RegentTweet is a very good example of well planned and executed blogger engagement on a pretty large scale. I am really looking forward to all experiences, meetups and a day of well, let’s face it…enjoying Regent Street. Last year my approach was focussed more on the way the event is organised and on catching up with fellow bloggers. This year the networking element is equally crucial but I will also focus on testing all my photo gear (so glad it all arrived on time). I also plan a small private coffee tour with #RegentTweet venues and possibly with additional other stops in the area. So it looks like all my newly updated three blogs will be busy;) Tomorrow will be a nice, relaxing, rather girly Saturday.

As some of you might know Twestival is back but this time, in 2013 you can register and organise your event any time – not just on one day. I have so far organised all Oxford Twestivals but this year I will be spending more time on the global community team so you can chat to me on @twestival too. In the meantime watch this one and pass it on to all relevant friends – it’s a great initiative. Happy to be even more involved this year!

I have to admit it was a bit awkward to get excited about the location of this event (I really loved the views from the BT tower this morning) because the Q&A session was dedicated to DEC Syria appeal. I am really impressed to see so many leading NGO’s working together towards better conditions for Syrian refugees, kids and women but also generally – working together! Just seeing all of their representatives sitting together and responding to our questions in such a collaborative manner was a huge privilege! I have collected notes in the Storify below and I remain impressed with the great work done in Syria. I do encourage you to support the appeal because from what I could see this morning not only that these people CARE but they have the contingency, processes and consistent approach to tackling the rather overwhelming amount of work. The least we can do is help them with the resources (You can donate on the appeal site or by calling 0370 60 60 900 or texting DEC to 70000 to give £5 – which will save at least ONE LIFE)! 

Here are the panelists from today once again: DEC Chief Executive, Saleh Saeed; British Red Cross – Julia Brothwell, Disaster Response Programme manager; Christian Aid – Oliver Pearce, Middle East officer; Oxfam – Nigel Timmins, Deputy Humanitarian Director; Save the Children – Andrew Walker, Emergencies Journalist; World Vision – Justin Byworth, Chief Executive.

Thank you to ActionAid UK for the invitation!

(to watch the entire discussion go over to the appeal site here)

Amy just posted about her feeling of an emotional hangover after last week’s Barcamp Nonprofits London so I thought it’s probably a good time for me too to gather all my thoughts too. Since last week’s event there have been a lot of interesting reactions to our event so before you check out my points, please listen (and leave a kind comment) on the following:

• Notes from Failure Swapshop
• How #BarcampNFP fried my mind
• Diplomatic Workshopping at #BarcampNFP
• Thanking Donors
• Engaging Young People Online
• BarcampNFP London 2013 participants (Twitter list)
• All content collated for us by Epilogger (thank you!)
• All our notes (Googledocs)

As for me I am simply HAPPY. When you have an idea which you feel is right but which requires a lot of effort, people and sometimes right time to ripe and become truly articulated…and then one day you simply see it happening…then how do you feel? It does not happen too often but I hope you can relate to it. My life has been a huge uphill in the last two years and I am enormously grateful to Laila (@spirals) for stepping up and taking the lead on our London event. This allowed me a bit of time and space to sort out everything else and come back to London event with new personal goals. I think Laila and the team of amazing organisers gave us everything we needed to discuss, negotiate and give birth to new ideas on the day. I was only there to help out so all the credit goes to her and the team really. THANK YOU for preparing this great day and for caring for the idea!

Choosing the sessions one is about to attend is probably the trickiest bit of a barcamp so I decided to stay in one, main room. Following the rules of barcamps and out Barcamp, I have left all my hats behind (ok, I might have had #BarcampNFP hat on for a few moments;)) and hosted only one session on Idea Lab for the barcamp. But I would like to mention three sessions that I found really useful.

First of all the celebration of FAIL. We all love Twitter Fail Whale but we find it really hard to stand up and admit a mistake so the Failure Swapshop was a brilliant one! You can see the notes here, but let me say – just as difficult as it is to admit the failure we all know that there are moment when we need to keep them to ourselves, and there are times when we need to share them with an audience. I am ever so happy to see the the barcamp audience proved to be so understanding and contributed with some really practical words of warning for all of us!;) (big hug to Barcamp Bournemouth for their 5th Birthday this year – March 9 so save the date;))

I really enjoyed the session hosted by @SteveBridger. It articulated the worry we all, BarcampNFP organisers, seem to share: how can we ensure that both tech and nonprofit world actually meet somewhere on the road to improve and innovate without landing in our own sector driven silo? Is it down to people, events or maybe is it a more complex challenge? I personally would love to see the idea of our BarCamp taken outside of just this format. I would love to see more and more types of events organised for both audiences, projects run by individuals wearing both hats and finally organisations focusing on social good and implementing best practice from both worlds.

I also really enjoyed agency vs. charity session – probably because I feel the pain of both sides on almost a daily basis. You can read it here and at the end of this post. I think it was priceless and it did make many of realising just how often we fall into the trap of putting people into the charity or agency box. At the end of the day we are all people! We all have senior management, we all have deadlines and most probably rather a crazy workload. So the key is to communicate, communicate better!

We were all asked to share our feedback as to how we can improve the event. From my side I will work on four aspects:

1. Taking our event to more cities and building larder audience to our events so that we can share practice with more people,

2. Working on the site and a central Idea Lab where we can all store our ideas, collaborate on our learnings and benefit from published case studies.

