Twestival… Twitter Festival … TwestivalKol (abbreviation for Kolkata Twestival) were the topics I was tweeting about (retweeted more…) for the last one week since I met some of the Kolkata Tweeps  who volunteered the entire event and who do tweet for a greater cause – @shilps31 (Shilpa Srivastava), @doubts (Kamanasish Roy), @saikatblogger (Saikat Sengupta), @subhojit_g (Subhojit Goswami), @shimulseo (Shimul Aich), @_samiran (Samiran Ghosh), @_anamus (Sumana Chakraborty), the cute and intelligent @princessmithai (Rajrupa Das) and @Shrabasti (Shrabasti Ghatak) and @DaMoViEmAnIaC (the movie maniac) in its true sense Aniruddha Chatterjee… :). Some of them I know personally and I felt honored when they asked me to join them in a pre-Twestival meeting and discussion (even though I was good for nothing… :)) on March 19, 2010.

I enjoyed watching them talking, joking, pulling each other’s leg while planning for the event at the same time. It’s truly inspiring how they managed time from their busy life to stand for what they believe… that is, “education for every child” … and they really worked hard to make Twestival Kolkata happen.

Twestival, since its birth in 2008 when a few London tweeple (people using Twitter) came up with an intention to “leverage the power of online networking” for social cause, has gone global with a total of 175 cities worldwide celebrating it simultaneously this year on March 25.

Twestival supports Concern Worldwide, an international charitable organization working to improve the living standard of people in some of world’s poorest nations. Some other cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi are already acquainted with Twestival in India. But it was relatively new to Kolkata as the city has its Twestival for the first time to bring twitter users living in this part of the world together for the cause of raising fund and supporting the education of under privileged children across the globe.

The mantra was “Tweet. Meet. Give”.

Tweet for a noble cause.

Meet offline to strengthen the support.

Give donation in the aid of world’s poorest.

Therefore, in every reason I wanted to be there at Natya Bhavan, Salt Lake where the Kolkata Twestival was being held on 25^th March. But alas!…the same old story again… I planned for Twestival and Destiny had planned something else for me. I was assigned an urgent work lately in the afternoon and had to complete it by that evening. So, when I got out from my office it was already 7:15. By the time I could reach the venue (from Kalikapur near Ruby Hospital) the program would be over. I rushed towards home hoping to catch up with some live tweets on the event and of course the snaps that people uploaded on @twitsnaps.

It was an enjoyable evening for everyone present there. Kolkata Twitter Festival was an assortment of painting exhibition by destitute children from SOS Village, a video show on the sufferings of the under privileged and deprived children; a musical performance by a local band and most interestingly a candid speech by the chief guest @greatbong aka Arnab Ray, the renowned blogger and writer whose blog I just love reading… and so much I wished to meet him in person and hear his speech. I also had one question for him – ‘why does he follow MrTweet only’? Doesn’t he find anyone else worthy of following (on Twitter of course …:P )!

A friend who attended the event told me that @greatbong talked about how to use twitter effectively for business promotion while sharing his views on blogging which I think I did miss greatly.

To end, I must mention that a sum of Rs. 17000, raised from Kolkata Twestival will go to the charity Concern. But I personally feel that had Twestival t-shirts (quite attractive!) been available at the venue (profits earned from the sale will be sent to charity), the amount could be higher. Well…. 17000 is not  bad at all for a debut performance! Hoping for more funds, more fun and stronger fraternity next year – a bigger Kolkata Twestival in every way …!