nfptweetup

In the first of our series of guest posts after NFPtweetup 12 last night, we hear from Lisa Hopkins as she shares her ‘view from a newbie’:

I was thrilled and delighted to be welcomed to last night’s 12th NFPtweetup.  Friends in the sector had long spoken highly of this paradise for passionate and enthusiastic people working in the charity / NFP sector to come together and share ideas.  Having followed the event on Twitter in the past I was intrigued to go along myself and see what it was all about.

I don’t know what I expected, really, but if I think about it, I thought it would have more of a casual, coffee morning vibe…  Instead what I found was a fabulous lecture theatre space full of buzzy charity and digital people, excitedly waiting for the presentations to start.

It was a little bit daunting, actually!  But spotting the snacks and drinks at the back gave me a reason to stride into the mix and start rubbing shoulders.  It was definitely a strange experience to keep seeing people I recognised and trying to place them – when I had never met them in real-life, just on Twitter.  Once I was over that small oddity I grabbed a glass of wine and settled in for the presentations.

My day job is in fundraising but my career has thus far been distinctly un-digital – but I have a burgeoning interest in digital and social media, so I was very excited to hear about something very different to my day-to-day.  The three speakers were clearly well-prepared and knowledgable about their topics and the whole event struck the perfect balance between professionally run and fun to attend.

When the breakout groups were announced I didn’t hesitate to join James Sadri’s session to talk some more about Greenpeace’s VW Darkside campaign.  For me, talking about this kind of campaigning – rather than direct fundraising – was a bit of a revelation.  I’m so used to measurable KPIs – return on investment, pledge rates, average values – so a campaign with no clear end date and that thinks about success in such different terms, was really inspiring to me.  And being in a room full of friendly people keen to share thoughts and opinions was brilliant.

I really wanted to be actively involved in tweeting about the event as well as participating and that proved a challenge – multitasking perhaps something I could refine a little! – but it was worth it as hearing in the moment what other people are thinking about what’s being presented added another dimension again.

On every level I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and found a lot of food for thought.  If I could do one thing differently I think I would have forced myself out of my comfort zone and spoken to more new people – so my tip to anyone reading this ahead of the event is to just talk to people.  Say hello, engage and interact.  Those strangers I did converse with proved to be friendly, funny and welcoming and I look forward to hearing more from them in the future – both on Twitter and hopefully in real life too!

I must say a massive “thank you” to Rachel and Teri for organising such a fabulously geeky (in the BEST way) and fascinating event, and I definitely look forward to attending more in the future.

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We had a record turnout of 124 people at the NFPtweetup last week! Thanks to Amnesty International UK for making this happen by donating such a fantastic venue for the evening.

As resident NFPtweetup live tweeter (alongside Rebekah Hah), I’ll attempt to sum up the evening in 140 characters:

Biggest yet, interesting, satellite vans, informative (as ever), clicktivism not slacktivism, new faces & new ideas, fun, freebies, beer!

Here are some of my favourite tweets from the evening, or see #NFPtweetup 10 tweet doc for your favourite:

And finally, smile it’s NFPtweetup 10:

Already looking forward to the next event in May (we think this will be either the 25th or 26th, for those of you who want to save the date – we’ll announce ASAP).  Hopefully see you then!

Teri

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Following Howard Lake’s guest post yesterday, NFPtweetup newcomer Becky Coleman shares her experience:

I’m a relative newcomer to the world of social media; at easyfundraising we started using Facebook and Twitter to communicate with and about our members and causes just over a year ago. It’s been a steep and incredibly rewarding learning curve but I’m aware of the vast potential to do even more.

So being a bit of a newbie and keen to know more, I jumped at the chance to venture down to the big smoke and pick the brains of the terrifically talented social people who organise and attend the #NFPtweetup.

I first heard about the #NFPtweetup last year from Graham Richards and was lucky enough to get a ticket to the first event of 2011, being held at Amnesty International’s HQ in Shoreditch. I had a few specific aims in mind:

1. Get there without getting lost

Didn’t get off to a great start with this one but fortune smiled on me and the first person I asked for directions turned out to be the lovely Lucy from tweetup organisers, beautiful world, who kindly escorted me to Amnesty International – and without laughing at my poor map reading skills either.

