The Fail Whale Fan Club

Tuesday night’s FAILparty at Shine was a success. We had a capacity+ crowd and copious amounts of [pseudo] Fail Whale Pale Ale was consumed. My compliments to the organizers and everyone who participated in the event!

The photos above are just a sample from Flickr. Please click through to the respective detail pages for copyright information.

Originally, I was going to step away from my computer and completely unplug for the long holiday weekend here in the U.S. By chance however, I stumbled across some links for the Austin Blood Drive Tweetup and felt compelled to write about it ASAP. OK, it was not totally by chance. During the event the group presented a birthday cake to Mike Chapman (@mikechapman) with a fail whale on it. So I was all over this as soon as the tags showed up on Flickr. Happy belated birthday to Mike Chapman by the way. Your cake looked both awesome and tasty. But that’s all I have to say about the fail whale cake, because that’s not why I’m writing about this.

Austin Blood Drive Tweetup (ABDT) was organized, announced, and executed all within about 72 hours. Based on a recent post by Michelle Greer, one of the organizers, ABDT effectively doubled the donation center’s typical volume, and may have set a record for the number of first time donors. This is an amazing result, and an exemplary case of what online social networking can and should be. It inspires the rest of us to do better and to use our online social connections to do good in our offline social lives.

The motto of this club (and blog) is to make light of the growing pains that we are all facing as we push online social communication to the next level. However, I can’t help but take time to highlight the good that is being accomplished as we advance. I look forward to reading more about events and movements just like the ABDT, where offline social activities are enhanced by their online compliments. This event appears to be a glowing success, with or without the fail whale cake. So the Fail Whale Fan Club tips its hat to the 501 Tech Club of Austin, The Austin Social Media Club, and all of the individuals who literally put blood sweat and tears into this event.

[Photos courtessy of Omar Gallaga (@omarg) and SummerTX]