whom I already knew, and NONE of whom I had met before Twitter, were already partying.

The pig was “en roast” to becoming dinner.

After a few drinks, a bunch of the guys went down to flip the pig, only to find out that she was ready to eat. We tore into her, before she was even unwrapped, burning our fingers on the hot grill.

That was the most delicious pig I have ever eaten, and I learned so much about how Chris did it: the brining, the special fabrication of the grill, the creation of the roasting pit, the butcher that supplied the pig –I mean it was an entire new world! On the right is the special contraption they built to roast the pig.  The brined pig is on a spit inside. The spit was specially cut to fit the size of the pig by a metal contractor.

Chris takes the pig out and discovers it is done.  We all start to eat with our fingers.  It was just like Tom Jones. We literally ate the ribs right off the pig!

So what did I learn? I learned, first hand, how good social media is at what the geeks like to call “discovery,” — leading you to people, life experiences, or perhaps things to read that you might not find yourself, without the recommendations and help of friends.

And after dinner, a wonderful conversation with Erica O’Grady, who I met — at a Tweetup and re-met at Gnomedex last year. And in looking for a link to her for this post, I discovered her new site, which is aptly named ReinventingErica.com. Her tag line, “Fate Loves the Fearless.” That says it all.

The birthday boy slicing the loin.

Pig's foot:-) Up close for me for the first time