Who would you donate $5000 to?
I’ve been asking this question of myself for a long while tonight, after reading about the contest that John Chow is having, sponsored by tiny url service XR.com. In his contest, he’s giving the winner $6000 – $5000 will be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice and $1000 will be given to the winner directly to do with as they wish.
XR.com is a great service that allows you to shorten a URL and create a custom extension. For example, if I wanted to shorten the URL of this post I can enter it in at XR.com and create http://xr.com/donate5000. The beauty of signing up for a free account with XR is that you can keep track of all these redirected tiny URLS so you can use them repeatedly. That URL went from 62 characters to 17! It’s perfect when you’re not allowed a lot of characters to work with, like on Twitter.
The $1000 isn’t that easy either. My gut immediately says that I want to buy Guitar Hero World Tour & use the rest of the money for the Bahamian cruise I’m taking with friends in February. But then there are bills that could be paid off. Hand-me-down furniture that could be replaced. But since I’ve already committed to this trip, I believe I’ll use it for the cruise bills. That way I don’t have to put too much on my credit card.
Back to the donation to charity. A few worthy causes come to mind immediately – The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fund, American Diabetes Association, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Make a Wish, the list goes on. These are charities that I believe in and believe that they could do a lot of good things with $5000. But, maybe I should stick with something closer to home? Make my community a better place, eh? So I did some Googlin’ for local charities, and I wasn’t overly impressed by anything. It also occurred to me that deciding to donate to charity based on a quick read of a mission statement isn’t very responsible.
So I’ve decided to donate the money as a way to give back to a non-profit organization that did so much for me in my youth – Girl Scouts of Northern California. Specifically, I will donate the money to a fund that helped me continue my membership for 12 years, go to summer camp in the sierras of California, and attend many other trips and activities that provided vast opportunities for me to learn new things and grow into a confident young woman.
The Opportunity Fund provides financial assistance that helps girls go to camp, covers their Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. membership, and allows them to participate in Girl Scout activities regardless of their families’ financial resources.
I can’t think of a better way to give back to an organization that gave me so much. This donation will give young girls the opportunities to expand their horizons, built their internal strength, and learn how to be better citizens in this global community.
That’s what I’d do… so I’m hoping that I win so I can fulfill that desire to give back.
Who would you donate $5000 to?
Read MoreSocial Media: The Marketing Summit Day 1
Day 1 has concluded with some great after hours discussion for the Social Media: The Marketing Summit at Moscone Center West in San Francisco, presented by mThink. A day full of good pannels on various aspects of social media, including the panel with myself, Brian Caldwell, and Celine Takatsuno on the affiliate channel and how social media applies.
Unfortunately due to some public transportation issues, I didn’t make it on time for the first half of today’s keynote by Charlene Li of Altimiter Group, co-author of Groundswell. What I did hear was some key insight, and I look forward to finding some notes on fellow attendee’s blogs!
Brian Solis delivered with some great words of wisdom that were highly sought after (the slides of them, anyway) after the session. He had some really good actionable items in terms of creating a social media plan and allocating time and efforts that the attendees were really intrigued by. I definitely want a copy to assist with my own understanding of social media planning!
I met with my co-panelists through the Ticketmaster brand highlight so unfortunately I missed that talk, then noshed, then came our panel. I thought we did pretty well, and for my first more traditional speaking engagement. I got some good feedback on the panel, including some nice tweets:
@shelisreal – @briancaldwell, Celine Takatsuno & Trisha Fawver are talking about SM & affiliate mktng. Not my fav topic, but these guys are pretty good.
@lornali – @briancaldwell with Trisha Fawver & Celine Takatsuno on social media & affiliate marketing
@TTaxChristine – @TrishaLyn enjoying your discussion of the tie between affiliates and social media. #SMMW08
After our panel were the fellows from Best Buy responsible for their internal social network Blue Shirt Nation, who were a blast to hear from. There was also a panel on segmentation that I didn’t actually think was that great, and finally a presentation by Karl Long from Nokia on making your customers work for you using social media – great stuff.
Of course, i’ll post my notes as always in coming posts, but I’m jazzed to attend tomorrow’s sessions and soak up the social media goodness like a sponge!
Read MoreSocial Media: The Marketing Summit
That’s right all you conference junkies, there’s a new kid at school. From the people who bring you Revenue Magazine, Social Media: The Marketing Summit will be taking place locally here in October. Some of the brightest folks in social media will be there:
- Lisa Picarille, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Revenue Magazine
- Brian Solis, Principal, FutureWorks and PR2.0
- Charlene Li, Independent Analyst (formerly of Forrester Research)
- Tara Hunt, Co-Founder, Citizen Agency
- Chris Trayhorn, Founder & CEO, PERFORM and Montgomery Research
I’m excited that there’s a new conference on the block, especially one that’s close enough to just commute to! Unfortunately I won’t be able to afford this on my own and, given my recent changes at work, don’t think the company will send me.
Early bird pricing ends August 30th. The early bird price is $895, a whopping $400 savings! As well, I’m officially taking sponsors if someone wants to send me on their behalf. No travel expenses, just the registration of the conference itself. If you’re interested in being my BFF, contact me.
Read MoreBall: Dropped Stress: High
I have good news, and I have bad news. Hopefully this will explain why I’ve been asleep at the wheel here.
First, the good!
- TrishaLyn.com is now available as a mobile compatible site! Just point your smartphone browser to www.trishalyn.com! Thanks to Shawn Collins & the Geek Cast crew for mentioning this nifty plugin in the last episode and Shawn specifically for sending me the link.
