Colganology: The Thursday Guest Blogger

Thursday, 12 July 2012

The Thursday Guest Blogger - Andy Kerr

Welcome to this week's Thursday guest blog, an occasional series of discussions, opinion pieces and reviews. This week it's home maker, charity fundraiser and all-round good egg, Mr Andy Kerr. Enjoy.

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Be Sweet & Retweet a Charity's Tweet

Each day on Twitter there are 340 million tweets!

There will be people Chit-chatting, playing hash-tag games, tweeting their favorite celebrities in the hope of a mention or follow and in amongst all these millions of tweets there are people wanting your help!

Yes YOUR HELP!

Now before you get all panicky, I should write this is not about you donating anything.....well except one thing that is.... I would like to put forward the idea or notion that each day you should "donate" one Tweet in the form of an RT to help support someone who is taking part in a charity fundraising event or to promote Tweeters like Stevyn Colgan, who is looking for pledges for his new book. A simple enough idea which sadly I don't see enough of.

Twitter used to have a lovely wee community feel to it when I first joined in early 2009. But now it all seems to be a numbers game.

How many followers do I have?

How many Retweets did that tweet get?

How many people have Favorited my tweets?

Now I don't want to be a party-pooper and say you must only Tweet or RT stuff about charities or helping people. Hell no. I've typed my fair share of good and bad jokes on Twitter! I've even tweeted a celebrity or few in the hope they'll tweet back. I don't want to take the fun out of Twitter, what I want to do is put back the community spirit into Twitter; a Community Spirit where we RT a Tweet from a fellow follower who is walking/running or hopping for charity rather than scanning past the Tweet to see what a celebrity is up to today.

Someone asked me why they should they should RT a charity tweet, because they felt they might not be real. Now in the light of a Twitter scandal where a Tweeter wasn't all they claimed to be and allegedly took money from fellow followers, I better address what you should do if you wish to donate to someone on Twitter. Only donate to the charity or fundraiser via www.justgiving.com or uk.virginmoneygiving.com The Fundraising Tweeter should have a charity page set up at either one of these places if they are legitimate. The same goes for Pledges for Stevyn Colgan's new book http://unbound.co.uk/books/42.

Tweeting is a fun thing to do and can only be enhanced by RTing more charity and support for other's tweets. You might think 'How can ONE TWEET ever help someone?' I would say to that, ONE TWEET might be all they need to help them. If you donate one Tweet each day, that would add up to 365 Tweets in a year ... and that is a lot of help to give someone.

Check your followers to see if someone has a fundraising event coming up and give them an RT (maybe even a donation too).

Thank you

Love Andy (@Support_Charity) xxx

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The content of guest blogposts do not necessarily reflect my views (although they often do) and are the views of the writer alone. Fancy being the next Thursday guest blogger? Drop me line at stevyncolgan@mac.com or tweet me @stevyncolgan.

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Praise for Joined-Up Thinking

'I found myself fascinated and somewhat dizzy. Most impressive' - Stephen Fry

'Dizzily intriguing' - The Bookseller

'The book that nails that odd, slightly unnerving feeling that everything really is connected' - John Mitchinson (Co-author of QI: The Book of General Ignorance)

'This is not a stocking filler - this is a real book. Buy several copies and keep one' - Daily Telegraph

'Quite simply the best way to spend time when not shopping, sleeping or preparing food' - Tony Hawks (author of Around Ireland with a Fridge)

'Can I recommend a book? It’s Joined-Up Thinking by Stevyn Colgan. The book’s packed with great info, from the derivation of the phrase ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ to the name for the thin bits of a cricket bail. Spigots, since you ask' - Mark Mason (author of The Importance of being Trivial)

'If you've ever looked at the Eiffel Tower and wondered how it's related to Dracula, then Stevyn Colgan is your man. Yes, it's trivia porn' - London Lite

'He connects each piece of his trivia puzzle in a concise, chatty, easy to follow, even logical, manner. This free-flowing style does not, thankfully, lend itself to pause and evaluation, but does allow for a great deal of chuckling and chin-stroking. He is the master of the trivial, the collector and cataloguer of the forgotten and inane - but no matter how worthless and unnecessary the information, Colgan has the knack of making it all sound intensely fascinating' - New Zealand Herald

'Stevyn Colgan has a theory; everything in the world can be connected through 'six degrees of information'. Trying to prove it takes us up some strange alleys but his engaging style means we don't get stuck down the road of intellectual whimsy' - Maxim

'It's a very smart style to a trivia book, and will I am sure be one of the hits of the forthcoming season' - The Bookbag

‘Stevyn Colgan's book, 'Joined-Up Thinking', could well be turned into a pub quiz or even a TV show. The latter could be even more of a possibility as Colgan has connections to the 'QI' BBC TV show. You're going to walk away from this book knowing a lot more than when you started.’ - SF Crows Nest

'How Colgan manages to find all these connections, unravel them and create something coherent and entertaining out of them is beyond me. But I'm glad he took the time, as the result is vastly fascinating and had my mind whirring round after itself for hours - immense fun!' - Falmouth People

Praise for Henhwedhlow

‘All power to Stevyn Colgan and his project to preserve Cornish myth, legend and song. Who knows; as a result some Penzance Wagner may write the Cornish Ring Cycle and won’t the world be pleased? There’s more to Cornwall than Padstow, pasties and ‘Piss off you grockles’ and Colgan is doing the ancient kingdom a great service.’ - Stephen Fry

‘Jumping from the 19th to the 21st century, Stevyn is taking an essential element of our Cornish culture and bringing it bang up-to-date. With the aid of the very clever artwork he aims to do this in a way that even kids sitting their exams will be tempted to bring the book to school so as to take an occasional peek under the desk for a spot of well-deserved humour.’ - Howard Curnow (Cornish bard and storyteller)

'The best book I've ever seen for helping you to learn the Cornish language or practice reading it. Brilliant fun too' - Cornish Voice