Date: 25 February
Times: 17.30 - 20:00*
Venue: Christian Aid Head Office, 35 Lower Marsh, Waterloo, London SE1 7RL [map]**
*We had to vacate the building by 20:30 latest - but there was the option to continue in the pub!
**People were asked not to contact Christian Aid directly about this event. They have been kind enough to let us use a great space at their offices, but are not responsible for the organisation of the event and have got important work to do!
We were delighted that Christian Aid has kindly made their 'Forum' available free of charge for the February event. Many thanks indeed to Steven Buckley and Peter Berry at Christian Aid for their help and support.
The Forum is situated on the ground floor of Christian Aid's head offices in Waterloo, just off the main reception, and has a capacity for around 50-75 people, depending on the layout. Plans were to keep this 'café style', with groups of five or six people around small tables, to continue the informal, collaborative style of NFPtweetup.
Unfortuntately, those attending were not be able to have personal access to WiFi through Christian Aid's network - as this was only available to members of staff. There was a PC rigged up to a projector - and a large screen to project onto - so we had somewhere to show the live Twitter stream during the event. A few of us brought our laptops, with dongles, so that we could tweet during the event, and from each discussion group. People who had a laptop with a dongle, could bring it along, or others tweeted from thier phone if they usually do.
Drinks and snacks were available during the event - kindly provided by Just Giving.
When we had confirmation on our venue, we could better design the event based on the space and the facilities it has (which was pretty good!).
5.30 - 6.00pm Arrive, get your badge, grab a drink, have a chat, find a seat, and tweet!
6.00 - 6.05pm Welcome and introduction
6.05 - 6.15pm What is Twitter to you? Slideshow of thoughts, crowdsourced between now and the event [see below for info].
6.15 - 6.30pm We aggregated questions from the Twitter stream and defined groups to explore these points around the main areas of interest. Each group were faciliated and the facilitator tweeted the questions, thoughts and ideas that come out of each group's session. Everyone using Twitter was asked to post at least one tweet from their session, sharing an insight or a take out from the discussion.
6.30 - 7.30pm Broke out into groups around areas of interest to explore questions, ideas, learn practical tips, learn about tools, hear from others about their experiences, share yours and tweet!
7.30 - 8.00pm Came back together and reviewed what we learned, and tweeted, and shared across groups and through Twitter stream to online participants.
8.00pm Vacated venue and made our way to pub/ restaurant/ bar with interesting people we had met at the NFPtweetup.
More information about how to take part online and follow groups will be added to this wiki before the event.
Between now and the event, we asked you to send in one slide with your take on the question, 'What is Twitter to you?'.
You could have sent your slides in with your Twitter profile ID or without - if you wanted it to be shown anonymously. It was also worth creating the content of the slide and saving it as a PDF or taking a screen shot and replacing the text and images with that, just because the formatting you wanted can change if you have different fonts installed.
We did a collaborate slideshow for the previous NFPtweetup [view it here], it was a lot of fun and a great way to kick off the conversation, so it was much appreciated that people took part and helped us to create a great set of resources to be shared and referenced online during and after the event.
Slides were sent to Rachel Beer. We needed to operate a strict deadline, so the slideshow could be pulled together in time for the NFPtweetup, so any slides had to be sent in by 5pm on 24 February.
Feedback from the first NFPtweetup in November 08 was overwhelmingly in favour of quarterly events, so as this event was in February, we aimed for another in May.