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Garp
03-02-2009, 20:11
Coming up on February 12th (week Thursday) there is a world wide event occuring, the first annual Twestival.

Twestival is an event principally to bring twitter communities together and raise money for charity, but are open to all attendees. The general plan is for a party of some description, good music, food et al, though each area is organising their own event to suit. Whatever the plans are I'm sure you can guarantee it will be fun. Check out your local event and see whats happening?

The charity behind it all is Charity:Water, you can read more about them here: http://www.charitywater.org/

You can find your local even here (http://twestival.com/) if you consider it might be worth attending.

I've witnessed something amazing out here in relation to this twestival. Last Wednesday a group of 8 of us gathered in downtown Honolulu with the intent on putting a local event into action on short notice. By close of day Wednesday we had a major venue, food, drinks, and one artist. By close of day on Friday we'd raised half the sponsorship money we needed ($1000 of $2000) and had almost a complete line up. By close of play yesterday, not even one week later, we'd raised all the sponsorship money and still have a couple of major media companies both promoting our event and promising more sponsorship money, all of which can go to the charity. We'd got a full line up of local musicians some of whom are "major" in the Hawaiian music industry, plus a full backline PA setup which a pro will be running, and two local famous media people as emcees. It's stunning what these local people can achieve in next to no time. So we're now pushing ticket sales, $20 a head which gets peeps entry, food and two drinks :) 200 tickets to sell, one week to achieve it. Reckon we can do it? :D

petemc
03-02-2009, 20:58
Signed up and donating a print to the Liverpool twestival. There are rumours about Stephen Fry donating socks.

Garp
13-02-2009, 19:19
Update time.

Last night was the twestival. It Rocked \o/ Unfortunately I forgot to charge camera batteries before I went and they died fairly early on. Will be uploading some pictures later.
At the weekend we were still sitting at only 50 or so tickets sold, leaving us really worried that it was going to be a flop.

On-line ticket sales closed at mid-day yesterday with 190 tickets sold \o/ We knew we had about 30 people with the musicians additional to that (free tickets though) and with a venue capacity of 300.

I haven't heard official figures yet but I'd estimate we saw maybe 280-290 people turn up in the end with a number of ticket sales on the door. We got enough sponsorship to cover all the costs of running the event (and then some). One generous sponsor, AIG Hawaii, gave us $5 for every ticket sold, so even just looking at the straight cost:

190 (online tickets) x 20 = $3800 + (190 x 5) = $4750
50 (rough door tickets) x 25 = 1250 + (50 * 5) = $1500

So $6250 raised for charity right there. We recieved one anonymous donation of $1000 on the night too. Hopefully should be seeing the final figures by the end of the weekend. Needless to say all involved are ecstatic and shattered. We've seen feeds from twestivals all around the world and a number of them seemed.. well.. boring. More like lectures and stuff.

We had a TV feed going in the club that was displaying facts about the water crisis, looping all night long, and our three emcees for the night took time to emphasise about the charity and explain about it every time they got on the mic.

So.. two weeks work, one awesome evening with great entertainment, good food, drinks and great company, and a nice sum raised for charity that was well beyond our wildest dreams. At best we were expecting to raise $3000, we never seriously expected to more than double our target :)

petemc
13-02-2009, 19:23
Wow thats bloody brilliant. Kinda beat us poor Liverpool recessiony types. We raised about £507. It was a great evening though. I can highly recommend a band called 6ix Toys. They do a jazz type version of Voodoo People. I had no idea that the editor of the Daily Post was streaming video live from her phone when she came up to me and said "Say Hi Pete" and I said "Hi Pete" and waved like a dick to the entire world! Haha fun night. I dunno if they're selling them over there but did you get a Poken?

Garp
13-02-2009, 19:40
No Poken here, no :(

We did a ustream alongside the official liveearth stream. If folks want to see some of what was going on go to:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hawaii

The select the most recent clip beneath the video box. It's 9 hours long and the poor mic is being hammered :D

Garp
13-02-2009, 20:09
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56598963@N00/3275605487/in/set-72157613739848834/

I spy with my little eye, two geeks :D

full stream here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56598963@N00/sets/72157613739848834/

petemc
13-02-2009, 20:11
haha you've even got an @ tee :D

Garp
13-02-2009, 20:30
haha you've even got an @ tee :D

Yup, one of the locals @valdezign creates and sells them :) There were a couple of dozen of us walking around wearing ours.

edit: You can get them here http://valdezign.com/wordpress/?p=295

Garp
13-02-2009, 21:30
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/hitwestival/ flickr stream of hitwestival tagged photos :)