Everyone's talking about Rotary Global Swimarathon!

36 days to go. Great news of positive interest from a 2nd Rotary Club in Pakistan and their local interact club, excited to hear that Rotaract Westminster have now confirmed a pool  which means that they are on the verge of registering as the first Rotaract entry in the 2012 Olympic city of London. (With Atlanta and Lake Placid in the USA that's 3 Olympic cities all together!)

Been reflecting on just how we have communicated details of the event around the world today, and just how things have grown beyond we ever could have imagined.

 On Facebook, we created the fanpage back in May time, and I well remember being so excited when we had our first 10 page Likes. Today there are some 309 people who've Liked the page and are following our updates, and I particularly like to see the "people" talking about this number which keeps on rising by the day. In terms of daily page impressions and views we'd reached well a potential audience over a half a million the last time I looked. Over on twitter, we're up to over 2000 tweets, and have built up a following of over 600. With more than 10 separate Retweets by Rotary International to their 120,000 followers, cumulatively our tweets have been visible to more than 1,500,000 people.

I would estimate that in addition to the 52 clubs we have confirmed and registered today, over the entire period we have had positive enquiries and interest from well over 150 clubs worldwide. Well over 1000 emails have been sent on the subject of Rotary Global Swimarathon.

But for me the really amazing part, is the legacy of all of this. That when we say 52 clubs in 15 countries, that is 52 unique and brand new fundraising events created, every single one of which has the potential to grow and become established as an annual fixture, just like our own Grantham Swimarathon that is in its 23rd year.

Those 52 contacts have in turn gathered together their fellow club members, they are going out into their communities and publicising those events, getting in touch with swimming clubs, with schools , finding swimming enthusiasts of all ages and abilities.

I logged on to write up this blog tonight and let me show you the first thing I saw in my following list. PDG Howard Tong who registered Rotary Karori yesterday is continuing to promote the event across the region http://public-image-action.blogspot.com/2012/01/not-too-late-to-make-splash-for-polio.html?showComment=1326988991697#c7114340907060778842

Just look at this fantastic event poster from the Rotary Club of Hutt Valley. Over 11,000 miles away from where I sit now, swimming so much on a different time zone they are actually taking part on Sunday 26th February. The photographs, the video footage, the human stories that will be shared by all of us as we bring together the world of Rotary on that 1 day , in that 1 hour, will be something to treasure for a lifetime.