I enjoy social networking; it allows me to keep in touch with friends, family, and sometimes complete strangers relatively easily from the comfort of my desk.

I love meeting people; As much as social networks keep me in contact with my friends when I am stuck behind my desk, I still crave the interaction of actually meeting someone face-to-face and chatting about life over a coffee or a beer.

Going to the Twitter meet at The Baron in Santon last night was definitely the most fun way to meet the like minded souls I know online, get the face-to-face interaction I crave and as an added bonus I got to meet a whole bunch of new and interesting people and play with a couple of cool gadgets.

One of the cute/fun gadgets that floated around the table during the evening were the social contact sharing Poken devices, which I believe are only recently trying to make a mark in the South African scene. The Poken is a small USB / RFID reader that can “high-five” another Poken device, thereby transferring your pre-selected social network contact details to the other Poken.

The whole process is a much quicker and easier (albeit geekier) way to share contacts than trying to figure out how to spell a Twitter username into your phone or even trying to save a phone number (I remember the days I tried to get a number in a noisy club and couldn’t hear a word that was said).

When you get home, you plug in the USB portion of the Poken and it will update your selected online social network with the details of all the users you high-fived during the night.

I recall that the panda and the bee versions were popular among the ladies at the tweetup, and if you have a unique design, and have a need for a few extra Poken (say for corporate gifts) then you can get your own unique Poken design made.

The venue and service was good, even with us moving around a few times and being with some rain it didn’t bother us too much.

I had an absolute blast meeting and chatting with @SheBeeGee, @SnowGooseSA, @nickjackson, @Walterpike, @snappingturtle and our guest of honour from Cape Town @gabyrosario. I will definitely set time aside to get to a meet like that again.

Thank you all.

My pictures of the event are up on my flickr page and I will link to @craign’s photos as soon as he puts them online here and here .

Go here if you are interested in buying any Poken in SA.

UPDATE: Heidi has added her update of the evening on her website. A little more articulate than my post.