Japman Bajaj

I had the great plea­sure, with the gra­cious help of Jen But­son and Brian Alk­er­ton, to host Scott Strat­ten, aka UnMar­ket­ing this past Friday.

The event brought together Ottawa’s Twit­ter com­mu­nity to meet Scott, one of Twitter’s most influ­en­tial tweet­ers, and a social media conois­seur who speaks at events all around the con­ti­nent. Most recently, Scott keynoted at Pub­Con, which, sur­pris­ingly, doesn’t actu­ally stand for “Puberty Convention”.

Inter­est­ing fact: Scott was in fact an Ottawa boy until Grade 3. He was imme­di­ately poi­soned into becom­ing a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, but the Leafs’ sheer hor­ri­ble­ness served as the anti­dote to that dis­ease, prompt­ing Scott to make this dif­fi­cult decision.

For me, it was a nice oppor­tu­nity to meet the guy who helped me the most in my early twit­ter days, and who gave me the advice to fol­low peo­ple like Chris Bro­gan, Guy Kawasaki, and Eliz­a­beth Potts Wein­stein.

For those who missed it, or those who have yet to meet him, Scott’s as funny and down to earth as he comes across on Twit­ter, and is one of the eas­i­est peo­ple to talk to, sec­ond only to Ali­son Kramer, aka Num­mies­Bras, who also joined us at the event.

I went out of my way to make Scott feel as wel­comed as pos­si­ble, by expos­ing an embar­rass­ing pic­ture of him from his younger days, as well as intro­duc­ing him with con­stant lit­tle digs. Scott took it all in stride, though… at least I think he did. If I get any mys­te­ri­ous pack­ages deliv­ered to my house, I’ll assume it’s him get­ting his revenge.

A huge thank you to Scott for com­ing up with the idea of doing a tweetup in the first place. Big thanks to the #GenY­OTT sup­port­ers, the Yummy Mummy Club­bers and all of the other peo­ple in the Twit­ter com­mu­nity that sup­ported the event. Scott thanks you, I thank you, and Foun­da­tion thanks you! Hope to see you at the next #GenY­OTT on May 20th, 2010!