Twestival unites online friends for charity

Twestival bridges the gap between the off- and online worlds. It provides a chance for communities on Twitter (a web service that allows users to share their thoughts with their peers) to meet in person and to raise money for Charity:water, who provide clean water for people in developing countries.

Dharmafly spoke to Amanda Rose, the enterprising organiser who got the Twestival ball rolling, to find out more about Twestival and why Twitter is suited to this kind of crowd-sourced social action.

Rippling messages through the web

As Amanda noted, Twitter allows for a “ripple effect”, letting messages spread and surge through the web. This gives Twestival instant access to willing participants – people who pass on the message and offer to get involved.

Those who are making Twestival happen are ordinary people, choosing to help a good cause after hearing about it through their Twitter network.

Charity:water has been chosen as Twestival’s beneficiary, partly because they are active Twitter users themselves (such as the charity’s founder, Scott Harrison), using it to spread news of their work and to connect with interested parties.

Twitter steps out of the web

Twitter is sometimes characterised as another way for socially-awkward people to avoid human contact (mainly by people who’ve never used it). Twestival is further evidence that Twitterers want their interactions to make a difference beyond the web.

Twestival: a flash-function

So what exactly is a Twestival? It’s a loose idea, varying in nature from city to city. Each Twestival is a rapid-response flash-event, created almost spontaneously by volunteers.

Some Twestivals are taking the form of an “unconference” (a grassroots conference organised by the participants), some are relaxed social gatherings in cafes and pubs, and some will have entertainment and activities. All Twestivals aim to bring together local Twitter communities to benefit a good cause.

Twestival: raising money for Charity:water

At the heart of every Twestival is Charity:water, a non-profit organisation that brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of donations go directly to creating sustainable clean water solutions.

The directness of Charity:water’s donation system means that every penny raised by generous Twitterers will help provide clean water to the people who need it most. You can also donate directly on the Twestival page of the Charity:water website.

Twestival in Brighton: @brightwest

Brighton’s Twestival tickets go on sale at 12pm today. If you want to track its progress, follow @twestival and @brightwest on Twitter, and check brighton.twestival.com for more information.

Update: Now sponsoring

Dharmafly is now happily a Twestival sponsor, and we’re giving away some gorgeous raffle prizes.

This weekend is BarcampBrighton2, a grassroots technology conference organised and run by the participants. Over the last couple of days, we’ve been piecing together a special Greasemonkey userscript for the conference, which enables Yahoo Live users to broadcast live video as a group. We call it YLiveGroups.

» Install the script

We first used Yahoo Live at last month’s SemanticCampLondon and there was a great buzz of conversation from people who were watching from other countries, discussing the topics of the talks, asking questions and learning about the subjects.

For BarcampBrighton2, we’ll help people get broadcasting and we’ll use YLiveGroups to bring them all together. Viewers from around the world will be able to tune in and keep track of the many talks taking place.

Yahoo Live

Yahoo Live is an interesting new experiment. It makes it possible for anyone to create their own live video channel, available to anyone who cares to watch. As has been pointed out before, there is plenty of scope to increase its potential for social networking. YLiveGroups is our attempt to do just that with some rudimentary group functionality.

YLiveGroups

To use YLiveGroups, you will need to use the Firefox web browser, along with the Greasemonkey add-on. Then, install YLiveGroups and head on over to Yahoo Live.

At the moment, the only group available is BarcampBrighton2. However, we intend to develop the code so that anyone can create their own group. These groups could be used to tie broadcasts together at events, connect people around a single topic or simply bring together a group of friends.

Techie Details

In case you were wondering…

The userscript interacts with both the Yahoo Live API and our own simple YLiveGroups API. Our API uses XOXO microformat HTML documents to exchange data (as opposed to standard XML or JSON). The script then uses JQuery to interract with the XOXO documents and the web page that the user is currently viewing. Premasagar will be talking more about this in his presentation at Barcamp.

We’d love to work with other developers to take this project forward. If you’d like to get involved, or have any feedback at all, then please leave a comment here.

I’ve submitted “Social Compost” as a project proposal to Social Innovation Camp.

