Twestival Wien – HELP NEEDED!

Those of you involved in the twitter community have undoubtedly heard of ‘tweetups’, where the local twitter community organizes an event where they call all meet and socialize offline.  An outstanding idea in it’s own right, but a group of organizers from London have decided to take this concept one further and combine a charity fundraising event and tweetup into one cause.  On the 12th of February, twitter communities around the world will band together not only to meet each other, but to raise money for an amazing non-profit organization.

After hearing about the event, I took a drive on over to Twestival and did a bit more reading.  The non profit that twestival will be raising money for charity:water.  While I’ve never had any direct contact with this particular charity, I did work with the good folks from WaterAid a few years back, and know that what these folks are working on is truly a great thing.

Ok, looks good.  Who’s organizing the Vienna event?  Ummm.  No Vienna event?  Well, far be it from me to let my horrible german skills prevent me from organizing the Twestival Wien.  This was spawned on by a recent conversation I had with Amy from LetsFreckle.com.  She commented, “Wow, there’s so much tech going on in Vienna that I just don’t know about.”  You and me both Amy.  Hopefully, this event will not only raise money for a good cause, but spur on future twitter and tech events in Vienna.

And so it is born.  @MountainDan has become the official organizer for the Vienna branch of this global event.  As it stands right now, I’m also the only volunteer, organizer, location getter, and fundraiser (both corporate and private).  This is also my plea for help.  I’ve received a bunch of stuff from the Twestival folks, and to their credit, they’ve really mapped out a lot of procedures and ideas, but have ultimately left it up to the individual (or in most cases, local teams) to handle things on their end.

Right now, we have no sponsors, and no location.  The first official vienna.twestival.com blog post went up today, but sadly only with about the same info I’m writing to you here now.

Location

I do have a lead on a cool location, and thanks go to Thomas Fuchs for suggesting werkzeugH as another possible location.  I’ll be shooting them an email as soon as this blog post goes live.  Ideally the twestival location should have wifi access (the bigger the bandwidth, the better), multiple projectors (event organizers are currently working on live web streams of events around the world, and Thomas Fuchs and Amy Hoy are working on something tied in to twestival that would look VERY cool on a projector.  They’ve bound my lips with duct tape not to reveal any details, but is IS very cool), a decent but not overpowering (the whole point is to meet and talk) soundsystem, and perhaps most importantly: Booze.

Sponsors

Ok, here’s where the good news starts to flow.  I’ve already spoken with my boss, Martin Herdina from fatfoogoo about the event, and he’s verbally pledged support.  We have not, however, gotten into details about what form that support with take?  Cash only?  Cash plus entertainment (i.e. a video gaming station – yet again, need for those projectors), Cash plus some fatfoogoo staff to help organize and/or work the event?  Notice the casual dropping of the word cash?   Ideally, I’d like to see two sponsors for this event.  One that will sponsor the evening, and one that will make a matching donation for all funds raised.

Music

Music is the one of the things that I DO have nailed down.  Smartula, Stephono and hopefully I (time permitting) have our copies of Traktor fired up and will be laying down the niceties all night.  Other Vienna DJ’s are more than welcome to and encouraged to participate.  Simply get in touch (see below)!

PR

Martin has a great connection in Mirjam Mieschendahl from groops.at, and she’s offered to help out in any way she can.  Groops.at has a huge user base, hopefully some of which are involved with twitter as well.  She’s also got a Rolodex with some of the most important media contacts in Vienna (think FM4, Vienna Online, Kurier…etc.) and is the administrator for the women’s group at the Vienna BarCamp.  I’m also quite good friends with Ritchie Pettaur (@datadirt) from datadirt.net, and I’ll be calling upon him shortly.  Needless to say, we’ve got a good lead on getting some coverage, but as my grandmother always used to say – the more the better.  If you are, or have a media contact in Vienna, please let me know (see contact details below).

Prizes

As recommended by the twestival folks, prize raffles and/or silent auctions can be one of the most effective ways to raise money at this event.  Given the recent NPD report that the Nintendo wii was the console sales winner last year, a natural choice is to raffle off a wii.  Another thought that popped into my head was doing a silent auction for a night at the MonzaKart go-kart track in Vienna.  Who doesn’t love go-karts?

Staff

Once a location is secured the next step will be to ensure that we’ve got enough twestivalwien volunteers on site to make sure that the night runs smoothly.  Currently I need someone to work the door and collect tickets (I’ll update this post once I’ve heard a bit more info on that from twestival), and I would estimate 3-4 other folks that will be there in an official capacity just to make sure all of our high-tech is running the way it should.

Help

So here it is Vienna and the world.  You dear author of this blog (and others) needs your help.  Whether you can volunteer, offer your services, or simply donate to the cause, any and all help is now being accepted.

Remember, no donation or help is too small or insignificant.

Connect

Email address: twestivalwien@gmail.com
Official Organizer: MountainDan

So there you have it folks.  I’ve got just over three weeks to pull off what looks like a miracle.  Yes it’s going to be a lot of hard work, but at the end of the day, I’m quite certain it’s all going to be worth it.