Digital Disruption

I recently finished reading Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” where he discusses how the Internet has significantly empowered us to connect, exchange ideas, work together and engage in unprecedented public action well beyond the organizational constraints of old.  He includes many great examples where large groups of people have embraced the new social technologies at our disposal to achieve extraordinary things.

A quote from the book really resonated with me:

“We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money … Now, though, we can do big things for love.”

I thought to myself: “Imagine a world where we successfully leverage our social connectivity to contribute significantly to the upliftment of others less fortunate. That’s a powerful idea – an idea whose time has come.”

I first witnessed this idea in action in November, 2008 with the success of Tweetgiving which helped raise over $10,000 in 48 hours to build a new school in Tanzania. Then, on January 6th, 2009, David Armano bravely reached out via Twitter to his personal community to help a struggling mother and her three kids start a new life. He and his network helped raise over $16,000 for Daniela and her kids in just over a week with the majority of the donations being made within the first 24 hours.

A cosmic light had been ignited in Twitterville. It was time to take these incredible individual efforts to a global scale …

On January 7th, 2009, Amanda Rose, a Canadian living in London, called out to the global Twitter community to introduce us to Twestival, a global tweetup to raise money for charity:water. Why charity:water? 1.1 billion people across the world do not have access to clean, fresh, drinking water. 80% of disease is related to this lack. It’s a huge global problem that charity:water has tackled.  Their mission: Drill wells that provide sustainable clean water to local communities across the developing world. Her idea for Twestival was that it be organized 100% by volunteers around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events would go directly to support charity: water projects. Within 24 hours over 40 cities has signed up!  Over the next few days and weeks 800+ volunteers from over 200 cities across the globe heeded the call. They passionately joined together to rally their local communities to raise money for charity:water. The goal was an audacious $1,000,000! The efforts culminated in local events across the world this past Thursday (Feb 12, 2009) where people came together to tweet, meet, give and party.

I had the privilege of being part of the planning committee for Twestival Toronto where a small group of hard-working people with full-time jobs first came together on January 16th, 2009, under the banner of charity:water.  Less than one month later, on February 12th, 2009, more than 450 people gathered at CiRCA in Downtown Toronto to connect, share, party and celebrate with the rest of the world. Toronto raised in excess of $10,000, enough to drill two wells and provide two communities with fresh, clean, healthy drinking water for 20 years.

Multiply that effort across 200+ cities across the globe and you end up with the unprecedented achievement …

Amanda announced today that with only 65% of the count in, Twestival had raised more than $250,000 globally.

Beth Kanter interviewed Amanda yesterday to get her personal reflections on the Twestival phenomenon. It’s a great piece that discusses the key lessons learned.

Here’s my personal take on some of the dimensions of success:

• Choice of global cause – charity:water was a perfect global cause. It’s mission is relevant, it’s focus is global and it’s solution is tangible and focused.
• Tools and processes – There was an interesting balancing act here between providing centralized tools and processes and allowing local teams to do their own thing. Twestival provided a common blogging platform for individual city sites, global payment partners (Amandio, Tipjoy and Paypal), centralized t-shirt design, etc …
• Individual city committee composition – having a great combination of people who understand event planning, PR, marketing, social media and technology
• Blurring online and offline worlds – use of Twitter, Facebook, Google groups, traditional face-to-face meetings, the physical events on Feb 12 – all created a seamless experience
• Shared global experience – The use of ScribbleLive and Live Earth to link all the global events together and allow people across the world to experience the global scale on Feb 12 and after
• Need for transparency – Transparency is a fundamental requirement for success. In future events, this dimension needs to be amped up.  It would have been great to have real-time widgets showing number of tickets sold and amount of money raised.

Finally, as I reflect on my own personal Twestival journey of the past few weeks, please allow me to share a few personal words from a post I wrote back in December:

“This endeavor provides a model for a new reality. We’ve been given the opportunity to abandon the dominance of our selfish nature and to embrace a new world where giving back and caring for others is the path to our redemption.
We have the opportunity to temper the destructive nature within ourselves where personal gain triumphs over everything else. We are being given the change to balance it with empathy, concern and care for others. The quantum opportunity we have before us is to democratize this “giving” mindset beyond a select few. We have the tools to enable this change literally at our fingertips.  Technology and the Internet has provided a platform that connects all 6 billion of us on this planet like never before.  Let’s use it to serve others and thereby serve ourselves. Let’s elevate this world together via the enormous power our collective connectivity affords us.”

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