Reporting from events, and helping make them more sociable, is where a lot of my ideas on social reporting developed … with a early boost from the 2gether08 Festival a few year back. I’m therefore particularly delighted to be part of John Popham’s team for Celebration 2.0, which he has launched with a post here.

The genesis of Celebration 2.0 was the #twicket initiative that John ran on Easter Monday, live streaming a village cricket match, with local commentators and a global audience. Wikipedia entry here. John identifies three important lessons from #twicket:

• “Fun” events can achieve large scale, global audiences online and attract mainstream media attention;
• 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;
• Serious messages can be conveyed to large audiences engaged by their interest in the fun nature of the event.

And adds:

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 practical strategies for engaging the reluctant in the use of new technologies.

There’ll be live streaming, recording audio and video, blogging, tweeting … and helping people do all that and more themselves. I do most of my reporting on an iPhone, uploading straight to YouTube, and a lot of people have the same capability on their phones. If not video, do some audio from any phone. We’ll produce a toolkit by the end of the project in  mid-2012, expanding the one I started with Bev Trayner.

The project is supported by Nominet Trust, and we will be working closely with the Talk About Local team who support local online sites.

I’m also hoping that the Media Trust’s Newsnet project – which I wrote about on socialreporters.net – might provide channels for wider distribution, and that is further scope for building on the work John and I have been doing with Big Lottery Fund’s People Powered Change. The Big Jubilee Lunch next June could offer some terrific opportunities.

John is the main point of contact on all this, and he provides details in his post. We are keen to hear both from people running events, and also from policy people and organisations looking for fun ways to engage people using a mix of media. It’s not just about the impact of one event. As Tom Phillips says here, events can help build networks too.