- Speaking of Geek Cast, I was mentioned two weeks running. Apparently Scott Jangro and I will be the only audience members for their Geek Cast Live show from Affiliate Summit, and Lisa’s counting on me to help keep the boys in line. Ah, good times will be had I can FEEL it!
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 is SOLD OUT and takes place in a little over a week. I’m excited to be hitting Boston again and finally meeting some of these people I’ve been networkin’ with online since the last summit.
- Affiliate Classroom Live! is also in about a week, so I really REALLY need to get my act together and formulate some talking points for the round-table discussion I’ll be leading.
Now, the not so great.
I’m sad to say that after almost 2 years my beloved supervisor is leaving our company. I’m going to miss her tremendously as she’s been a complete pleasure and joy to work for! To be honest, I’m taking the change harder than I should because of….- I’m moving! Just from one city here in the East San Francisco Bay Area to another, nothing major. It’s just that I absolutely detest packing and moving. Luckily my husband acknowledges that I’m a weakling and useless in the actual heavy lifting, so I’m on packing and unpacking duty.
- With the change in my supervisor leaving, my job responsibilities are changing as well. I don’t think I can say much right now, but involves some shifting in terms of my focused projects within the marketing department.
Obviously the combined changes of job responsibilities, moving, taking a long weekend vacation to celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary, and taking off for several days to attend Affiliate Summit East are all a bit overwhelming. I hope to be rejuvenated after my vacation and be able to jump back into the swing of things with some excellent coverage of Affiliate Summit!
If you’re giving away stress balls at the summit, save one for me!!
Read MoreJune BAAMC Meeting
After running to the bank to take out money for bridge toll, heading west towards the big scary city, and rifling through my car & wallet for change for the meter while praying that the meter maids were taking a day off, I finally made it into the June Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition meeting, this time hosted graciously by Real Networks. As an aside, I like their building… older, brick, kinda funky and unique but still professional.
Last time I did a video because it was my first venture over there and I had a lot to say. I was happy to receive some kudos on it from BAAMC organizer Michael Brucker. We had some special guests at this meeting… Lisa Picarille from Revenue Magazine came over and Brook Schaaf from Schaaf Consulting flew up from LA just for this. Aren’t we special? 🙂
I was going to write a good long post about it, but it seems Lisa in her diligence as a journalist has beat me to it! So here’s her take at RevenueToday.com. She mentions a few other special guests that attended the meeting, but I didn’t see them (and yes… I’d recognize them!) so maybe they were on the phone listening in… I did arrive a touch late.
So, some notes not mentioned from my take. It was nice to finally meet Lisa in person, especially after subbing for her that once on Affiliate Thing. Very gracious…although I have to tell you, it’s totally surreal sitting in a room looking at a person speak that you listen to every week without an image in your head. Strange lol. She was surprised that I’d had time to come to the meeting given how busy I usually am, which prompted me to mentally review how busy I must sound on Twitter and this here blog without actually intending it!
Also said hi to Karen Garcia of GTO Management who came to the meeting directly from SFO – what a trooper! And had a nice conversation with a fellow affiliate manager who’s used PsPrint a lot in his former life of being an event promoter and loves us! Always great to hear!
Brook talked about the up-and-coming Performance Marketing Association (PMA), which got a lot of people in the room revved up. We also talked at length about the NY affiliate tax and how we wish the networks would get more involved. What’s definitely clear is that there’s a lot of confusion on how we’re effected as managers and the programs we represent. A vague law will only vaguely be enforced, NY!
Incidentally as a side note, the PMA launched their blog this week and today Rebecca Madigan posted their plan of attack.
We also talked a bit about some miscellaneous things like video widgets and the like. Since most of us in the room have our programs through Commission Junction, we collectively wish they’d buck up on offering some more interesting and innovative creative options, like widgets. One opinion was that video is pretty good for buzz, but general consumers never think to click on the video so it doesn’t convert as a sales tool. I think the jury is still out on video as a traceable seller like a banner ad.
That’s the meat & potatoes of it, really. Our next meeting should be sometime in August. And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I managed to escape parking-ticket free!
Read MoreBoston Tips
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As this is not a travel blog, I have little business posting any travel tips for Boston. However, as many of us are returning to Boston in August for Affiliate Summit East 08, it will be good to know these things for any first-time traveler to the Boston area.
- Boston Cab Co. is the most reliable and easiest to get ahold of when you need a taxi. Keep their number handy – (617) 536-5010. Rates are reasonable for a big city, too.
- Faneuil Hall is pronounced “fan-you-ill” and is home to (among cool historic things) the Hollywood Replica Cheers Bar (complete with gift shop). If you want the original Cheers, it’s in the Beacon Hill district on Beacon St. Faneuil Hall is right in front of Quincy Market, South Market, & North Market. It’ll take probably an afternoon to see everything if you want to just wander around. Very picturesque.
- The Cheers Beer is nothing special, but you do get to keep the glass. I guess that makes it worth $15. The Irish Stew is really good on an overcast Boston day. The Boston Cream Pie was “meh”.
- Delivery.com has HUNDREDS of local places to choose from if you’re too lazy to leave your hotel. A lot have late delivery hours too. Thank you, college town!
- Charlie’s Pizza & Cafe has good burgers (they’re on Delivery.com!)
- There are like a million colleges there – it’s almost ridiculous.
- Duck Boats truly caught my imagination – I wanted to take a Duck Boat tour, but it’s too expensive for my blood (~$32).
- New England Style Clam Chowder eaten IN New England isn’t any better than what we have here in San Francisco. At least not at the Boston Chowda Co. (I tried it at the Prudential Center Food Court).
Boston really is a beautiful coastal city.
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