I'm delighted to report that the first NFPtweetup, held last night (4.30-8.30pm, GMT), seemed to be enjoyed by those that took part, and provided a useful forum to bring people together and start exploring all things Twitter for nonprofits.
To think that it started out as a casual, off-the-cuff, remark in a conversation between two not-for-profit tweeters...
... but evolved to be so much more - just like so many things do, wherever social media enables like-minded people to come together. You can see most of this by looking through tweets mentioning NFPtweetup here and checking out the wiki here.
In all, 35-40 tweeters participated - either in person and/ or online - to share ideas, insights and thoughts, and discuss some of the issues and opportunities for charities and nonprofits using, or thinking of using, Twitter.
(I should say that, although Twitter was the focus of the event, one of the main objectives that emerged as the idea for the event evolved was to engage around the topic of social media in general, using Twitter as an entry point for the conversation - since many of the challenges, considerations and opportunities are the same across the many social platforms.)
To get as much value from this gathering of minds, and allow it to be shared as widely as possible, I put a shout out to everyone before the event to submit one slide capturing an idea, a thought, an observation, a question or an example related to nonprofits' use of Twitter. This was the result:
Brilliantly, this collaborative effort was even featured as Top Presentation of the Day on Slideshare which took it to an even wider audience than that for the event itself.
As you might expect of a gathering of nonprofit geeks, there was also plenty of content generated during the event that we've shared across the web. Here are some links for those interested:
You can access much of the content via this search of hashtags.org.
Tweets including NFPtweetup can all be seen here, too (this would usually be the case at hashtags.org, but the service was down for development when the tweets for NFPtweetup started, and the team at hashtags.org say they are not intending to backdate to aggregate what they missed during this time, because it would take them too long!).
Blog posts (known at time of writing):
- Post by Howard Lake, at UK Fundraising
(Howard says this was the UK's first NFPtweetup. I think that's true...)
Photos:
Videos and more are being listed here on the wiki as they are created and shared.
With content still being posted, and conversations - having been started on Twitter - moving to other social sites, including The Charity Place, I hope that this event has acted as a catalyst to open up the area of social media a bit more, make it more accessible and unleash its potential for charities and nonprofits.
Thanks again to Just Giving for supporting this event, and to everyone that attended, contributed and participated.
So, should we have another one in a couple of months? Perhaps to explore the burning issues that came up this time that we only had chance to scratch the surface of? Any feedback greatly appreciated...
It seemed to go really well (tweeting from the sidelines), would like to make it in person to the next event but if it's always down in London that might be a problem. Was discussing with Jakki Booth maybe having a partner event run at the same time in Birmingham/Manchester and live stream with the London event?
I think using Twitter as an entry point and having a specific topic is great, and then people can expand from there.
Posted by: Ed | November 26, 2008 at 07:36 PM
Thanks for your feedback, Ed.
I think the idea of partner events is brilliant. I have set up a survey to collect views on whether we hold future events and how we do this - including asking whether people would be interested in regional events, which I would love to think could be run simultaneously. I'll email you the link.
Rachel
Posted by: Rachel Beer | December 03, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Just stumbled across your blog Rachel, it would be great if you could share some of your thoughts on some of the issues and opportunities for nonprofits and other third sector orgs thinking about using Twitter on www.ThirdSectorForums.co.uk
Posted by: Ross McCulloch | December 06, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Thanks Ross.
I'll check it out. However, because I already blog here, micro-blog on Twitter, post content at www.thecharityplace.org and comment on the odd blog (if I get any time to read them and see something I'm interested in), I don't know whether it makes sense to replicate content elsewhere and I would find it hard to find time to.
If it's particularly thoughts on Twitter that you think will add value, perhaps it would make more sense to link to the posts on this blog on Twitter (and other social media), which themselves link to other related content on the web?
I'll let you know when we have fixed a date for the next NFPtweetup, too, as these are a great way for charities to meet up share experiences, insights and learnings.
And it might be of interest that I'm taking a surgery on Twitter at The Social Media Exchange, hosted by Sound Delivery on 26 January. If you want to share information about this on your forum, there's a programme at http://www.sounddelivery.org.uk
Posted by: Rachel Beer | December 07, 2008 at 03:52 PM
Just stumbled across your blog Rachel, its really cool.
Posted by: acting jobs | September 15, 2011 at 07:28 PM