Gumballing the Twestival

It was about a week ago i tweeted how It would be nice it would be able to go to more than one Twestival.. There were so many events on the one night across the UK with so many great people attending i felt like i was missing out on some great meet ups.

Seconds later I got a phone call from @Philcampbell saying.. “Lets do it.. Lets go to them all.” Phil is always on the look out for a mission that exists on the edges of possibility and we figured that to do the whole of the country in one day would only be possible in a helicopter. Fun but not the most Eco friendly choice..

It was only moments later after Phil dropped a tweet into the ether that we had a driver. Dave @magiprint very kindly offered his time and the use of his Renault Grand Scenic. Another couple of tweets later and we had videographer @barnstormed on board. The next couple of days I had a mission in spain for @thirstforwine and Phil’s fingers continued to carve the project from his keyboard. Dave Goodchild, @buddhamagnet, was soon on board and started coding to assist GPS and mapping functionality into a Rezpondr page for it to become www.4CharityMate.com.

Over the next few days the ideas formed into a reality.. Phil put his money raising skills learnt at Podcamp UK 2007 into action and sponsorship started coming in. People like @sleepydog @thirstforwine, Nokia were all keen to help. Check our videos to see all the amazing van sponsors.

And now we are here. I am writing this in the Malmaison Hotel as the sun is rising over the Tyne. In a couple of hours we will be driving south taking in as many of the UK Twestivals as we can along the way, finally ending up in London later tonight.

The sole purpose of this mission is to raise money for Charity: Water. Please take time to go to www.4CharityMate.com and on the right hand side you will see a box where you can tweet your donation.. this is the Twitterati’s chance to really make a difference to peoples lives.. What ever you use twitter for this year please take a moment to use it for the power of good and enable people less fortunate than ourselves to get access to clean drinking water.