… you might be sur­prised! Twitter-ati in Bris­bane, Sydney, Jakarta, Ubud, Beijing, Mito, Tokyo,  Bangkok, Kuala Lum­pur, Singa­pore and Hong Kong have all just hos­ted IRL (that’s in real life, for the non-techie-minded) gath­er­ings over the week­end of Septem­ber 10 — 13, as part of the Global Twestival.

Cit­ies in East Asia host­ing a Twest­ival this month.

The Twest­ival Pro­ject is all about get­ting people away from their com­puters, out of their houses and into their cit­ies to meet their fel­low Tweeters — all in the name of a good cause — their motto is Tweet. Meet. Give.

Par­ti­cipants from each city choose which cause they want to sup­port — Beijing has chosen charity:water, Bris­bane is donat­ing to the Inspire Found­a­tion, and Bangkok is sup­port­ing the Baan Dada and Baan Unrak orphan­ages — and then select a venue and enter­tain­ment to draw Tweeps in their cit­ies out to meet each other. Some are volun­teer­ing to DJ, work the bar or the guest list, oth­ers have worked to secure spon­sor­ship and dona­tions — from cakes to air­fares, art­works to mobile phones, watches to laptops — to be auc­tioned for their charities.

The truly amaz­ing thing about this Global Twest­ival is that it’s all been organ­ised in a mat­ter of days — anyone’s who’s tried to syn­chron­ise a few friends’ social cal­en­dars will know how hard it is to organ­ise a party in such a short time — but it’s been made pos­sible by in this case by a form of tech­no­logy which allows people from all over the world to com­mu­nic­ate instantly, fol­low the thoughts of like-minded people, and find other people in their cit­ies and com­munit­ies who share their interests or want to work with them to make change.

It’s inspir­ing to see people work­ing together in the name of great causes, and using tech­no­logy for a very human pur­pose — as a way to meet the people who live, work and play in the city around them — and it’s stag­ger­ing to think of what the future poten­tial of the medium is. If parties and fun­draisers can be organ­ised in a mat­ter of days via Twit­ter, ima­gine what else is possible?

Did you attend or help organ­ise a Twest­ival in your city? What was the exper­i­ence like, did you put faces to the names you know online, and how did it change the way you see your city? Do you have ideas about other ways Twit­ter and social net­work­ing tools could be used to make change IRL? Join the dis­cus­sion below to share your thoughts.