HoHOTo Archives - The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

An overhead view of the packed dance floor at HoHoTO

HoHoTO began three years ago as a Twitter conversation among Toronto’s tech and social media crowd and turned into the Toronto Christmas fundraising event. This Thursday, December 15th, marks the fourth HoHoTO party, and tickets are still available. Since the very first HoHoTO party, the event has raised over $200,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank (making them one of the largest donors) and this year’s goal is to raise $65,000. The unofficial slogan of HoHoTO is “You party for a night; they eat for a week”. Good times, good cause, what’s not to like?

If you’re in town and want to enjoy an amazing party with great music, dancing, drinks and other fun goings-on with some of the people who make Accordion City the special place that it is, you’ll want to buy a ticket now.

If you can’t make it to HoHoTO – or like me, you’re not in town that night (I’m in Ottawa for the week) – you can still do good by making a donation (visit the HoHoTO site and click the “Donate” button). With a million Toronto-area people having had to make a visit to a food bank in the past year, your help is needed, and there’s nothing more in the spirit of the holidays than giving.

If you’d like to find out more about HoHoTO, check out this Canada Newswire piece: HoHoTO Feeds Hungry Torontonians for the Fourth Year Running.

Win 2 Tickets to HoHOTo

Nobody in Accordion City throws a charity event quite like its creative techies, and the latest such event is hoHOTo. It’s the summer sequel to HoHoTO, a charity party that got put together in mere days, not weeks or months, by some very ambitious Toronto techies on Twitter.

HoHOTo’s charity is the Daily Bread Food Bank, the organization dedicated to eliminating hunger in and around Toronto. They provide food to hungry people. offer support with issues that often accompany hunger – social benefits, housing, employment, immigration – and work to create social change to reduce poverty through research, education and advocacy.

A recent report from the Daily Bread Food Bank says:

A new report released today by the Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB) revealed that there has been an alarming increase in the number of persons turning to food banks in Ontario since last fall. Between September 2007 and September 2008, food banks in Ontario have reported an average increase of 13 per cent in the number of neighbours turning to them for support.

HoHOTo will take place tomorrow night at Suite 106 & Wetbar, located deep in clubland at Peter and Adelaide, from 7 p.m. until late, with DJs and cash bars plying their trade all night. Only 500 tickets were made available, with prices rising steadily as the event drew nearer. In these last hours before the event, tickets are now $40 each and it appears that only three or so dozen remain.

Microsoft, for whom I work as a Developer Evangelist, is a sponsor of the event and has provided me with two HoHOTo tickets to raffle off. I’ll make it simple – just email me at joey.devilla@microsoft.com by 6:00 p.m. tonight and I’ll put your name into a lottery for those tickets. I’ll announce the winner on the blog tonight.