Thanks to all who came down for Bristol Twestival at the Tunnels last thursday nite! It was packed out and went down a storm. The performances by the Reacharounds and Phantom Limb were something to remember. We raised £ 5,612 for Concern Worldwide! We look forward to the next one. If you couldn't make it down see the photo slideshow below and the video of Phantom Limb to get some vibes about what it was like....

Shout outs to the following for helping making the nite what it was:

@dan_martin, @reeb1981, @samdownie, @jaywilliamspr, @gdyer, @prbristolblog and @jamesainsworth

Also great to meet:
Anna Kirby @atkirby, Stephen Gardner @stephengatbjs, Ben Park @benparkbjs and Chris Taylor @glowgadgets(thanks for the entertaining rapping and comedy!)

Fundraising update: #bristwestival has raised £5,617!! Third most money raised by a UK city and 11th most in the world!

As many of you know by now I have been helping organising Bristol Twestival. Twestival is a charity event that will take place this Thursday 25th March in 200+ cities across the world in aid of Concern. Concern organises worldwide projects to reduce suffering and end extreme poverty. The event is organised over Twitter though you don't have to be on Twitter to go!

The Bristol event will take place at the Tunnels. It features music from soul and R&B band Phantom Limb and Bristol cover band the Reacharounds. There will also be a raffle with an extensive variety of prizes as well as goody bags.

I hear an England shirt signed by the David Beckham and a House of Commons bottle of whisky signed by the prime minister are up for grabs too!

More info is available on the Bristol Twestival Website, Twitter or Facebook Fan Page. We have already sold over 120 tickets and are chasing a £3000 target so your support is much appreciated. We would love to see you down there.

For those reading from outside Bristol, have a look out for a local event wherever you are!

It looks to be a great nite - I can't wait! :)

UPDATE!
NEW RAFFLE PRIZE: Room hire for 30 +free buffet at brizwalkabout 's new bar Rewind during England's 1st World Cup game! Worth £300!

It's official then! Facebook is bigger than Google now in the US. The lead is miniscule at the moment but the trend of Facebook's growth over the last couple of months seems to be an undeniable indicator of a further movement in this direction.

But what does this all mean for us? There is a now a battle on between Google and Facebook. Both sites want to be your starting point for the experience of the web. While Google provides a highly efficient way of searching the net more are turning to social recommendations on Facebook. Social media can also put you in more direct contact with experts online where you can gain the information you require

Early guises of the internet were of static sites that did not change but this evolved into more dynamic web-content. It is now going one step further towards a continuous social streams of information. Facebook is currently capitalising on this while Google seems to be still coming up with ideas. Google's first proper venture into Social Networking, Buzz, was met with lots of privacy concerns which they are still trying to iron out.

For us digital life will be case of surfing and manoeuring around the online social slipstream which no-one person can really control or regulate entirely. While this is good for sharing information it can lead to a state of information overload. People may walk around with a smartphone in one hand and iPad in the other in a permanently distracted state. One big problem about all this is that you cannot easily switch off or disconnect easily especially with mobile web. Another is the issue of a growing digital divide between people who can afford the internet and take it for granted and those who do not have access. There may be many that are left behind while others rush ahead.

On the positive side, however, the possiblity for creating new communities that span the globe is immense though this must be handled with responsibility and care. It has implications for all parts of society from politics, to media, to business, to interpersonal relationships. Authenticity, transparency and trust are becoming vital commodities that hold all of this together.

For my part I hope that the sharing and collaborative aspects of online communities will far outweigh any downsides and we are moving from the darkness to a brite new world.

Social communities and the slipstream will be what we make it so we should strive to make it as positive and inclusive as possible.

@Chrisbrogan's speech at Likeminds last friday was very insightful to have witnessed in person (please see previous blog post for more on my trip to Likeminds). However, I have just watched the video of it again on his blog only to gain yet more insight.

It is strange the aspects you may miss the first time round but the second time I really tried to understand what Chris was trying to communicate about running successful social media campaigns.

In my mind it was all about being a human being and making others feel special. If you do not have this all the marketing, IT, online, social media knowledge in the world will not be enough to compensate for it.

Being human is not something you learn or have to study to be but it is something you have. It is amazing the amount of people in business and society at large have lost touch with this. Often people buy into the social role they play and think that is all they are.

In fact maybe you do not have to be human. My friend has a dog and she is a little over-enthusiastic to say the least! What she does do very well however, is pick up on people's emotions around here very well. She is very responsive to these and because of this she makes the people around her feel special.

I had a really wacky thought! If it was possible to train a dog to do social media campaigns she would probably be quite good at them!

Anyway going back to Chris Brogan... It is great to have high-profile people like him to remind us of the basic fact of human connectedness. We definitely need more of it!

I am always fascinated with wide diverse sets of people I seem to be meeting from Twitter. Each has their own passions, interests and reasons for using it. You never quite know what you are going to get!

It is very weird meeting people you have been used to seeing as avatar bouncing down your screen. This was certainly the case recently in the Likeminds event I went to in Exeter on last Friday which featured some high profile social media speakers and bloggers.

Twitter was the main weapon of choice there and I found it to be a very good leveller between lots of different types of people. Often in the case of such events you almost feel a barrier between the audience and the speakers. Each attendee was even provided a sticker of their Twitter avatar instead of name badge.

I realised this event was very different as I met @chrisbrogan (a President of the US company New Marketing Labs and Influential Blogger) outside the venue. I had been reading his blog for a while as he is very much a social media thought-leader at the moment. It was really something to meet him in person and I soon realised how down-to-earth he was. In true British style I asked him how he was finding the cold weather and he told me it was much worse in Chicago where he had flown from!

The event itself featured a multitude of speakers from right across the spectrum of social media. Chris Brogan was the headline speaker for the event and the one everyone was eargerly anticipating. He did not disappoint though I wished he could have been on for longer. While others focused on specific strategies and tactics Chris focused on the underlying aspect of human connection and making people feel special.

One of my other favourite speakers was Olivier Blanchard @thebrandbuilder. He spoke and on how to intergrate social media into businesses and the challenges on the way. I was lucky enough to talk to him at the end of the event too. He seemed to have an answer for every question I had even the toughies!

I ended up staying the after party too even though I was supposed to come back to good old Bristol. I am very glad I did. I meet some very interesting people from PR people, to bloggers, to enthusiasts, to journalists, to business owners as well as having a beer with Olivier and Chris!