3. I will reach out to CEOs of both nonprofit and tech brands to join us on the day. Don’t ask me how…I do not know yet but I feel we really need them to be there and share their take.

4. I will get more involved! I will help in arranging a volunteer/blogger programme for the next London event. I would like us to have t-shirt, stickers and goodie bags – it’s silly, I know, but those little things become keepsakes of those few hours of hard work and great spirit.

I am so happy to see that spirit growing and I would like to thank each and every person who participated – it is all thanks to you that we had such a great day! Stay in touch!

It’s very interesting to see how ideas shape up. Barcamp Nonprofits originally was born out of a need to build a platform for nonprofits and geeks to spend time together and clarify some really basic terms. When I attended the IoF National Convention back in 2010 Steve Bridger and Howard Lake agreed that a lot of rather basic digital/tech/social terms are misinterpreted in the non-profit sector. I even felt that the blogger engagement programme was way out of line at the time (and today I still think not many brands appreciate that) but I fell into the trap of more basic misunderstandings. So today, as the next London Barcamp Nonprofits is about to happen I am going back to that one conversation I had with a fundraiser about “digital”. We spent 15 minutes conversing and in the end, he went off convinced I work in email marketing, not social media, simply because that is what “digital” stood for at the time.  Today a lot has changed in the UK non-profit sector thanks to many brave individuals who dare to speak up, do their own things, work outside of their sometimes very limited organisation boundaries. Sometimes some of them leave to become independent consultants. Sometimes they stay and work even harder to convince their managers to shift from traditional ways of work to digital/tech friendly ones. Before every Barcamp Nonprofits, I like to look back at all our events and remember the people who made them happen. First, we had the event in Oxford. When many were still not convinced few friends (Dan, Anna, Graeme, Nick, Tony, J-P and other Oxford geeks too) understood the need for a Barcamp and supported it! They were the ones who made it happen and I will remain eternally grateful for that. Without Oxford Geeks Barcamp Nonprofits would not happen at all! Then we moved to London and once again few of my London based friends trusted me, arrived on the day and contributed to the event! Catherine from Princes Charities convinced her management and gave us their great venue which allowed us to keep the tickets costs free! Amy, Laila and Nick were there to help in organising, Euan,  David and Rachel took time in their busy schedules to join us for the panel, Michael and Mike helped us with the first Google hangout, many of our attendees took a day off to contribute! (I love the fact that there is always something that makes the event attendees feel that it is “almost perfect” because it always prompts them to contribute, to take part, to fix, to step outside of the box…)

Today I see that @spirals and the London team did an amazing job in bringing the original spirit and goals of Barcamp Nonprofits to London. I am really excited about tomorrow! But…I do repeat and will keep on repeating that if you come with professional interest you will be tested, I have to warn you. Each of us works somewhere and many of us wear multiple hats but on the day we leave them all behind. We are present on the day as people with skills and expertise, opinions and ideas, not as brands. I feel that London’s Barcamp Community has matured enough now to pick up shameless pitches and boo them out – even if just on Twitter. Please note that each participant can leave your session at any point of time so if you want to make it compelling do not sell, but teach and bring value. The problem with sales pitches is the fact that they distract us from genuine solutions and the main goal of our events is to help our attendees to utilise the acquired knowledge, connections and ideas for all the social good they are to achieve in their work afterwards. So help us make the day pleasant and effective by following those gentle rules. If you do so, we will remember it for at least another 365 days!

I feel that Thursday at Mozilla offices is going to be AMAZING because we have so many talented, interesting, motivated to collaborate people. I look at Twitter conversations and marvel each and every time I see a new attendee worried about their contributions on the day! I see that you all care about the success of the event and this is exactly what we need. Because as much as we can prepare the day, we cannot plan its success. It is down to every single one of you to make it your own. You might want to take it slow and simply help with setting up the place or just helping out the organisers with their tasks. You might want to come with a clear idea of what you want to talk about. In any case, do consider one thing: Barcamp Nonprofits is a day for you. It will not happen until the next year in this very form so do make the most of it here and now, this Thursday. Come in in the morning, grab a coffee, slowly look around, say hi to few people. OK, if you need to, do check your work emails if this gives you time to listen to sessions, that’s all fine, but look around. Maybe there is more value in helping those guys with the schedule or registrations? Look at sessions, join them, host or moderate one. If you like to tweet, take notes or take photos – do just that! We need as much documentation as possible to promote the event more in the future so you are helping a lot! Participate in sessions and follow up after the event with people you think you can create something awesome with!

Make the event YOURS because we do it for you.

Twestival is just like Barcamp Nonprofits – every single event is different and it depends mainly on the contributions from the attendees, there is only so much we, the organisers can prepare. I am really happy to announce that Oxford Twestival is back and shortly you will hear about us more. I am currently working on the social media team of global Twestival so you might have seen me posting about it already but before we get too excited, let’s just go back and look at few moments from the history of our local Twestival events!  Remember Oxford Twestival for Pegasus Theatre? We have aimed for £800 for this amazing nonprofit and considering the size of our venue I think we did great! Here is a small video of one of the performances. Back at the Living Room we had nice cupcakes, enjoyed music and a special Oxford Twestival cocktail too. Our first Oxford Twestival hosted for Oxfam (raised around £1,500! thank you!) opened with Ben Walker’s famous “Twitter Song” and continued with performances from many amazing Oxford artists.

Thank you for all your support!