SI Camp is a grassroots conference, where social entrepreneurs and web developers get together to help each other out. A number of great ideas have been submitted, a few of which will be selected for the event. My idea is to connect local people who produce kitchen scraps with those who produce compost.

I’ve moved home twice in the last 6 months, and both times to a top floor flat with no garden. We get a weekly delivery of fruit and veg (from Pulse) and quickly turn it into a whole heap of peelings. How could we just throw that juicy waste away… to slowly fester in a plastic bag on some landfill site?

And so, we have scoured both of these new neighbourhoods, looking for someone with a compost bin to take our scraps (thank you Toni, Jon and Anna). There must be a better way….

From the Social Compost proposal:

‘Social Compost’ would be a drop-dead simple website, based around an interactive map. There would be an option to add yourself to the map and to offer either kitchen peelings or mature compost. You could use the map to find others who are offering either peelings or compost.

Have you ever been in a situation like mine? What did you do? And how might such a website help you?

We were happy to have attended Tuesday’s launch of UnLtdWorld, a social networking site for social entrepreneurs.

UnLtdWorld brings together people and businesses who make a difference in the world and connects them with potential co-workers and supporters. It aims to be a hot-bed for collaboration, the sharing of services and the pooling of resources.

At the core of the UnLtdWorld site is the social networking software Elgg – an open source platform that attempts to remain flexible and unassuming within the differing needs of social networking projects.

There is also an initiative to build a comprehensive API into the UnLtdWorld data, which will allow third-party developers to access information about social entrepreneurs and their services. This data could be combined with other kinds of data, for example, to marry the needs of a local community with UnLtdWorld members that may be able to assist.

You can find me, Madhava and Dharmafly on the UnLtdWorld site. Come and say hi…

I am afraid it is no exaggeration to say that what we saw was a hellish scene. [source]

It has been a sobering experience to see reports of the Bangladesh cyclone – and to watch them flow through the Bangladesh River Journey site we built for BBC World Service. The project’s original aim was to expose the very real presence of climate change in Bangladesh – a low-lying land of myriad rivers – and the cyclone’s arrival seemed shockingly symbolic.

While news of the cyclone competed for airtime in the general media, the World Service maintained a stream of often very personal and touching accounts from the Bangladeshi people. Their Flickr photos and Twitter texts acted as informal media channels, adding an extra dimension to the more formal reporting on the World Service website and radio.

Social Media News

This year, the World Service are celebrating 75 years of global media broadcasting. They, and the BBC in general, are about to launch a major website redesign and there is a conscious effort to embrace new media techniques, such as microformats, APIs, social networking and open content.

What is the future for news reporting through social media? Is there greater or less authenticity in such reporting? Share your thoughts below…

Further Reading

• Technologies in the Bangladesh River Journey site
• Cyclone Sidr group on Facebook
• Oxfam cyclone group on Facebook
• United Bangladesh Appeal for cyclone donations
• ‘Uncultured Project’ visit to the disaster area
• Rezwan advises on helping victims
• East-west perspectives on climate change
• Helping cyclone victims from overseas

We gave a 30 minute session at BarCamp London called "Yoga and the Social Graph: from smoke-signals to self-realisation"…

We discussed the ever-increasing trend for expansion and connection within society. This is now stronger than ever with the progress from the Internet (a network of interconnected computers), to the Web (a network of interconnected documents), to the Social Graph (or more simply, ‘Social Network‘, a network of interconnected social relationships).

We considered this tendency in the light of the yogic concept of constant progress towards union – on both the individual and collective level.

The discussion was interesting – with everyone offering insights into the process that we see unfolding in the world today. We found it a refreshing chance to take a step back from technical details and consider the bigger picture.

BarCamp

BarCamp is a growing global movement of web technology conferences that follow a model of grassroots, collective participation. The latest camp was held at Google’s London offices.

[See our previous post from BarCamp Brighton]

Further Reading

Nothing here about yoga – but some interesting commentary on social networking issues…

• Social Graph basic concepts on Read Write Web
• Brad Fitzpatrick’s summary of the problems and issues
• Brian Oberkirch blue-skying the future of portable social networks
• ‘Move My Data‘, a campaign to make data easily portable between different social networks