Shwmaeathon 15/10/18 - Results!

Shw mae, Bawb?

I am awoken…!

What a great event the 24 hour Shwmaeathon was! I must admit I was more than nervous that the whole thing was going to be a flop, and when the floods wiped out our broadband on Saturday and it still wasn’t working properly when I went to bed on Sunday night, I thought it might not go ahead.

But we had some kind of connection Monday morning, and the good people of Australia (including, Dee!) put my mind at rest straight away with their cheery greetings and their obvious enthusiasm for the idea.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

I started at Calon Tysul, in the office of the leisure centre. There’s not much happens there at 3 o clock in the morning, but as it happens, Phil, who usually sleeps in a caravan in a car park beside the river had moved his caravan to the Calon Tysul car park, which means he saw the light on and came to make me pancakes almost straight away! Following such a lovely Australian welcome on the Hangout, that set me up for the morning!

By 9 or so, as the town started trying to use the internet, I started to struggle with connection speed, but Cat came to the rescue, setting up a hot spot with her phone, and the 4G connection worked well to tide us over the morning rush of TV and radio interviews. Cat herself took over the hotseat for a while, and our own HuwJones also stepped in.

There was quite a bit of shwmaeing of people bringing their children to swimming lessons between 4 and 6, and random children (including my own) calling in to be on YouTube, and all the time, a steady stream of amazing SSiWers (and ti was mostly SSiWers) came to talk to me and each other.

But the internet got too bad, and I had to move home in the hope of a better connection. Unfortunately that didn;t work out, and it got to the stage where I was barely taking part in my own shwmaeathon, because there was a 4 or 5 second delay between me saying anything and anyone hearing me. That got so frustrating that just after 10 o’clock, I upped sticks again and moved down to the house of the manager of Calon Tysul.

I’m gutted that that meant that the live broadcast missed the Llanelli Clwb Clecs World Premier (they sung an especially composed song for us) - as did I, during the move. Matt (the manager) had reported that he had a better broadband connection than I. He wasn’t wrong either - in his house, my YouTube feed threatened HD quality at times, whereas at home, it got so bad that just speaking caused a kind of logjam effect and cut my connection!

So we had a great time in the last 5 hours or so, with the Hangout almost full for most of the period, and people voluntarily leaving to make room for others.

At least Rhan 1 and Rhan 5 of the Shwmaeathon footage should be good, and rhan 2 was good enough because of the 4G connection via Cat’s mobile phone. I’m not looking forward to seeing how much that cost…!

I haven’t had a look at Heno and Prynhawn Da footage yet - I must get around to that soon.

I’m loathe to mention names, because I’m bound to miss someone out or something. But here goes:

I had amazing help from Dee, who kicked things off and finished them up, Huw, who made the trip to Calon Tysul to represent SSiW learners on TV, and helped with the hot seat when I was called to other things. I had great online support from Mila on the day, and Nicky (mostly before the event) - experienced Hangouters. Then there was the long termers who filled in if things became quiet - people like Lea and John Ifanc,

But hugest thanks go to everyone who took part. I love that I have a list of places which includes passages like: “Helsinki, London, Reims, Sgiwen, Trallwng, Helsinki (yes there were two from Helsinki!)”, or “Los Angeles, Machynlleth, Brittany, Karlsruh, Machynlleth, Basingstoke, London, Israel, Essen, Aberangell, Melbourne”. Those are genuine consecutive entries from my list of contributors.

And I guess you’d like to see the numbers:

Well, I “shwmae’d” a few more than 126 people online (I say a few more, because I have spotted 2 people who definitely aren’t on my list, which means there may be a few more that I missed) and a further 68 offline - ie in the Leisure Centre, giving a grand total of 194.

I spoke to people in 24 different countries / states / provinces / territories (USA and Australia are too big to count as 1 country each, so I’ve counted the states as separate entities). List below

I sung 1 song: It had to be either calon lân, coffi du or trôns dy dad, so those who are of a sensitive disposition will be pleased by which one I chose.

We heard 1 song, that unfortunately wasn’t picked up on the live broadcast.

The money collected online currently stands at £289 (the donations page is open until the 7th November, on MyDonate.BT.com/events/shwmaeathon )

My recovery time is currently 37 hours and counting!

Diolch i bawb a gymrodd ran - thanks to everyone who took part. I loved your company, and while the 24 hour thing was tough, the company made it a real pleasure. Diolch yn fawr!

After a number of requests, here is the list - in no particular order - of place where people took part in the shwmaeathon:

Cymru
Tasmania
Queensland
Victoria (Australia)
England
Massachusetts
New South Wales
Califfornia
Breizh / Brittany
Germany
Israel
Finalnd
France
Bavaria
Delaware
North Carolina
Italia / Italy
Missouri
Slovenjia
Northern Ireland
Scotland
Illinois
New York
Washington DC

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Hey good morning! :smiley:
Will you publish the full list of locations? Must be quite impressive!

