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"A Big Texas Welcome!"

Your music has helped to inspire and shape Texans for decades. Put simply, you and your stories are part of what makes Texas great.

To do our part to make Texas great, we’re working with organizers and volunteers all over the world to bring Twestival to Austin on March 25. Twestival is a world-wide event which is working to raise funds and awareness for Concern Worldwide this year, a group focusing on educating the world’s children, particularly those who aren’t given access to any education at all.

Our hope is to make this year’s Twestival better than the last. We have big plans for the local event, and we have but one request of you: Join us!

We know your presence would allow us to reach a greater audience. And a single song from you and Trigger might even allow us to surpass our fund-raising goals for this worthy cause.

We’d love to see you there. Give it some thought. And call us!

Sincerely,
Twestival volunteers and fellow Texans

March your calendar! This year’s Twestival is slated for March 25, 2010!

Last year’s Twestival raised more than $750,000 for Charity: Water and other nonprofits all over the world.

In 2010, organizers and volunteers are turning the focus to education and the 72 million children in the world who aren’t getting an education for one reason or another. Organizers have selected Concern Worldwide to be the recipient of this year’s fundraising efforts because of their comprehensive and well-respected approach to education. This is an issue that involves many different elements; hunger, water, teacher training, building of schools, etc. Locally, we hope to harness the power of the global event and use social media to give people insight into this cause as well as raise much-needed funds.

Austin plans to make this year’s Twestival even better than the last!

So how you can you get involved? Volunteer. Buy your ticket (link to come) for this year’s event. And save your pennies to contribute to Concern Worldwide during an auction of Austin’s biggest names in social media, business and more!

Having fun at a benefit is great, but not if you end up raising very little money. Approximately 450 people showed up for sumo suit wrestling, a raffle and T Bird and the Breaks for Twestival, a benefit for charity:water. Many people told me they were having a great time.

Well, I’m happy to report that not only did we have a great time, we raised $8868 for charity:water. Considering Los Angeles and London are a lot bigger than we are and raised just over $10k, I’d say we rocked and then some. Many thanks to Orgsync, Sentient Services, WebWorks, Mosso, JungleDisk, Kimbia,SxSW, TechRanch Austin, Piryx, Nerdabout, and Network in Austin for their cash donations. I would also like to thank Stalelife, Stephanie Malone Designs, Buildasign.com, A Glimmer of Hope, and Basiccouture.net, Storme Wood, and Paul Walhus for volunteering their services. Aces Lounge did a great job of accommodating us.

Thanks to all the volunteers. You made this happen and don’t forget it!

The money we raised is enough for over two wells in many areas. That equates to water for possibly tens of thousands of people. All my blessings to charity:water and its partner charities like A Glimmer of Hope for all the hard work they do to make this happen.

If you’d like an Austin Twestival t-shirt, I’m selling the rest for $10 a piece with all profits going to charity:water. Leave a comment on this post and we’ll meet up when I’m back in town. If you’d like to see the pics, check out images by Michael Cummings, Jungle McLovin, and Eugene Hsu.

South by Southwest Interactive. It is the de facto standard for web conferences and a who’s who in the online space. South by Southwest stepped up big for Twestival by not only offering one SxSW Interactive badge, but two music wristbands and two film badges for our raffle and the international auction. We are so lucky to have this conference in our city. If you can’t afford to go, now is you have the chance to go to all three!

DETAILS and UPDATE:
Currently the SXSW Interactive badge is slated for the twestival international auction that will go live today. The wristbands and film badges will be raffle prizes. You must be a ticketholder for our Austin event at Aces to win a raffle prize. You will need to be present to win the raffle prizes EXCEPT you can win one of the SXSW wristbands or film badge if you brought a ticket through amiando.com and provided your name and email address. We can’t make that exception for the entire raffle, as we do not want to redirect charitable funds to cover cost of shipping, handling, and insurance of items.

Buy a ticket here and tell all your friends to come. The more event and raffle tickets we sell, the more people have a chance to escape poverty and lead better lives.

If you see @snax on Twitter, tell her good job for making this connection. And a great thanks to John Rodriguez and the SxSW crew! We are so excited for SxSW this year!

There are a lot of causes out there. So why pay so much attention to this one? I (Michelle Greer) am just some two-bit tech marketer, but check out this video charity:water made on the subject:
\"Time Bomb\" by Beck

If you think water relief is a complete no-brainer issue as I do, consider embedding this on your blog. Thanks.

P.S. I have no idea why WordPress MU won’t accept my embed codes. If someone wants to volunteer to fix this stuff and add sponsors to the sidebar, we would much appreciate it.
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One in six people on this planet does not have clean drinking water. $4000 can build a well that would provide clean drinking water for an entire village. Most of us cannot give a lot these days, but many of us can give a little. That’s why it’s key to spread the word about Twestival as much as we can.

What has Austin music guru Josh Shepherd found to help you? We will have Lang Freeman from Sounds Under Radio, Dana Falconberry, and Leatherbag on stage at the same time playing accoustic sets. I listened to all of them, and it should rock fo sho. We are still looking for one more killer band we can livestream to raise tons of bucks. Ping Josh at @backlineshow if you have any leads.

Amanda in London thinks I’m being ambitious, but I really want to raise a ton of cash for this event. We need to show people that tools like Twitter are great for mobilizing people and accomplishing goals. If you are interested in the fundraising aspects of Twestival, @adranchjason is organizing a get together to discuss goals and sponsorships. Just ping him or me and we can give you more info on volunteering.

Thanks for tuning in!

I was going to do a cool post referencing my newfound addiction “Heroes”, but it’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m needing some sleep.  You know you are awesome for volunteering to help the one in six people who don’t have drinking water, so just express your interest on the Twestival Wiki in the appropriate category.  If you want to volunteer at the event, contact Debbie @snax or snaxxx AT gmail dot com. Thanks!