Very exciting news today, we’d like to welcome iomart Hosting as the headline sponsor of Twestival Global London in March. iomart are planning something really fun for the 25th March event, so keep your eyes on the blog here and @LDNTwestival for announcements. We’re so pleased to have the iomart Hosting team supporting Twestival London!

Phil Worms, Director Corporate Communications, iomart Hosting said:

“iomart Hosting is delighted to be associated with this year’s London Twestival as headline sponsor. Twestival perfectly demonstrates that when used effectively, the internet can be a great medium for highlighting important issues and harnessing goodwill on a global scale, in this case the use of social media for the social good. We are particularly pleased that the beneficiary of this year’s Twestival is Concern Worldwide and that the focus for funds raised in 2010 will be for education projects.

For those of us that cannot imagine life without the internet, we can all be guilty of assuming that everyone else must be as busy emailing, browsing, tweeting, as we are ourselves. We couldn’t be more wrong. For many of the world’s citizens, basic day-to-day survival is a struggle, and that without the help and support of organisations such as Concern Worldwide there would be little or no hope.

Let’s not deny anyone, particularly children, one of the greatest gifts that we can bestow: opportunity. We can’t ever hope to be a truly aspirational society if we do not open up the possibilities that education offers. I would therefore urge anyone who uses Twitter to get involved and support their local Twestival.”

So join with us in giving iomart Hosting some tweet love to say thanks for their support of Twestival Global London.

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Posted by @evarley, Twestival London Team Leader

Welcome to the relaunched Twestival Global London site!

We’re getting ready for a fantastic event on Thursday 25th March 2010 supporting the education projects of Concern Worldwide. London will be joining hundreds of cities around the world in raising money and awareness for the vital work Concern does in some of the poorest communities in the world, including right now in Haiti.

So, how can you get involved? In the next few days we’ll be calling for sponsors and volunteers to help make Twestival London a truly awesome experience. So if you’re keen to get help in that way, please get in touch.

You can also help by putting the date in your diary right now and tweet, tweet, tweet to let others know. You’ll be able to donate through your ticket purchase, online and on the night at the event.

Spread the word by following & retweeting @LDNTwestival. Let’s make it happen!

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Posted by @evarley, Twestival London Team Leader

As we start gearing up for the next Twestival Global London (on March 25^th – put it in your diary!), we thought a small reminder of the last Twestival Local London event was in order.

For those who didn’t attend or for those whose recollection of the evening may be hazy (and thanks to generous donations from Barefoot Wine (via @thirstforwine) and Magners, that could be a few of you), Leap Anywhere have handily provided this great video to remind you.

Entertainment on the night was provided by a wide variety of acts, including headliners The Hours and Newton Faulkner, plus many more musical acts, spoken word artists, DJs, and live tweet-storytelling from The Dreaming, who created a tale as the night progressed from tweets and suggestions from party-goers. Activities included making your own crafty-badges with The Make Lounge, face painting, playing the Tweetminster guys on their games consoles, or contributing to the playlist that Sonos created and played as the night progressed.

While everyone had a great time, we also raised lots of money and awareness for ChildLine, the NSPCC helpline for young people in need of guidance and comfort.

There are so many people to thank for their kind volunteering, but a special thank you has to go to:

Malcolm Scovil and the rest of the @leapanywhere team

One Taste - @onetasteuk

Gary Williams - @garytomwilliams

Mike Marcus - @mikemarcus

Nicola Riordan - @nicolariordan

Cuan Mulligan - @cuan

Jon Cartwright - @joncart

The Twestival Local London team who worked their socks off were as follows:

Elizabeth Varley - @evarley

Ben Matthews - @benrmatthews

Tim Hoang - @timhoang

Tom Malcolm - @tommalcolm

Jaz Cummins - @jazcummins

Damien Austin-Walker - @b33god

Sandy Matthews - @sandytechman/@gpslighting

Gabriel Phillips-Sanchez - @gabzqc

Sarah Espiner - @sesp

We’re all looking forward to the next Twestival in a few weeks, and hope you will all join us again to raise money and awareness for Concern Worldwide, a very worthy cause. Stay tuned for more updates on activities and musical guests – it’s all going to be very exciting!

Today sees the launch of our new Twestival theme! Hope you like it. While the site is being put in order it presents the perfect opportunity to give a big thank you to all the sponsors of the last London Twestival Local without whom the event would not have been possible.

So watch this space and in the meantime a big shout out to all the Twestival Local 2009 London sponsors and our Local 2009 Charity cause.

@b33god

Charity Cause

Headline Sponsor

Major Sponsors

Sponsors

Supplier Sponsors

Supporters

Twestival has teamed up with ScribbleLive, the live publishing platform, to support the city events around the globe.

With ScribbleLive’s technology, we will be able to capture, in real-time, all Tweets made by anyone using the #ldntwestival hashtag. Text and photos included in the post will instantly be published at http://twestival.scribblelive.com/London . This will provide a stream of experiences as the evening unfolds and an archive of the cities events around the globe afterwards.

