Last night saw the second third annual London Twestival take place. We (that is to say myself and Shona) popped along to watch the madness unfold. The following is what we learned as a result…
1. It continues to be the case that nothing gets people in a room quite like the prospect of free stuff.
2. Karaoke is never a welcome edition to ANYTHING, least of all Twestival.
3. Occasionally Shoreditch and Hoxtonites DO come south of the river.
4. Money was raised for a good cause… but can anybody remember what cause?!
5. As the name might suggest, Twestival was neither festival nor tweetup but a hybrid that possibly lacked focus. Perhaps if Twestival had tried to rally around how social media (and more specifically, maybe, Twitter) can be used as an effective tool for charities this would have provided more of a focus.
All in all, however, the night was a success: money was raised for charity, we all stuck two fingers up to the 10% rise in cider tax by quaffing kindly donated Magners and Shona even got a free cupcake.
Veni, vidi, tweety.
Free cupcakes did make me pretty happy. I loved that some companies really embraced it – very pro social media doing social good. The idea of a crowd-sourced playlist providing the soundtrack was nice.
Totally agree about lack of focus…setting up some charity stalls and calling it an ‘activity area’ is stretching it. Felt like the event needed hosts, and proper thought about what it was meant to make people to do beyond ‘drink cider, raise money’ and then tweet about it. I’d have suggested some quirky, innovative games to get people talking.
Shurely third? London was where it all started in 2008 thanks (in no small part) to my erstwhile colleague @timhoang…
Thanks Mat, amended accordingly!