Happy Twestival

Tonight marks the second global Twestival (or Twitter Festival) in over 175 cities around the world and Bing is excited to be a part of it in at least a few of those cities.  At first I asked the team to see how many we could hit in a night to lend our support and donations to Twestival’s great charity beneficiary, but cooler heads (and the pesky immutable laws of spacetime) have limited us to four cities.  Look for Betsy (@baoki) in Twestival SF, Aya (@ayazook) hanging with the beautiful people at Twestival LA, Melissa and Christi are staying in New York after our work at SESNY is done to hit Twestival NYC, and Stefan (@stefanweitz) is popping up to our northern neighbor to celebrate Twestival Toronto.

A couple of cool things about Twestival I think you should know. First, it’s all volunteer driven and completely powered by social media.  Second, 100% of donations and ticket sales go directly to the chosen charity.  Last year, Twestival raised over $250,000 for @charitywater to help fund projects to deliver clean drinking water to the nearly 1 billion people around the world who go without. This year the organizers have turned their focus to childhood education – something close to Bing’s heart – and with the excitement we see across the Twittersphere, we can only imagine this year’s fundraising efforts will eclipse last year’s inaugural effort. Bing is proud to be contributing both financially as a sponsor of these four events and by sending our crack team to cajole attendees into donating whatever else they see fit (it’s amazing what being a search engine with access to an awkward 8th grade picture of a person can do to her generosity).

From across the US (and Canada!), happy Twestival!

Stefan Weitz