Twestival: Amazing!

Today is Twestival — there will be gatherings around the world, in more than 175 cities, to raise money and awareness for a charity aiming to deliver clean, safe drinking water to the billion human beings who don’t have this most basic necessity.

This is the real deal — a wired public latching onto an idea and making it happen at an astonishing pace and scale. With almost zero institutional overhead: Charity:Water surely spent very little in the way of resources on management, PR, marketing, etc. The people provided almost all of it. My jaw is  agape. Literally.

I’ll be at Asheville’s event this evening, and hope to say lots more about the phenomena I see unfolding. For now, just consider this map, and the fact that the launch of this event (via twitter, of course) occurred just one month ago. One month.

Twestival locations

  • What's even more amazing Ian, is that the Asheville Twestival started organizing just two weeks ago!?! Wow. I have to credit 1) awesome folks who are 2) connecting well with each other via 3) amazing social networking tools.

    Blogs, FaceBook, email, YouTube, Vimeo and of course, Twitter are rocking our world - both digitally and in the “real” material world. The best effect of this short month of digital frenzy is... a lot more clean water for folks who really need it. And finally, the good feeling of working hard for a great cause while making friends.

    I hope to meet you tonight.

    David Bourne
  • David,

    I haven't had time in the last couple weeks to give to the twestival effort -- I've just been watching from the peanut gallery. And I agree -- the way it's come together here in Asheville has been astounding. Look at all those sponsors! And the talent people have donated -- video editing, coding, graphic design, writing, speaking, mandolin-strumming...

    Anyway, it's been exciting to see, and I too am looking forward to meeting you and about 50 other people I've been floored by in the last couple weeks. See you there.

    -- @iwilker
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