Introducing Celebration 2.0

I am extremely pleased, and not a little proud, to announce the launch of a new project. Celebration 2.0 is funded by the Nominet Trust, and I will be delivering the project in collaboration with Talk About Local.

The genesis of Celebration 2.0 was the #twicket inititiative that I ran on Easter Monday 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twicket). There were three very important lessons that came out of #twicket:

1. "Fun" events can achieve large scale, global audiences online and attract mainstream media attention;
2. People who previously had seen no use for new technologies in their lives radically changed their attitudes as a result of being involved in an event that was enhanced by technology;
3. Serious messages can be conveyed to large audiences engaged by their interest in the fun nature of the event.

So the core of Celebration 2.0 is to do more of what #twicket was about. Essentially, I will be going where people are having fun, helping them to use new technologies to enhance and amplify their events, engage new audiences, connect with others in the world doing similar things, and celebrate their traditions and cultures. And, in doing so, I'll be looking to disseminate some pratical strategies for engaging the reluctant in the use of new technologies.

Some of the things I'll be looking to do around celebratory events are:

• live video streaming
• live audio streaming
• recorded video via Youtube (or similar site)
• recorded audio via Audioboo (or similar site)
• video and audio interviews
• live blogging
• Facebook pages
• event blogs
• securing and utilising internet connectivity in difficult places

Celebration 2.0 is live now, and will run to the first week in June 2012. And the first step is collate a list of events (carnivals, fetes, festivals, unusual sporting events, etc.), happening between now and then, where people are happy to have me along to help them celebrate using technology. So, please let me know, in the comments section of this blog, by tweeting me @johnpopham, or by emailing john.popham@johnpopham.com if you are running a celebration event I can be part of. I am particularly keen to hear from cultural and arts networks which might have a series of events planned. And, I need a lot of help and support from my network in reaching out to people who don't spend a lot of time online, but who have events that would be suitable for inclusion in my programme.

This project has been some time in gestation. I am extremely grateful to the Nominet Trust for showing faith in it and putting their resources behind it, and to William Perrin and Talk About Local for following up on their initial support for the #twicket event by helping me make this happen. I also want to talk to policy and decision makers about how this approach can be built into funding and support programmes as well as digital inclusion, digital engagement, and digital service delivery strategies. So I will be knocking on doors in Whitehall, Westminster, and elsewhere to show the benefits of having fun with technology.

Please get in touch if you can help with Celebration 2.0 in any way. I hope to see you soon at an event near you.