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After 7th November, will another page for Calon Tysul be set with no date limit as it was before so I could drop in (will try to do it every month if possible) like I did before?

Slovenia was one of the places with lonely busy weird woman being there about an hour and a half or so … :slight_smile:

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That was a heroic effort on your part. The staying awake bit must have been a piece of cake compared to dealing with your wifi connection. You coaxed me and quite a few others to brave our first multiperson hangout or indeed our first hangout so well done for that. I kept an eye on proceeding for most of the day under my google name which is Pennysows. I then crashed in at my allotted time and felt like I was in one of those Harry Potter picture frames just sitting around waving as the delay was quite bad then haha, I even managed to call in on my phone too for a few minutes just to see if I could.
Some top SSIWers stayed close to you throughout and popped in and out of proceeding when they were needed so hats off to them. What a team - well done everyone. :facepunch:t2:

@tatjana, you are our favourite ‘lonely busy weird woman’!:wink::wink::wink:

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Ummm… I’m not sure, but let’s say I believe you. :grinning:

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What an absolutely fantastic result, and under such difficult circumstances as well!

I kept my eye on YouTube at various times during the day planning to pop in if I saw Iestyn was on his own, but that literally never happened! I thought as it got towards the end things might get a bit quiet, but not at all. The hangout was full of very supportive and enthusiastic people. It was such a great idea and more successful than anyone could have imagined. Llongyfarchiadau mawrion to all who took part, but especially to Iestyn!

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Well, if Shwmae Su’mae day would be a week earlier and Shwmaethon with it it would be all different on my part as I was at home on holidays. But, unfortunately when I am not on holidays, I’m off home most of the day … I did my best but I wish I could do more.

Yes, llongyfarchiadau to @Iestyn and all the crew behind the event!

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The page “Diwrnod Shwmae Sumae” on Facebook posted this:

Great article in the Western Mail on ShwmaeSumae Day and a tip on how to reach 1million with Iestyn Ap Dafydd from SaySomethinginWelsh who’s also held the first ever, international, 24hr #Shwmaeathon on Monday! Legend!

I can’t find an online link to that particular article, but did find this while searching for one:

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I’ve put the question about the article online on FB under their post with explanation that I can’t buy the physical issue, but I didn’t get any answer yet.

Massive congratulations Iestyn. You prevailed even in the face of angry weather gods. There certainly seemed to.be enthusiasm in abundance whenever I popped in ( at least until my phone decided it was allergic to Slack and to keel over every time I logged in - fortunately that didn’t happen till late in the evening.)

So p!eased to meet a few folk whose names I knew but who i hadn’t seen in hangouts before. And to reconnect with a few I’d met just once or twice.

A massive a achievement. Dylech chi gyd bod yn falch ohonochi eich hun, enwedig ti, Iestyn.

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You did excellently, Iestyn! Well done. I’ve been watching the total raised creep up and up over the last couple of days, so it’s nice for me to be able to say to you for a change “da iawn ti!”

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Diolch everyone! It was a massive day, and thanks to all the enthusiastic support, a massive success. I hope everyone else (I’m looking at you John Young, and you Lea, who stuck with me as long as I needed!) has recovered as well by now. I’m missing it already. Maybe we should have a monthly 24 hour hangout?

NO!

(But maybe next year…)

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Definitely next year! I’ve put it in my calendar already :wink:

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I’ve been thinking about next year too. I thought the Shwmaeathon was great fun. I’d like to do something locally. Not a 24 hour thing, but perhaps to stay all day upstairs in Caffi T H Roberts in Dolgellau for anyone to pop in for a paned and a brief sgwrs. As they have wifi, people could join us virtually too – or if you do the Shwmaeathon again, we could pop in to say, “shwmae, su’mae!” to you?

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As requested, I’ve added a list of the 24 countries where the shwmaeathon took place to the opening post on this thread. If I’ve missed anyplace out, could you let me know? Diolch!

@Deborah-SSi

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Just an extra Thankyou to you, @Iestyn for arranging this event. Particularly regarding an unintended consequence. I have been told that taking part in the event had a big effect on my acquisition of the Welsh language.

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And (thank you @JohnYoung, you’ve just reminded me of this) to remind you that you have only tomorrow to donate yet, after that the donation page is (according to the written there) closed.

The link once again: https://www.mydonate.bt.com/events/shwmaeathon

Or, (discovered just now) you can actually donate through this page (Calon Tysul BT My donate profile page) https://www.mydonate.bt.com/charities/calontysul.

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