Hey gang, Hilary Topper (@hilary25) has invited the #LITweetup crew to join Social Media Club for their Holiday Party. For those of you who haven't yet had a chance to get to one of the SMCLI monthly breakfasts, I hope you'll take my word for it; this is a great group of people, worth getting to know better.

Here's more about the event, copied from the eventbrite page:

Join us on Tuesday, December 6 from 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm for the Social Media Club of Long Island's Holiday Party at Frank's Steakhouse in Jericho. Meet and mingle with other social media enthusiasts. Tweet the night away as you enjoy wine, beer and soft drinks and a full array of delicious appetizers. You won't leave hungry!

In case you're thinking 'I'm not sure, $50 is a lot right now'... how about this? If this is your first SMCLI thing, and you decide to come, just come up to me at the party and say hi and for the next year (2012) you've got a permanent 10% discount off of any event I (@namnum) run, and I've got a few new things in the works. Fair enough?

Hunger sucks, period.

We live in one of the most amazing places in the country, surrounded by some of the most remarkable and generous people but we still have neighbors, and their children, going hungry. That has to stop and that's why we've been doing LITweetup Helps the last few years.

The Big Announcement

This year, thanks to the amazing network that is LITweetup, we will actually be partnering with Long Island Restaurant Week (LIRW) to feed the most people we've ever been able to! WordHamptonPR is the remarkable agency behind LIRW and they worked out all the specifics to make this happen. Not only will there be 5 restaurants serving as collection points for the duration of LIRW (November 6th-13th), but each restaurant has agreed to host an LITweetup.

What We Can Do

The press release is below, but the bottom line is we have an opportunity to make a significant dent against hunger on Long Island in two ways; first by the donations we're able to collect and second by using our positions of influence as marketers, business people, consultants, journalists, writers, friends, family, executives, etc, to raise awareness of Island Harvest's very honorable mission using this campaign as a centerpiece.

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WHO: LITweetup Helps and Sixth Annual Fall Long Island Restaurant Week
WHAT: Island Harvest Food Drive and Local TweetUps
WHERE: Participating Restaurants across Long Island, NY
WHEN: November 6 – November 13, 2011

LITWEETUP HELPS WITH HUNGER ACROSS LONG ISLAND
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH LONG ISLAND RESTAURANT WEEK
Benefiting Island Harvest

(Long Island, NY . . . October 2011) LITweetup Helps www.litweetup.com has teamed up with Long Island Restaurant Week (LIRW) to offer food drive locations at restaurants across Long Island to benefit Island Harvest, Long Island’s leading hunger relief organization. The food drive will take place during the Sixth Annual Fall Long Island Restaurant Week from Sunday, November 6 to Sunday, November 13. Participating restaurants will be collecting non-perishable food items and cash to be donated to Island Harvest. Long Islanders are encouraged to donate non-perishable foods, supermarket gift cards or cash funds to help Island Harvest in its mission to end hunger on Long Island. To date we've been able to collect over 1200-pounds of food. Each participating restaurant will host a Tweetup, a face-to-face gathering of people who enjoy social networking and are connected on Twitter, for one evening during Long Island Restaurant Week.

LITweetup founder, Jeff Namnum explains, “The LITweetUp Helps campaign grew from a desire to use our skills to help feed our neighbors in need. This year, thanks to the partnership with Long Island Restaurant Week, we're confident that we will be able to help Island Harvest feed many more of our neighbors."

Participating Restaurants

Vittorio’s Restaurant & Wine Bar

: 184 Broadway, Amityville, NY 11701 (631) 264-3333 www.vittorios.biz
Tweetup will be hosted at this location on Monday, November 7 at 5 p.m.
Donation Drop-Off is available Monday through Thursday from 12 to 10 p.m., Friday from 12 to 11 p.m., Saturday from 3 to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 3 to 9 p.m.

