#HoHoTO – Toronto’s Twitter Holiday Party
December 16th, 2008 • Toronto Social Media
Weird here is normal. Weird here is the extreme somewhere else. - Champions of Nothing, Matthew Good
I couldn’t help having the above quote echoing through my head last night before attending #HoHoTO, a holiday party for the Toronto Twitter community, raising funds (and foods) for the Daily Bread Food Bank. Any time you gather “people of that ilk” together in a large group, one never really knows what to expect. Last night’s event, though certainly not without a couple of people that didn’t quite fit in, really relieved any of the concerns I had, and has already become a must-attend every year for me. After the break, a few thoughts of mine on the experience I had with everything surrounding the event.
- Prior to the actual event, I attended a dinner hosted by Andrew at Bar Italia. This was a perfect icebreaker for me; not knowing many people prior to the event besides what they had posted on Twitter, I got a chance to spend some time talking with a small group of varied personalities. It was a good, entertaining group of people, and I was definitely glad to have had that experience; it’ll make me more likely to attend things like TwitterBrunches in the future.
- Upon arrival at the Mod Club, the venue for #HoHoTO, I was… overwhelmed. There were a LOT of people there, and the group I arrived with quickly dispersed into the crowd. I like the Mod Club, and I think that it eventually proved itself to be an awesome venue for the event, but at first, it was a little bit too loud for the types of people that were there – if you wanted to talk to anyone, you had to shout, which wasn’t so good at first. Duarte and Ryan, our awesome DJs, figured it out, and things got rolling really well after that.
- You could tell the intoxication level of the crowd by looking at the dance floor – early in the night, people were mostly standing there talking, as the 620 attendees pretty much filled the Mod Club completely… after a while, people really started to dance – credit goes to the music choices; both the crowd requests and the DJ selections were timely and upbeat, although I didn’t really do any dancing. Of course we got RickRolled, and of course there was Journey – and the crowd LOVED it.
- One of the downsides of not knowing many people is that when I arrived and the crowd I came with spread out, I didn’t really have anyone reliable I could hang out with. Luckily, two lovely ladies that I had recently met on Twitter recognized my name and came and said hi, and we ended up spending most of the night together. As the young ones there, things really worked out – I was able to talk to Leah about football (like who the small coaches in the NFL are) and get Vanessa embarrassed on the big screen – it was good times. Thanks ladies!
- I also had those whom I had been talking to in the past come up and say hi – Jaime, who was so happy to be meeting a friend whom he only knew online; Katrina, whom I have been trading blog comments with over the past while, and Lisa, whom although I ran into her awkwardly in the bathroom hallway, remembered that she gave me hair stylist advice! You guys are all awesome, and I look forward to spending more time with you!
- Finally, it’s a real statement on how powerful social networking is with the impact of this event. The planning for it only started at the very end of November on a whim, and together, we raised over $20,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank, making the Toronto Twitter community the 5th largest 3rd party contributor for 2008. This from a group of “geeks,” and a bunch of people who mostly knew of each other. Amazing! Rob, Duarte, Ryan, Alexa, and the whole #HoHoTO team, you all really deserve commendations for the hard work you put into this event, and for the response you all drew out of the community. I’m looking forward to future events solely because of the success of this one, and the people I met, which you all deserve credit for. Congrats, guys!
