Cosponsored by the 501 Tech Club of Austin and the Austin Social Media Club, spearheaded by Club members Michelle Greer and David Neff (@michellegreer and @daveiam), the first Austin Blood Drive Tweetup was a resounding success.

Staff at the The Blood Center of Central Texas confirmed that we more than doubled their usual donations at the North Austin location. I’ve never seen so many people happy to donate blood and, even more so, disappointed if they couldn’t. The feeling of community was palpable. From a personal perspective, it’s been quite some time since I’ve felt so moved by a group of people that were coming together for the good of others. Of course getting a FailWhale cake in my honor did make me pretty emotional.

You can go to the Austin Blood Drive Tweetup Flickr page to get a very nice feel for the day. There were so many great people involved that I couldn’t possibly name them all here. If you missed it, don’t worry, we’ll be doing it again soon.

Check out these other blog posts on the event: The Fail Whale Fan Club,  Every Dot Connects (@sheilas), Michelle’s Blog (@MichelleGreer), FI Space (@daveiam), and the Twitter Queen herself, @ConnieReece.

To those who aren’t using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social networking tools yet, social media may not look like a very serious business. Outside observers might even see it as kind of silly or a waste of time. Decision makers in government, business, non-profits, and across the spectrum, are waking up to the realization, however, that this new style of communications is here to stay. The Blood Drive Tweetup is a tangible example of how Twitter, as just one example, can actually be very productive.

On a modest scale, the Blood Drive Tweetup is an example of what can be positively accomplished, in a very short amount of time, using the new communications tools that we all now have at our disposal.

~ @MikeChapman

P.S. Recently, Sam Eder of Small World Labs spoke to the Austin Social Media Club. With no prompting from Sam, I would like to share a video, featuring him and Michael Wilson, that explains what they do in the Enterprise 2.0 space. Thank you again, Michael and Sam, for the presentation last month.