Category: causes

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causes

Why I Stand Up to Cancer – Abby – Charity Smackdown

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m on Team Corbin, supporting Stand Up To Cancer in the Charity Smackdown 09. (You can donate on the widget on the right >>>)

Over on the Stand Up To Cancer blog, they tell great stories of people who are inspiring. One of my stories and reasons for Standing Up To Cancer is about my cousin, Abby. At age 12, when many of her friends were more interested in boys, haircuts and bat mitzvahs, Abby had some symptoms that no one could figure out.

She took it upon herself to go online and do her own research, and her conclusion was unfortunately correct: she had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. And if you quote her the Larry David quote about “the good kind” she’ll look at you with fierce anger, then tell you there is no good kind of Hodgkins.

Abby went through hell, lost her hair, was sick all the time from chemo and radiation, and basically lost a year of her childhood. All while managing to complete school work and come back the next year as President of her class.

I look at her now, a grown woman, at an Ivy League school, working for a prominent government office as an intern and probably in line for a serious job there, and I marvel at how she has continued her life.

But I also know she and her family always have be on the look out for the Big C.

So, as part of this Smackdown, I Stand Up for Abby, and I’ve made a donation today to Stand Up To Cancer, in hopes that my amount will make a difference for the girls like Abby in the future.

Click and donate, please. The Dropdown menu lets you donate more than $5, by the way.

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causes

Charity Smackdown 09 – Call to Action!

THANKS. In advance. Thank you for reading this, and thanks for helping me and Team Corbin, but most important, thanks for reading this for Team Stand Up To Cancer in the Charity Smackdown 09.

I’ve been asked to participate in Charity Smackdown 09 – a cause marketing event contest between teams lead by Celebrities with Social Media ‘notables’ on each team. Each of the Smackdown Teams has from March 16th at 11pm EST to March 26th to raise as much money as possible for the causes.
My cause, as it has been since last year, is Stand Up To Cancer. Cancer has touched my life in terrible ways through family and neighbors over the past few years, and this is my way to give back. (More stories as the week goes on).
My team is “Team Corbin” led by musician (and High School Musical star) Corbin Bleu, and including Natali Del Conte (@NataliDelConte), Tech Reporter for CNET and CBS’ the Early Show, and Jared Eng of celeb blog JustJared.com (@jaredEng). My team is up against some stiff competition, from celeb power like Alec Baldwin and 2 of the stars of Heroes, and also from some top social media celebs like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, WalMart’s 11 Moms, MCHammer and Chris Brogan.
Will You lend me your friends and your network to help promote this cause?

*****Call To Action******

Please help me to at least place respectfully in this competition by taking one or more of the following actions:

Continue reading “Charity Smackdown 09 – Call to Action!”
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causes

Charity Smackdown 09 – My disclosure and disclaimer

Starting tonight at 11 Eastern, I’m happily joining the Charity Smackdown ’09, (background: http://mashable.com/2009/03/13/social-media-smackdown ) competing against many of my Social Media Friends, who have joined teams led by celebrities from my own Stand Up To Cancer team’s Corbin Bleu (of High School Musical fame) to Alec Baldiwn, musicians Linkin Park, NBC’s Heroes Hayden Panettiere and Brea Grant. The event runs from March 16 to the 26th, with all teams trying to raise as much money as possible for their causes.

Disclaimer: The event is called a “SmackDown” because there will be “Trash Talk,” defined by the Urban Dictionary as: “In the course of a competitive situation putting down your opponent verbally or saying how good you think you are. Often involving talk of moms or sisters” ie: “Your momma’s computer is so slow, she can’t even use Facebook.”

I have no intent to personally insult or harm anyone, make them feel bad or send them crying home. This is all in good fun. And we’ll all watch the “Your momma” references. My mom reads the blog. Enough said.

Continue reading “Charity Smackdown 09 – My disclosure and disclaimer”
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causes social capital exchange social media socialmedia

Paying a Charity in Exchange for your Attention

Lee Dryburgh has “called me out” to help in an effort to raise money for a shelter group in the Bay Area, the Shelter Network. In his blog he calls upon me, and a list of social media ‘gurus’ to promote his conference mailing list, and for each person who signs up to the eComms Conference list, they’ll donate fifty cents. There’s more about this in his article. (eComms is a conference about telecom and communication – so if you’re in that space and you can handle 4 emails a month, why not take a minutue to act?)

It is a bit of a bold strategy, calling on all of us to promote his conference in the context of helping a charity at the same time. I’m not sure I love the strategy, actually, but it is bold and it has the potential to be a new model:

  • Paying for mailing lists =”tired”
  • Paying a charity in exchange for people’s attention = “wired?”  (Or even Causewired?)

Lee’s article is below – go read it, sign up (and tell them where you found out about it, eh?).

Social Media: Can it Raise Just 5000.00 Dollars to Help 5 Year Olds? – Emerging Communications Blog

Let’s have a public test of the effectiveness of social media. Let’s do it with the aim of measuring the reach and usage of social media (and hopefully with some serendipity regarding the results). Let’s do it in a way that helps us understand the role and significance of social media on the emerging communications landscape.

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blogging causes

2 Reasons to Blog today – Blog Action Day and Creative Commons Awareness Day

Today, October 15th, is a do-something day online. Blog Action Day, supported by everyone from the UN to Friendster, is generating awareness of what everyday people can do to fight poverty, worldwide.

Creative Commons awareness is about letting people know they have a choice when they share their words, pictures, and images in public- they can limit how those media are used, or they can allow people to re-use them in specific ways that benefit everyone. (This article is (cc)2008 attribute-share alike).
Read more about these 2 great causes:

Blog Action Day 08

On October 15th bloggers everywhere will publish posts that discuss poverty in some way. By all posting on the same day we aim to change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.

Be Common on October 15, 2008 | Social Media Club

October 15, 2008 represents the first opportunity to evangelize the importance of standards and move this mission forward in partnership with Creative Commons.

So what can YOU do to help create more awareness around the important service Creative Commons provides? There are 3 ideas which certainly would help which have been bantered around, but I suspect the community can come up with more by October 15th. The key theme is just to identify a way to let folks know about the best practices around the sharing/creating of creative works leveraging a Creative Commons License.

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