This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon Sept. 2, 2009 - Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey has more than 1.1 million people following his every tweet. But how many people can say they’ve seen the master of microblogging in person?
That chance comes at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18, as the St. Louis native Dorsey gives a talk, "From St. Louis to Twitter.com," at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center. The presentation is free and open to the public but a reservation is required to get into the event. Dorsey, who's reportedly a huge Cardinals fan, is speaking as part of Webster's "Success to Significance" series and is receiving the 2009 Person of the Year award from the university.
Webster is calling the event “TweetUp with @Jack.” And while many TweetUp (a takeoff on meet up) events are intimate gatherings among friends, this one is guaranteed to have a mass audience. Already, more than 600 people have signed up to attend, according to a Webster official. The venue can accommodate about 1,000 people.
Want a little taste of how Dorsey might be introduced? Here's Benjamin Ola. Akande, dean of Webster’s School of Business & Technology, making a rather strong statement about the Twitter co-founder:
"If I were to micro blog Jack's impact on business and society in 140 words or less, I'd tweet Jack Dorsey's Twitter is to our generation what Gutenberg's printing press and Bell's telephone were to theirs.”