This week, we hosted a barbecue and outdoor summer movie screening of the social media documentary Life in Perpetual Beta by Melissa Pierce. Our CEO, Jeff Holden, was nice enough to offer up his beautiful waterfront property as the location for the barbecue, and we invited the Seattle community (and out-of-towners here for Gnomedex) to join us.

We had an awesome crowd show up – and fêted Seattle Geek Week in style with fabulous catered food and wine from Lisa Dupar catering and kegs from Pyramid Alehouse. We also debuted the new Whrrl live feed showing everyone checking in, along with their comments and photos. In fact, everyone who checked in one a copy of Life in Perpetual Beta- how cool is that? :)

After dinner, everyone gathered to view Life In Perpetual Beta, a thought provoking movie about how technology is has shaped our past, present and future, with interviews from Brian Solis, Seth Godin and more. It’s a must see for the inner geek in you!

To top off the evening, we had a surprise special guest show up – Robert Scoble, @scobleizer, who interviewed Jeff Holden and John Kim on their thoughts about Facebook’s Places announcement. You can listen to the interview here, and read John Cook’s post about it on TechFlash too.

Thanks to all who came out and made the evening what it was!

See fabulous pics from Eric Berto, @geekgiant, here.

And the entire Whrrl story (with 40+ collaborators sharing pics and notes throughout the event!):

Last night’s Twestival in Seattle was a huge success – raising $10,000 total for Concern Worldwide. The total donations, counting in-kind, the Seattle community made to support Twestival Global was more than $16,000! Wow. Pelago is so proud to be a member of this amazing local group of businesses and social media fanatics who work so hard to support charitable causes.

Seattle Twestival was held at Emerald City Trapeze, who graciously allowed all attendees swing on the trapeze for free – how fun is that. The evening included apps from Elegant Gourmet Catering, drinks from Fremont Brewery (perfect candidates for our free merchant program ;), Hansen’s soda and Magnificent Wine Company, and stellar ribbon and trapeze performances.

Thanks to all the great Seattle peeps who helped pull the event together – Karianne Stinson, Jeff Shuey, Shauna Causey and more. Here are some of my fav pics from the night:

Left: Swinging ribbon performer. Right: Johnathon Fitzpatrick (freelance news reporter) David Hoang (SocialLOL.com), Monica Guzman (Seattle P.I. reporter) and me, posing as the AT&T bars

You can see other great pics taken of the night on @ogalthorpe’s Flickr site. (Some great shots of the trapeze & ribbon performances.)

Thank you Seattle for being part of the Whrrl and Twestival Community!

Heather snapped this pic of me and John Fu before things got started – we were enjoying this incredible view of Seattle from the 27th floor of the WAMU Tower conference room.  Sunshine in Seattle in December – so there!

The Web Laureate is, by the site’s own definition, “the writer of poetry embodying the web experience by one who is especially gifted in the perception and expression of the online” and has written a poem about Whrrl:

Off Alaskan Way, on Elliot Bay,
Where ellsie o. likes to go sit
At Pier 66 many people hang,
On benches, others lunch with chips.
Enjoying the westerly view,
A sailboat, some ships, go past,
Remembering, some like to sketch,
I’ve been here before,
And I will here whrrl more,
Again, by and by.

Of course after seeing this I had to peruse the entire site to find some other gems, such as Advancing Methods (about the Obama iPhone app) and All By Myself (about Brightkite).  This refreshingly creative blog is definitely one for the RSS reader.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I have!