Monday, 18 January 2010

Twestival Farnham: 25 March 2010

On 25th March 2010, cities and towns across the world will be harnessing the power of Twitter and digital media to raise much needed funds for Concern Worldwide. Twestival is a global event organised by a fantastic team of volunteers, and for those interested in hosting a similar event, the UK Twestival office is run by the very helpful @claireatwaves and @arengrimshaw.

In the charity's own words: "Concern’s work is informed by a vision for change and their education programs target the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world, with particular emphasis on reaching out-of-school children such as girls, orphans, street children, working children, children affected by conflict, children affected by HIV and AIDS, and children with disabilities."

Twestival can truly make a difference. The first Twestival event, held just under a year ago, involved 220 international cities and raised over $250,000.00. The money donated funded the building of over 55 water wells in Uganda, India and Ethiopia, positively impacting over 17,000 people.

thebluedoor has decided to organise a Twestival in Farnham, with the generous support and sponsorship of iBundle, the Surrey based innovation hub. We know that there are a fantastic number of people and businesses in Surrey who actively use Twitter to network, do business and have fun. We hope that people will be inspired to support this event by coming along, lending a hand (in kind or in sponsorship), and helping us to raise some funds for a truly wonderful charity.

We have set up a Twitter account - @twestivalfarnhm (yes we know, it's missing an 'a' - Twitter won't let through longer account names LOL) and hashtag #twestivalfarnhm so interested peeps can keep up to date with our progress. Very soon we will be launching a farnham.twestival.com blog as an official source of event information and the global organisers are planning to ensure that tickets will be on sale some time in February. One way or another, thebluedoor will aim to keep everyone up-to-date with our progress.

If you are interested in finding out more, helping or even sponsoring an aspect of the evening's events (give-aways, prizes, music etc), please don't hesitate to let us know - info at thebluedoor dot com. We'd love to have you on board and are committed to creating an interesting, fun and productive event worthy of the main Twestival event.

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posted by thebluedoor at 17:41 1 Comments Links to this post

Sunday, 5 July 2009

Tweetcamp London: a review

Last weekend over 100 people met up for the London TweetCamp, generously hosted by GumTree and sponsored by mymuseli, Sun Startup Essentials, Addlestones, PayPal and Yelp. Some were colleagues and friends in real life, but many were 'friends' and / or 'followers' who communicate online through Twitter.

TweetCamp provided an inclusive and welcoming place for people active and interested in Twitter to meet up, network and put faces to Twitter names. In true Bar Camp style, discussions were loosely guided and encompassed a range of subjects including: What people use Twitter for; The do's and don'ts of Twitter; Trends; and Business benefits.

For those reading this who don't know, Twitter prompts users to fill out a micro-blog posting using only 140 characters (this includes spaces and punctuation). Postings can be extended by the use of hyper-links to blogs. Conversations take place on Twitter either through private Direct Messages or in public. In order to talk to someone or get their attention, it is vital to the person's account name (Twitter handle) in the posting e.g.: '@toni_jane have you seen the Radian6 YouTube video?' By including Toni's handle in the Tweet, it enables the message to be searched more effectively and therefore discovered by Toni.

TweetCamp enabled free, unrestricted conversations to happen, online relationships could be explored face-to-face, and valuable insights shared. Interestingly though, at the end of the day when each participant was invited to contribute a summing-up comment, Tweet-speak prevailed.

One of the key aspects of the Twitter online community is that (in the main) people genuinely want to collaborate and be useful. And that was certainly true of the spirit of the day which would not have happened without the amazing and generous organisation by @farnhan, @cyberdees and @jonin60seconds, and brilliant facilitation by @benjaminellis.

So thank you all - and for me, Twitter has already become a more meaningful landscape having met some more of its inhabitants.

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posted by thebluedoor at 14:43 0 Comments Links to this post

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