Ingredients
- 1 cause that can touch the hearts of everyone, for example charity: water
- 180+ well-connected Twitterati located in prominent cities around the world
- 1 cheerful and motivated event coordinator in London
- 1 smokin' tech dude to handle all the development issues
- 20,000+ people who are all trying to change the world
- A melange of content: social media press release, videos, music, iconic imagery, first-person stories, e-newsletter pdfs, blog posts and tweets
- Generous helpings of social media: Twitter; Facebook; Twestival FM; Live Earth; Wordpress; Amiando; Google; YouTube etc.
Directions
Set a single date say February 12th 2009 for a global event date, and incite a laser focus by setting impossible deadline that requires everything for each city's Twestival be organized and completed within a month. Test it in London, refine the model and then roll-out world-wide a few months later.
Select a cause that the world can embrace like charity: water. The challenge is that 1 in 6 people in the world don't have access to clean, safe water. Charity: water builds wells in the poorest communities around the world to provide access to the clean safe water we take for granted. Additionally, charity: water is a lean, focused non-profit organization where 100% of money raised from an event like Twestival goes directly to solving the global challenge by building wells.
Elevate "grass-roots" localization with the global power of Twitter and other social media to organize the event; generate awareness about the Twestival: build interest in the cause it supports: and obtain commitments to sponsor, participate or attend the event in one of 180+ cities around the world.
Let each city organizer have their own blog to post updates as the Twestival comes together and collect donations on behalf of their city. Ensure that the central organizer (an event planner by profession) is able to quickly and seamlessly communicate world-wide via a common language (English) and interface (Google Groups).
Variation:
As the co-organizer of the Detroit Twestival (along with Traci Armstrong), we exceeded our goal to raise at least $4,000, the cost of a single well. To date, Detroit raised more than $4600 through tickets, sponsors, a silent auction and raffle. Plus we had contributions to run the event, Mexican buffet, drinks, DJ and security - an amazing accomplishment in less than two weeks. And donations are still being received on the Detroit Twestival site.
We estimate that our team of about 18 incredibly hard-working volunteers provided approximately 200 hours of their time. If that was at all typical (and it probably was given the size and results from the other cities around the world), more than 36,000 hours, or 20 FTEs in volunteer time was harnessed using social media to highlight a very important cause and generate at least $1 million that will allow charity; water to drill many more wells.
In some ways this is an interesting experiment in using the high tech connectivity of social media tools like Twitter to unite influencers on the bleeding edge behind a common goal to help fulfill one of the most basic of all human needs: access to clean, safe, fresh water.
Social media amplified the request for help and provided a platform of hyper connected people to unite quickly with a global solution, resulting in at least $1 million raised in less than a month. For centuries we have answered the call locally to help fund the local school or, more recently provide assistance for regions affected by natural disasters. But it always took time. Twestival demonstrated the globalization of grassroots support through a transparent effort with minimal 'organizational' oversight at low-to-no cost and a huge payoff. There is a lesson here for charities, businesses and institutions looking to leverage the power of social media.
Lori Laurent Smith
Strategists & Planners
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