2. Make some new friends – and meet some old ones

This turned out much better than aim number one. Within minutes of arriving, I met Janet Stollery of Calvert Trust – a meeting I know I found incredibly useful and I hope she did too.

A brief glance at the name stickers we all wore allowed me to put more faces to names and I was pleased to meet my long-standing ‘virtual’ friend Howard Lake of UK Fundraising in the flesh. I’m happy to report he is every bit as nice in real life!

I was also pleased to make the acquaintance of @ycharity, @chasecare, @thenspcc to name just a few.

3. Learn

The evening was split into two speakers, Jonathan Waddingham from Just Giving and Fiona Mclaren from Amnesty International UK, plus three break-out groups for further discussion and finally a panel debate.

Jon’s talk focussed on donation apps and how fundraisers can make best use of them, while Fiona showed us how Amnesty engaged their supporters to play a part in the Egyptian Crisis.

Both speakers were fantastic and for me I think the most interesting fact of the evening came from Fiona – during the Egyptian Crisis, for the first time, Amnesty recorded more referrals to its site from social media platforms than anywhere else.

I was torn between the three break- out groups and would happily have attended all of them but plumped for Rachel Beer discussing developments in the social world – which ended up ranging from the new updates to Facebook to how choosing an engaging Twitter avatar is not as easy as it seems!

Lastly the panel debate – the main focus was whether fundraising via social platforms could be classed as ‘slacktivism’, the general consensus being ‘no – any action taken by a fundraiser or supporter is valid and useful in its right’.

4. Be inspired

Well the event certainly succeeded on this point too. It was hugely enjoyable as well as being massively stimulating and I’ve taken so many ideas away with me that will enable us to help our causes do and raise more.

Throughout the evening, live streaming of tweets tagged #NFPtweetup kept the discussion lively but this one from Chance UK really stood out for me. Well said.

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Following last night’s event, NFPtweetup scores 10 out of 10 from Howard Lake. Here’s why:

It’s an odd state of affairs when cutting edge technology becomes so widely adopted and accepted that it is just part of the background. It is even odder when that process happens in a very short time.

Last night the 10th NFPtweetup event took place. In just over two short years, the event has moved from the upstairs room of a pub where about 20 of us squeezed in to share and learn about charities’ use of Twitter, to the roomy surroundings of Amnesty International UK’s (AIUK) London head office. Now the event is booked out within hours of tickets becoming available: it is a must-attend event for many people.

Incidentally, I regard the pub birthplace as a very good omen. Amnesty International was inspired by two students toasting freedom at a bar, and plenty of fine fundraising initiatives have been developed on licensed premises.

NFPtweetup has grown, but the original ethos is still there, I believe. And that is an impressive achievement these days, when you can fork out £300 or more to attend a social media conference for the charity sector.

Why is the event so valued?

• Its informal nature encourages many delegates to ask questions and share advice
• While there are many experienced social media people present, newcomers to the event and to social media are welcomed
• You get to hear from people who have experience and results to share, not just the theory. And they are usually current. Last night for example we heard detailed information from Fiona McLaren of how AIUK dealt with the protests in Egypt. This even covered events at the Trafalgar Square rally (#feb12global) just four days before.
• Although run and sponsored (ie. paid for!) by commercial organisations (JustGiving, beautiful world and Pixel Philosophy), and attended by some for-profit people (that would be me), there’s no hard selling going on. Although JustGiving’s Jonathan Waddingham gave the opening presentation, he pointed out that this was his first presentation in all 10 NFPtweetups.
• NFPtweetup walks the talk: the physical event is augmented by being shared on Twitter (via the #nfptweetup hashtag) and by live video (thanks noonanmedia.com). Those who can’t make it can still get a pretty good sense of the event, and engage with those there. People aggregate the content too and share it, sometimes live during the event, or the next day with links to Slideshare presentations, videos and photos.

