Water

for the Oxford Twestival 2009, in Aid of the Water & Sanitation programme in Mali.

Water is life, water is death,

Water brings food, but takes away breath.

First there are torrents which carry off men,

Then we pray for it again.

We give people water, they piss it away;

They piss in the river where children play.

It buds mosquitos and carries disease,

But holds of the sun by feeding the trees.

Water flows white, brown, and henna-red;

It keeps the dust down, keeps the cattle fed.

A boy washes in four cups of it,

Yet you use six cups just to flush your shit.

You tell me it’s dull, spit it down the sink;

Here death comes at forty for lack of a drink.

© Ellen McAteer

Apologies for being quiet for a bit. I am sure there will be more posts coming up soon, but I just want to update you on the financial side of our event.

We have raised all together £1570! Here is the breakdown:

£530 - auction

£200 - @oxcom donation

£210 - tickets

£85,68 - cash and raffle on the night

£10 - additional donation form my landlords;)

600EUR - Nokia

We will have more materials from Nokia bloggers later on as well. We are currently focussing on finalizing the payments with auction winners, Nokia and Oxfam themselves. Amiando will transfer the money directly to Oxfam, we will transfer the rest to them as well. We will update you when we do so, and publish the confirmation letter form Oxfam.

We are all very happy that the party went well, you enjoyed yourselves and that we all managed to raise money which will save lives in Mali.

Great job everyone!:)

Please look up the address of the pub: 1 Iffley Road, OX4 1 GB

Once you get to the Cape of Good Hope look for our logo - the entrance to the upstairs venue is on the right hand side from the bar;)

As we are going through our checklists, bags, posters etc we decided to give you a quick shout about tomorrow!

We are going to be at the Cape at 6PM, but the performances start at 7PM. If you want to help out with decoration, goodie bags, posters - do come over earlier;) Any help is much appreciated!:)

Between 7 and 10.30PM we will treat you with quality music and poetry, but also a raffle (yes, we will knock on your sholder asking for £2;)) and auction. Remember, if you have ordered a T-shirt, do let us know - you will get a raffle ticket for free as the income we charge you on the top of t-shirt production costs goes to Oxfam too.

Just so you know what presents you can return home with, here is a quick list:
Alcopop CD’s
Ox-Tales
Oxfam Arctic Monkeys LP
Framed pix by myself
Hotel Chocolate vouchers
Oxford College of Marketing course, consultation
SEOptimise SEO review/PPC review
Witney Lakes - 3 vouchers
Nokia Phone N86 8MP

Some of those will be included in the raffle, some in the auction;) but we will let you know more details few times during the evening;) Some of the sponsors will be there, so do come along and say hello to them!

Finally, we hope you will have a lot of fun and enjoy supporting improvements in Mali - by donating to the Oxfam’s project we have chosen to support with this Oxford Twestival.

We hope to see a lot of photos and video files coming out of the night, as well as honest blog posts with your opinions about it! Please use #oxtwestival hashtag, so we can find them!;)

We will have a Twitter feed screened on the wall, so you can see we will be a part of a huge international event, so make sure you tweet with the same, #oxtwestival hashtag! Tweet, tweetpic, audioboo, qik us! The more ideas, the better!:)

Let’s let the world hear that Oxford is having an awesome party!:)

And if you like the idea, let us know this way:

With great Twestivals comes great Twesponsibilities (does that work), so as the drinks flow and bands rock Oxford Twestival, why not take a moment to take those empty bottles and make sure you #tweetrecycle?
As creating bottles and jars from recycled glass uses less energy than creating glass from raw materials, here at www.frieendsofglass.co.uk we’ve been trying to encourage the great folk of Twitter to recycle their glass bottles, and share that fact with the #tweetrecycle tag, to promote recycling within the wider community.
We’ve already reached our goal of targeting 76,500 bottles between us to power the streetlights of London for 5 minutes – but we want to continue! The steps are below, and #tweetrecycle wristbands will be free and available on Sunday. So do pick one up, remind the barstaff to recycle any bottles used and share your numbers on Twitter with the #tweetrecycle tag.
1.    Go to www.twitter.com and set up a Twitter account if you haven’t already
2.    Count up the number of glass items you’ve put out for recycling
3.    Include them in your tweet and mark it #tweetrecycle
4.    Don’t forget to encourage your friends to take part too!

Follow us @GlassFriendsUK and www.bloginabottle.com.

We’re delighted to be an official sponsor of Twestival Oxford. SEOptimise is a leading search engine marketing agency – so we live and breathe the latest online trends and are genuinely excited to see innovative ideas like Twestival develop so successfully.

Not only is Twestival connecting people all over the world it’s raising money for life-changing charities such as Oxfam - it has our full backing!

We work with a wide range of clients around the world to raise their visibility on the internet and many projects include social media campaigns…

In fact, the story of our own business’s success also points to the power of social media. Our blog has proved a key driver in our business’s rapid growth. Since we first posted in 2006 our blog is now followed by 6,000 Twitter users and has more than 5,900 RSS subscribers. So we use our blog to connect with a wider audience and offer practical advice as well as comment on the latest industry trends.

Chat with us on Twitter @seoptimise or visit our blog.

Kevin Gibbons
Director of Search, SEOptimise

I thought I remind you who is helping us to make this event happen and to make it interesting!;)

BIG THANK YOU to all out sponsors!:)

Remember…

So go on, grab a ticket here!:) And see you on Sunday!