A year has passed since the first Twestival in Manchester, and although I’m sure you’ll hear much about the money that was raised for @concern and the great work it will do, I wanted to highlight how much things have changed.

In 2009 Twitter was for those who wanted to share and embrace ideas, ask for help or off load their frustrations about the projects they were working on, it was real people sharing real things in a virtual world.  Twestival brought these people together and virtual relationships were cemented in real life. Many of the PR and media types were only just beginning to take the social media space seriously and a few uninitiated PR and marketing types hovered around the edges like fish out of water. (classical example, one PR agency put forwards a gadget as an auction prize that wasn’t MAC compatible – eek(!))

A year on, and we’re in HulaBar – the place is bustling as virtual relationships are cemented into real life. But the question is . . . . where are the Twitter fans of old? The event was full of PR people who are now firmly planted in the Twitter culture. I was asked by an interviewer my twitter name, why i use Twitter and my favourite celeb to follow – after admitting celeb followings isn’t really my thing the girl seemed to be at a loss.

I couldn’t help but think that the place I should have been was over in Madlab, where all the interesting people had got together to talk emerging digital, what’s new and how the landscape is changing.

The Madlab is a community space for people who want to do and make interesting stuff – a place for geeks, artists, designers, illustrators, hackers, tinkerers, innovators and idle dreamers; an autonomous R&D laboratory and a release valve for Manchester’s creative communities.

It’s here where PR and social media people need to be paying attention. It’s here where we’ll understand about what happens after Twitter. It’s here where we’ll learn.

So, I was asked at the event which person I’d recommend to follow this Friday – on reflection I change my answer to this follow @Madlab.