The initial phrases of the Girl Scout song reminding us of how precious friendship is are as true today as they were over forty years ago, when I first learned the short round. And so it was into Manhattan Sunday morning to meet with a dozen or so members of the Diabetes Online Community and "Type 3" friends for brunch at Marseille. The gaggle of us varied in how we embrace digital communications technology to first learn about each other and virtually "meet" -- most of us blog, either independently (e.g., The Butter Compartment, Lemonade Life) or as part of a major diabetes portal (e.g.,, dLife, Diabetes Daily), or within a diabetes-oriented social network (e.g., TuDiabetes); many of us Tweet; a few are just community members who occasionally read blogs or get involved one way or the other. We all knew the organizer, Allison (@amblass), through her blog (Lemonade Life) or through Twitter, or through one of her other diabetes-related activities -- but not all of us knew (or knew of) everyone else beforehand, and for some of us this was the first time we'd met face-to-face.
It was somewhat indicative of this crew that some of us were tweeting our way into the meetup, and when The Other Half and I arrived to find half the gang already there, it was no stretch to use the cellphone camera to send a quick TwitPic to those d-tweeps out of the area. Just to make the eVite meetup into an unofficial Tweetup, we exchanged "Hi's" with Charise (@Diabeticizme) during our meal.
This was probably the first time I'd been among so many Type 1's at the same time, so it was a bit of a new experience for me to see a bunch of women checking their pumps and CGMs, asking, "Was that yours or mine?" every time one of them heard a beep. Definitely a good reason for pump and CGM manufacturers to include user-selectable (and possibly downloadable?) diagnostic tones, in the pattern of cellphone ring tones!
The meal itself was lovely -- as should be expected from a place whose exterior advertises the availability of muliple top-tier champagnes! -- the waiters attentive, and the clientele a mix between young twentysomethings hanging out and more settled folk coming for the Mediterranean French and Moroccan cuisine. More photos were taken during and after the meal -- mostly with Other People's Cameras, so I anxiously await the set of follow-on blog posts to see what we looked like as a group. The long table made it a bit difficult to converse with folk at the opposite ends, but some of that worked out afterwards when Val, Wendy, the Thills, my Other Half, and I walked down to Penn Station to return home.
The Other Half and I finally reached home about half past six, tired, but having had an excellent day meeting "old" online d-friends face-to-face and making new ones. I'm looking forward to the next meetup, and to the possibility of meeting more of my online friends "in the flesh".