HONU Kitchen & Cocktails

: 363 New York Ave., Huntington, NY 11743, 631-421-6900 www.honukitchen.com
Tweetup will be hosted at this location on Tuesday, November 8 at 5 p.m.
Donation Drop-Off is available Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Grasso’s

: 134 Main Street, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11743 (631) 367-6060 www.grassosrestaurant.com
Tweetup will be hosted at this location on Tuesday, November 9 at 5:30 p.m.
Donation Drop-Off is available Daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Thyme Restaurant & Café Bar

: 8 Tower Place, Roslyn, NY 11576 (516) 625-2566 www.thymenewyork.com
Tweetup will be hosted on Wednesday, November 9 at 5:30 p.m.
Donation Drop-Off is available Tuesday through Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Nick & Toni’s

: 136 N. Main St., East Hampton, [631] 324-3550, www.nickandtonis.com
Tweetup will be hosted on Wednesday, November, 9 at 6 p.m.
Donation Drop-Off is available from Wednesday to Sunday from 6 to 10 p.m.

LITweetup Helps is a group of many of Long Island's most talented and creative professionals in fields ranging from Advertising and PR to Digital and Traditional Media to Journalism and Literature. They are passionate and skillful in their professions and use those talents to help fellow Long Islanders. "'Long Island is a great place to live and Long Islanders are great people. It's not okay with us that so many go hungry. These beliefs combined with our admiration of the great work Island Harvest does is what led to the creation of LITweetup Helps,” says founder, Jeff Namnum.

ABOUT LITWEETUP:
LITweetup was founded as a local social gathering of Twitter users. Tweetups are held on a regular basis all over Long Island and tweeted about using hashtag #LITweetup. Follow the group on Twitter @LITweetup.

ABOUT LONG ISLAND RESTAURANT WEEK:
Long Island Restaurant Week is presented by WordHampton Public Relations, the creators of Hamptons Restaurant Week and is sponsored by Long Island Restaurant News and OpenTable. Media sponsors include Newsday, EastofNYC.com, Trends, Long Island Pulse, News 12, NewYorkCorkReport.com, WALK Radio 97.5 and WEHM 92.9 & 96.9. The First Annual Long Island Restaurant Week won the SABRE Gold Award Certificate of Excellence and was recognized for its superior achievement in branding and reputation by the leading public relations industry analyst, The Holmes Group. The Second Annual Long Island Restaurant Week garnered the prestigious Big Apple Award in the Marketing Consumer Services, Travel and Tourism/Hospitality sector by the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) for excellence in research and situation analysis, planning, execution, results and evaluation.
If your Long Island restaurant would like to participate in this year’s event or to view a current list of participating restaurants, visit www.longislandrestaurantweek.com. For more information about Long Island Restaurant Week, please call (631) 329-0050 x108. For press inquiries, contact at WordHampton Public Relations at (631) 329-0050.

Photos by @silverph

Ok Nassau County, great job! In the middle of a rainstorm and with only 2 weeks of promotion, we did a good job of feeding some of our neighbors. Here's the recap:

• Approximately 30 pounds of food was collected
• $42 dollars was raised (according to Island Harvest $1 provides 2 meals)

Please note on the monetary donations $25 was in a check written directly to Island Harvest, which I will mail out to them tomorrow and $17 was cash donations.  I will be pocketing the cash and making the exact amount donation online using my personal debit card under the name Jeff Namnum (correction 11/15/09 - I had my wife make the donation to save some time; it's under the name Ruby Namnum).

Much thanks to the amazing folks at Panera RVC, especially the GM Richard Balsam who was kind enough to offer to hold our donations until Island Harvest comes to pick up their Thanksgiving donation.

Please remember there are 2 more events left, on Saturday in Hampton Bays and on Sunday in Happauge.  If you can spare some time, stop by and drop off a donation.  If you can't make either one, keep on eye on this space, we will announce a way to help Island Harvest online.

I am very proud to be a Long Islander tonite.