Categories
causes compensated not-for-profit

Joining Nokia’s SXSW Cause Marketing Experiment

As part of Nokia’s efforts this year at SXSW to raise awareness of the over 4 million acres of land burned in Texas wildfires last year, they’ve started a contest to generate some excitement and re-plant some of those trees.

I’ve been asked to participate as a blogger/twitterer in this friendly contest, called #IJustPlantedATree @SXSW 2012. For this participation, they’ve given me one of their slick Nokia Lumia 800s to use.*  From the site:

So, during our time at the Interactive portion of SXSW, we invited 50 of our favorite Twitter friends to help us out in our mission. They will take part in a 48 hour online Twitter challenge using the hashtag #ijustplantedatree. Each time they tweet with that hashtag, 5 trees will be planted locally by our friends at the Arbor Day Foundation. To make sure we keep up the pace, an online leaderboard has been established, and will start to keep track of who is planting the most trees.

There is a sub-contest where the tweeter who plants the most trees gets one of the shiny new Nokia Lumia 900 phones. Great if I win, but I’m not concerned about winning. If you re-tweet me, you’ll also be helping plant trees (not helping me win).

So if you see Tweets regarding “ijustplantedatree” you’ll know what I’m up to.

*Disclosure – it is my option to keep or return the phone – I have not decided yet what I will do. I will update this later.
Categories
not-for-profit

SXSW Cares

Here at the South By SouthWest conference, several of my friends noticed the “fiddling while Rome burns” effect of people socializing and going to parties while tragedy continues in Japan. Realistically, people here are not going to drop everything and become rescue workers, and I think it’s challenging to keep up with news during a conference of this size.

But we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the situation abroad and that’s why many people I admire here at the conference started SXSW Cares. Donations at http://www.sxsw4japan.org/ will go directly to the Red Cross, with no transaction fees, meaning 100% of funds raised go to charity.

I encourage my friends to take a moment to make a quick donation, and help our Japanese neighbors in their time of need. Thanks.

Categories
Metro-North not-for-profit

Suffern Music and Arts Festival

I’m excited to be helping the Suffern Music and Arts Festival with a little of their online and search strategy. The festival is September 5 and 6, 2009, here in my hometown.
From the site:

The Suffern Music & Arts Festival is all about community in the 21st century. Music and the arts is our world’s universal language. So when this village, located in the heart of New York’s Ramapo mountain region of Rockland county chose “THRIVING” over “SURVIVING” this economy, they looked to that “one voice” to speak out.

I know this will also be reposted on the MetroNorth bloggers site, and I hope my friends in the Northern Suburbs will come out and support our Jazz, Blues and Grooves stages as well as the local crafts and artists.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
causes Entreprenurship not-for-profit

Project 10 to the 100th – A Google idea

Check out the video about project 10 to the 100th (10 to the 100th is a Google in math for those following along). There are no words, but the pictures tell the story really well

helping government become more open, transparent and effective through better use of published information.” Show Us a Better Way asks “Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?”  The task force put up 20,000GBP for the winner of that competition to develop the best idea. (I noticed the Google prize via Tom’s blog).

All these prizes to improve the world, plus X-prizes for 100 mile-per gallon cars, space travel, and more.

I hope that these contests and market forces can help us improve the world in some significant way, and I’m glad some big companies are asking for solutions with their hands on their wallets. Now, about that idea for a jet pack I had…

Categories
causes marketing not-for-profit

This site now brought to you by…

Ads on this blog? What’s that about? You’ll notice an add on the left column, from Apple. No, Apple hasn’t started sponsoring small blogs like me. This is a campaign from Social Vibe, supporting the Stand Up 2 Cancer initiative.

As I posted on the Social Media Club site, SU2C is an effort to get some much-needed attention on the problem of Cancer, and get some money in the hands of researchers trying new things to solve difficult problems.

SocialVibe is donating $1 for each blogger that signs up to their service via the special url http://www.socialvibe.com/SU2C, as well as turning points for showing these ads on Facebook and other social networking sites into real dollars for the SU2C cause. They’re hoping to raise $50,000 by doing this.  So, you’ll see this ad on my site, and on my Facebook page. And, hey, SocialVibe even referred to my Social Media Club post on their page. So, I’m returning the link and asking you to get involved too. If you have a blog – run an ad for a few weeks, and get that $50k to the Cancer Research labs via Stand Up To Cancer. Oh, and you can donate directly as well.