tweet. meet. give.

It’s a Twesti-whaaaat? It’s a Twestival! …A global fundraising event that is bringing together the online Twitter community from hundreds of cities around the world to support  and celebrate a good cause. And yes, it’s coming to Toronto! This Thursday, March 25th at Tryst Nightclub, join hundreds of Torontonians as they rally behind Concern Worldwide, raising funds for an international humanitarian organization dedicated to reducing suffering and ending extreme poverty. Organized 100% by volunteers, the team behind Twestival Toronto ensures that 100% of all tickets and sponsorships go directly to Concern Worldwide.

Now I know the question that’s hanging on all of your minds… “I don’t have Twitter, can I still go?”. Of course you can! You don’t need to be on any social networking site to go out and support a cause that you believe in! So this Thursday, take a break from your studying blues (you know you want to!) to kick back and meet some cool new peeps all while supporting a more than worthy cause!

When: Thu, March 25, 2010 1:00 AM – 1:00 AM

Where: Tryst Nightclub

More Info/Ticket Purchase: http://www.twestivalto.com/

During UTSU elections it is always a good idea to step back from all the Orwellian0-sounded Solidarity and Unspecified Change and look at the election process itself. Like any municipal election, byelection or election in an authoritarian state, the University of Toronto Students’ Union elections tend to have a low voter turn out.

In the UTSU Elections the rules determine the outcome as much as any other factor yet electoral-reform doesn’t seem to be on the radar as an issue this year. The Varsity writes:

Gabe de Roche asked both candidates about the Elections Procedures Code. “Currently the incumbency rate over the past seven years at the UTSU is one hundred per cent. I’ve never heard of another democracy where that’s the incumbency rate,” he said.

“So to clarify what that means to the audience, candidates who are running as incumbents are winning every time?” asked Meslin [the moderator.]

“Yes, they’re incapable of losing,” said de Roche, drawing laughter from the audience.

Amendosun did not respond to the question. Maher said reform of the EPC is a top priority, and that he found the rules “restrictive” and “draconian.

The Elections Procedure Code (EPC) for the University of Toronto Students’ Union defines “Campaign Material” as “any item, design, sound, symbol or mark that is created or copied in any form in order to and / or likely to influence at least one voter to cast a ballot in favour or in opposition of a candidate” and “Campaigning” as “any attempt by an individual or organization to encourage a student to cast a ballot in favour or in opposition of a candidate. This may occur with or without campaign material.” These definitions are so broad that almost anything a candidate does during the campaign falls into the category of campaigning and therefore must be approved by the CRO (Article IV Section 1, F.)
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So let me make this open confession right now. I’m a Twitter fanatic and I don’t care what the rest of you think about that. No, it’s not just “status updates” like what we find on Facebook. It’s a place to interact, engage, and communicate with many like-minded and inspired individuals from the local Toronto community and beyond. It is a hotbed of many brilliant ideas from passionate, creative, and driven people. Let me demonstrate…

Speaker Mark Kuznicki of ChangeCamp. Photo by Andrew Louis/Torontoist

Last Thursday, #voteTOin416 was held at the Annex Live, an event organized by #voteTO, a group of self-proclaimed municipal geeks that came together through Twitter with the shared goal of a better Toronto. Hosted by writer, broadcaster, and organizer, Jane Farrow, and using the upcoming municipal election as a backdrop for discussion, the event showcased fourteen different presentations that captured various solutions for Toronto. And staying true to the Twitter style, each presentation was kept short and sweet…not quite as short as 140 characters but almost. Each speaker had 4 minutes and 16 seconds to share and discuss their vision, some of which included voting reform, the establishment of Toronto as a fair trade city, and the need to solve the city’s bedbug epidemic (yeah, you read correctly). (more…)

If you missed the last Overheard on Twitter, you can check it out here.

