A few minutes before he was scheduled to give a workshop to international development professionals, NGO heads and community leaders gathered at the Rising Peace Forum in Coventry, U.K, last week, Nick Pickles, head of advocacy and public policy at Twitter U.K. was having some technical difficulties.
“Did that work?” he asked, unplugging and replugging an HDMI cable into a laptop. He craned his neck toward the pale blue screen behind him. “Nope, still not working.”
Pickles, former head of the U.K.-based civil liberties campaign group BrotherWatch and a former parliamentary candidate, knows a thing or two about campaigns. Now at Twitter, he gives free workshops around the United Kingdom to development organizations, CSOs and nonprofits about making the best use of the social media platform — whether they’re establishing a presence as a startup or expanding the reach of an upcoming campaign. With his advocacy team, Pickles is also about to release a Twitter Nonprofit Handbook, due out next month.