There's life after Twestival
When @timhoang IMed me almost two months ago asking for money, little I knew that this actually would be turn out a pretty good investment. Because it was just then that Tim met with his mates @tommalcolm and @benrmatthews in a pub and came up with an idea for the Harvest Twestival. Tim had me at ‘there will be lots of PR people there’. There’s no secret that at Huddle we love PR people. We love them so much we even give them pizza with every demo. Needles to say, I was sold. What made me even happier was that this was not supposed to be some random tweet-up, it had a social conscience; there would be a food drive (it cleaned up my cupboard nicely) and monies would be collected for a homeless charity.
It was supposed to be a small affair, maybe up to 70 people, I was told. I have to thank @amandita and @renatenyborg for turning this into the best tweet-up ever with more than 200 people and a waiting list. I can still remember Amanda sending me emails at 3am in the morning. That’s what I call true dedication. Big thanks should go to @jstride whom I coerced into joining me as a sponsor - hope you think it was worth it, Jake.
I really enjoyed watching the @ list grow. As @mbites noticed the gender balance was suddenly more equal. Twestival brought together PRs, bloggers, social media experts, start-ups and journalists - it was absolutely perfect. I’ve met many Twitter peeps I have never met in person before, made a few new friends. Winning a Flip camera in a twaffle was just an extra cherry in my Manhattan. Even better was meeting @photogirluk who turned out to be my Camden neighbour and chatting to @SophieCox who already signed up to Silicon Stilettos. What can I say, Twestival rocked.
It’s not clear yet what the future holds for the Twestival. I cannot image it happening on that scale on a monthly basis, but the idea of Christmas Twestival sounds pretty good to me. Hope to see you all there.
