VILLAGES IN ACTION 2010- is this the biggest social media story of the year?

In my last post I was on my way out to Uganda from where I am writing. But before I left I had a telephone conversation with  one of the sponsors of the VILLAGES IN ACTION and CEO at Business Fights Poverty asking if I would represent his company at the conference and in return he would cover my airfare! This is someone I met by joining his online forum!

I have written about how the actual day went over Ethnicsupplies.org therefore this post will deal with the Social Media story in relation to the conference

There were several people involved in bringing this conference about and the actual idea came about from a conversation on Twitter and I was pleasantly surprised to meet at least 7 people in person, in Masindi, people I had been “talking to ” on Twitter and Facebook for nearly two years or so but had never met in person.

But the real story of the day call it a miracle if you will is the power of  technology to narrow the world quite literary.

Orange™ Uganda  co sponsored this event and provided free WIFI on the day which enabled folk from 6 continents to experience the event on several social media platforms right from their living rooms/offices.

A camera crew was hired to record the event and were linked into the Ustream account of BUSINESS FIGHTS POVERTY an online forum hosted by  NING. the final analysis indicated that 570 people across the globe had tuned in/visited the video stream and those that tuned in were tweeting about what they were watching.

At the event itself at least 8 of us were tweeting about the event whilst some had a running commentary on facebook.  Those following the event on twitter were able to ask questions of the panels and tweeted the panels answers to the questions.

We took advantage of the free high speed WIFI and uploaded photos on Flickr,

Ning , facebook and video clips on twitter and this served to bring the event alive for those that were not there in person

What is amazing about all this is the fact this was going on in the middle of a field with no electricity   or telephone line as you can see from these behind the scenes photos from TMS RUGE MEDIA

I understand from the organizers PROJECT DIASPORA that the entire source of funding for this event came from Social Media sources/contacts. I am not privy to the exact costs involved but I doubt very much if they got much change out of $17,000! how about that for crowd sourcing

I don’t know about you but this for me is the biggest Social Media story of year, if you have one that beats this one lets hear it