Tip #4: Meet up with people you’ve only spoken to on Twitter.

This was an unintended benefit of the trip down to Good Beer Week last year. I hadn’t much thought about the likelihood of meeting in the flesh people I follow on Twitter.

But there I was sitting in the Alehouse Project waiting to meet my nephew when I recognised this guy sitting a few tables over. I figured it was Dave Ellis – now one-half of the Ale of a Time podcast. Rather than just go up and ask him, I sent him a tweet asking if he was at the Alehouse, then watched as he read the tweet then swivelled his head around looking for me.

In the end, he came over and we had a great chat. He also collared a few passing people who I also happened to follow on Twitter – Thirstyinmelb and James from Beer Bar Band. They also then introduced me to both Yeastie Boys, who also happened to be there.

After the nephew came, we had a few beers and as we left, it seems I unknowingly passed the other half of the Ale of a Time podcast – Luke Robertson.

The next day at GABS I met Brews News’ Matt Kirkegaard (who I embarrassingly thought was James Atkinson from The Shout), Dan Summers from Frozen Summers and a few other people as well.

Chances are I’ll meet a lot more this year as I’ll likely be sporting a t-shirt plugging my own blog (I was going to do that last year but didn’t get around to having a shirt printed. This time, they’ve been printed for more than a month and are just waiting).

So if you’re a beer geek and have been following someone on Twitter, talking to them 140 characters at a time, take the opportunity of Good Beer Week to talk to them face to face.