• @Lisa_Dunn: “U of T just called me to ask for money for students to be able to sleep over in Robarts library. Ew!”
• @scarletqueen: “if U of T taught Buffyology (aka Buffy studies, i mean we have women studies, why not?) i would totally major in that shit. MAKE THIS HAPPEN”
• @hughdashhyphen: “I am the urinal cake to U of T’s disintegrative parabola of piss.”
• @otakupeter: “family.utoronto.ca is a REALLY BAD IDEA, I will PERSONALLY deliver letters explaining why to David Naylor’s house if you give them to me”
• @carmisandiego: “i hate when people say “UFT” instead of “U of T”. please tell me what the F stands for. fools.”
• @moepickles: “This reading “week” is only going to make me procrastinate more. #UofT“
• (more…)

Last week my fellow blogUT writer, Julia, wrote a great piece dispelling the alleged evils of social media. This week, I’m continuing that thought.

As Julia mentioned, social media has given us all the opportunity to keep in touch with our friends, reconnect with lost ones, and even share relevant (and well, sometimes not so relevant) information with each other with a simple 140 character tweet. More than anything else, Twitter and other social media tools lets us “learn about and interact with the world in real time, and in a way we never imagined”.

I’d like to take this one step further. Not only has social media given us this chance to connect with each other on a one-on-one basis, but it has also opened the way for a much more far-reaching and collective purpose. Case in point? Tweetsgiving. Never heard of it? Let me give you the low down.

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There has been a lot of fearmongering going around about the evils of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. I recently had a conversation with a friend where she brought up pretty much all of the usual objections, and we came up with some interesting conclusions as to why social media is… not evil.

Objection #1: Social media cheapens social interaction.

No, no it doesn’t. I’ve heard this one a lot, and it always makes my blood boil. Just because I tweet back and forth with someone I haven’t seen since high school does NOT mean that I put him on the same level as my best friend. Just because I like having people write on my wall does NOT mean that I am deluded into thinking that cyber-companionship is a substitute for the real deal.

Social interaction is just that, social. Letter-writing in 19th-century England did not help make upper-class society any less fake, and its absense today will not make ours any more fake. Social media helps us reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a long time, or find out more about people we know only casually, but there is no limit to how many people we can know or be in contact with at a given time; finding out more about one person does not magically cheapen our relationship with another.

Objection #2: Social media cheapens the value of communication.

Anyone who says this clearly hasn’t read Jane Austen. Writing a ten page letter does not make everything you write meaningful. This way, at least the nonesense people write is limited to 140 characters. Plus, it means that we don’t have to wait until we have 10-pages worth of information to share with our friends. We can give them real-time updates about the things we think are important, and they can respond, in real time. Social media also means that we can connect information in unheard-of ways. Instead of telling you that my friend’s sister’s husband’s daughter’s teacher thought Aroma was a good coffee shop, I can just link you to Lori’s review.

And, just like with relationships, updating Twitter won’t stop you from writing that Nobel-prize winning novel. (more…)

Just for fun, I started searching Twitter for Tweets written about U of T. I have been saving them as favorites over time. Here are some funny ones I have found:

• @shaelaska: “why doesn’t u of t have buffyology? http://bit.ly/fXmt3“
• @StephenAlain: “I hope it storms superhard and washes u of t away…”
• @Gregory188: “Campus is abuzz with fresh faces ready to have their dreams and GPAs crushed by U of T.”
• @paulmarai: “The purell to student ratio at u of t is astonishing.”
• @thegrubby1: “Latest report on uoft girls: so far, classics has the least hot girls per capita of any class, even Dostoevsky…”
• @Zadkiel: “shared a cab with a belly dancer and a uoft grad….interesting end to an evening.”
• @AakankshaT: “Overheard a bunch of froshies complaining about hard UofT is & how they hate first year..wanted to smack ‘em. It just gets worse so shut it.”
• @inesrosa: “‘As a man you spend all your time waiting on bitches’ – overheard while walking thru campus. Charming.”
• @arahslife “I will not be setting foot on the U of T campus for three weeks and that makes me feel so good inside. Soo GOOOODD”
• @meghansauve: “$7,439.04 tuition. The sum of outrageously expensive and 4 cents! U of T, you are completely mad.”
• @timylee: “@alextruong It happens. I once got an email from U of T congratulating me on my enrollment to their Dentistry program. Prob an email typo.”

Speaking of Twitter, blogUT is on there now. Follow us! And for more stuff overheard on campus, check out the Facebook group.