We have just set up our ScribbleLive page so be sure to bring your iPhones, Heroes or whatever new fangled device you are using these days and be ready to tweet the night away!

AVG Technologies are proud sponsors of this year’s London Twestival in aid of Child Line, a charity that provides 24 hour help to distressed children that in many cases have nowhere else to turn.

As part of our recent AVG Free LinkScanner campaign, we have been actively engaging the Twitter community with informative articles & posts that raise awareness of the everyday threats that can arise from providing your personal information, private files and credit card details online.

Data snatching is a real threat for anyone who uses the Internet, particularly so if you are actively social networking, P2P file sharing, and downloading content. AVG LinkScanner is providing a free download solution that works with your current anti-virus software for added protection.

We’d like to invite you to follow us @datasnatchers, find us on YouTube, & Facebook, or simply visit our website http://linkscanner.avg.com if you’d like to find out more.

We are delighted to be supporting Twestival with free giveaways and the opportunity to WIN a Dell Netbook. We look forward to seeing you there.

To enter the Dell Netbook competition, please follow @datasnatchers and Tweet this message from the event:

“@Datasnatchers I am at LDNTwestival and would like the chance to win the Netbook AVGDatasnatchers”

You must be attending the London Twestival event to enter this competition.

A winner will be chosen at random from all that post the tweet and follow @datasnatchers

The winner will be awarded the Netbook at the event.

Elizabeth Varley interviewed by Malcolm Scovil about London Twestival…

A magical collaborative tale will be created at Twestival using Twitter. Tweeters at London Twestival and around the world can contribute ideas for the next twist in the tale, all woven together by one of the UK’s best storywriters, Daniel Clark! The story will unfold online, in Twitter-sized chunks from beginning to end, during the course of London Twestival. Follow The Dreaming’s twitter on the night, put in your own suggestions for plot changes and developments and if you’re at Twestival, visit Dan at The Dreaming desk as you enter and watch the story unfold before your very eyes!

To take part in creating the story and see your ideas come to life, follow Daniel Clark on: @thedreaminguk

This is a guest blog post from Sonos, who are kindly being a major sponsor at  London Twestival

Sonos is all about listening to the music you want, all over your house; and we can’t wait to bring that concept to this year’s London (and Amsterdam) Twestival. As a sponsor, we’re really looking forward to meeting the people we’ve been tweeting over the past three years; some of you have been with us right from the start, sharing music and recommendations as Sonos has evolved. Some of you are newer, bringing fresh ideas and recommendations that helped make the Sonos experience even better.

What’s great about the twitter community is the generosity we see time and time again, whether it’s people offering help and support to charitable events such as Twestival or the best places to get great free music online. We enjoy talking to our customers and fans so much on Twitter that we wanted to make the Sonos and twitter experiences even more integrated and so with our latest software update (which is currently in beta) we’ve created an application to enable people to tweet the songs they’re enjoying on their Sonos via Twitter.

Using the Sonos Controller 200, Sonos Controller for iPhone and the Sonos Controller for Mac or PC, Sonos customers will be able to edit and post the name and artist of the track they’re listening to on their Twitter feed. Check out what Engadget and CNET think about it.

At this year’s London Twestival, we’ll be showing off our new CR200 controller and the whole Sonos setup, providing music in the great hall and the soundtrack to London Twestival. And that’s where you come in! We want to make Twestival as interactive as possible and so we thought we’d let the Twitterati choose the music. To add your track to the Twestival playlist, just tweet the artist and track you’d like to hear with #Sonosplaylist and we’ll add it to the shuffle playlist for the evening. What’s more, one lucky Twestival go-er will win a Sonos bundle if their song is playing at 10PM on the night. You’ve got to be in it to win it so get your requests in now!

£4 is the average cost of a phone call being answered by ChildLine.  Today £4 bought me a small coffee, a banana and some cucumber sushi (it was about as filling as it sounds).

I love Twitter. While it has had, and probably will always have, detractors who says it’s too self-indulgent, I have never seen it like that.  It is, at the risk of sounding pretentious, all about communication – sharing ideas, information, problems – which is why it’s such a great fit that London tweeters chose ChildLine as their charity of choice – the service that helps by providing young vulnerable people with someone to talk to.

When I heard that London Twestival needed volunteers, I was happy to put myself forward for it, thinking that, at the very least, I could make the tea and move boxes and pour drinks and generally help out in the physical sense.  I like people, I like Twitter, and I like helping – perfect, you see?

It turns out, due to an entertainment manager pulling out, I was to get a lot more involved than that.  As I was not as busy in my day job as some of the other organizers, it fell to me to organize the bands and DJs – not something I have had experience in before.

But I was not to worry, for my lovely friends, both on Twitter and in real life, have pulled out all of the stops to help – offering me contacts, friends of friends, ex-partners even, who would be able to help.  We have managed to pull together a great evening of music and entertainment, including two ‘name’ acts – The Hours and Newton Faulkner – who are giving their time for free.  The Hours are even carting their own piano around London with no crew.  From supporting U2 at Wembley to being their own roadies – all in the name of charity.

This post was written by Sarah (@sesp), part of the London Twestival team.