And use of phones/laptops for sharing during the presentations is positively encouraged of course. Indeed, at the end of the event Rachel Beer gave the postcode of the post-event pub so that people could find it via their mobile devices.That made me smile too.

Indeed, NFPtweetup is still an enjoyable event. You learn, get to speak buzzwords like ‘gamification’ and ‘slactivism’, and laugh as tweets on the twitterfall screen behind the speakers take a turn for the bizarre, courtesy of the sector’s joker Sir @robinbogg.

My favourite lesson or thought of the evening was appropriately summed up in two related tweets:

Thank you NFPtweetup. You were ahead of your time, and now you’re bang on time. More please.

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I wanted to produce a blog post after this event because I don’t normally manage it and because this event was really special – in that it marked two years to the day that the very first NFPtweetup was held.

It was also special because there was such a positive buzz about the evening – more than ever before, people seemed to really be enjoying themselves; having fun, even. And it wasn’t just because of the booze.

I was absolutely delighted when I read this blog post from Paul de Gregorio on Thursday, partly because it is it so lovely, but mostly because it articulates so clearly what I set out to achieve with NFPtweetup and, in doing so, proves that actually comes across in the experience:

The deal is that if you go with a friendly, co-operative and sharing attitude you can leave with lots of new ideas, a lot of inspiration and some new friends … It has to be the most important get together of non-profit sector people in the UK… The star of the show is the work, the ideas and the community. So it’s a format and ethos that really challenges the traditional fundraising conferences and seminars that we go to. This is an exciting step forward and for me mirrors the impact of social media in society by giving everyone in the room a voice, no sit down, turn off your mobile and listen to the person on stage go through 60 slides in 90 minutes at NFPtweetup!

Thanks again for the lovely post, Paul – it hits the nail on the head, I think.

NFPtweetups are fun because of the people that come to them – people that opt to come after their working day has finished. They do it, not because their line manager has sent them, or to get out of the office for the day, but because they are passionate about their work and always striving to be better. They’re the ones that aren’t watching the clock, waiting to leave the office at 5pm so they can go and do something more interesting. They are the people that want to drive forward the new ideas that make the world a better place and will do whatever it takes to make them happen. They are excited – not scared – about the possibilities emerging media have to further the missions of the organisations they work for. And they come together at this event to discover how other people like them have managed to push this agenda in their roles; to find out what worked, what didn’t, what persuaded the board, what produced the best ROI, and what’s next?

It’s peer-to-peer support at its very best. No one is showing off here – just offering mutual support and encouragement. In fact, one of the things that’s so rare about NFPtweetup is that the charities that present are happy to say, ‘we tried this and it didn’t work’, in the hope that others can learn from their experiments and avoid the same pitfalls. It’s a bit different from most other conferences, where you only hear about the successful campaigns – which is a total misrepresentation of reality, really, isn’t it?

Of course, best practice case studies and success stories are really useful, and NFPtweetup has a more than equal share of those, but they are interrogated both by the people presenting them, and the people listening to them, who are all asking questions like, ‘how could this be made better?’, ‘why did it work?’, ‘would it work for all charities or does it rely on a high brand awareness?’, ‘how sustainable is this approach?’… and so on.

NFPtweetup has always been about so much more than a meet up about social media. It set out to make it easier for charities to share with each other, to learn about new trends and developments in media – even to create new trends in the way they are used by charities. But, most of all, it set out to encourage new ways of thinking and working that are apace with incredible rate of change in technology ‘these days’, to give people the confidence to challenge convention and innovate from an informed perspective, and to feel how much of a powerful role they can all have in this amazing sector, if they choose to.

I want to thank all of the people who have come along to the events and helped to make NFPtweetup what it is today. Particular thanks goes to those who have presented, sponsored, provided a venue, blogged, tweeted, reported, volunteered, acted as a sounding board, facilitated workshops and discussion groups, many of them having been supportive from the beginning:

JustGiving, Jonathan Waddingham, Steve Bridger, Paul Henderson, Howard Lake, Amy Sample Ward, Jacqui O’Beirne, Alex Goldstein, Leah Williams, Paul Webster, Bertie Bosredon, Christina McGill, Steven Buckley.

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