fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge Leads to a “Happy Mind.”
This is about the little boy or girl sitting at a table, hungry and waiting for mom and dad to put a bowl of food in front of them…and nothing happens. They can’t afford to eat. This is about the homeless person who shows up to a mission for a hot meal only to return to a box under a bridge when it’s done. This is about the single mom trying to make ends meet and feed her hungry family. This is about the dad who has lost his wife and is devastated, depressed and somehow finds himself in a place struggling to feed his family.
If our challenge helps one more person, child, family eat- it was WELL WORTH the effort.
Many may have thought that we forgot about this charitable social media project, the Facebook group and flickr groups have seemingly been ignored and it’s all over before it really got started…WRONG! Our work has been to inspire and organize and then inspire and organize some more. Starting with keeping Edmonton’s Food Bank in the loop, which has led to a discussion at the provincial level with the Alberta Food Bank Network Association, we hope to involve the national and international organizations shortly.
Achieving a “happy mind.”
The fragmented photo group approach wasn’t going to work. So we found some great and very giving people for the construction of a centralized website to house all the photos. This is being donated by Victor Rubba and his Crazed Coders of Edmonton. Victor assures us that the site which is to be located at www.happymind.ca will be fully operational on August 15th, 2009. We chose “happymind” by the way because it represents two things: One, the state of mind after donating. Two, D-DAY or donation day for this challenge will be in support of and coordination with the central message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who is scheduled to speak in Calgary, Alberta on October 1st, 2009.
We want to get his attention by scheduling this on September 30th, 2009.
SIDEBAR: I was invited to meet with and speak to the University of Calgary steering committee on the topic of social media at one of their meetings this summer. This great group of people responsible for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak inspired me to align this challenge with their efforts around actNOW and what we’re doing perfectly supports the message from the Dalai Lama of achieving a “happy mind.”
Trying to collect 1 million photographs representing 1 million donations from people around the world predominantly via social media is a daunting task and one I know we’re all up for. There have been many social media initiatives for the purposes of charity that have done very well in the past. Twestival comes to mind, I attended the Edmonton event and that model is brilliant and we’d love to inspire a similar effect in cities around the world. The 12 for 12K gang continues to do great work each and every day as well. The real challenge here is to get folks not only to donate food but then take a picture and upload it. We hope you’ll agree, that in this day and age of uber connected citizens, donating a picture is not too much to ask in order to achieve a “happymind.”
Our plan remains simple.
Go out to the universe and ask for your help. To support you, we’re working through Rotary International and still need to reach higher within that organization. Anyone know John Kenny President of Rotary International? By the way, Rotary has 1.2 million members and great communication channels within their organization, Rotarians are very special people and their help would be spectacular. We’re also approaching other organizations with considerable size such as the Lutheran Church of Canada and Edmonton’s World Trade Centre organization. We’ve had numerous discussions with Share Our Strength on their ability to help promote and support this initiative. They have agreed to promote this to their 40 thousand newsletter subscribers and we are very grateful for that. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if President Obama, Prime Minister Harper made a donation and posted a twitpic? They both have twitter accounts, so does Premier Stelmach for that matter. What about other world leaders? How about the United Nations? There are people out there with connections to get folks like this involved. Please reach out and touch them…
Does anyone know somebody at Feeding America or having anything to do with the Pound for Pound Challenge? Please contact me at walter[at]fusedlogic.com your help is greatly appreciated.
What about brands? How can your corporation benefit? Simple, own this event, put your brand behind it, your marketing message of inspiration. We want to share this experience with you, it’s about feeding the hungry for us and we know we cannot do it alone.
How can you help?
1.) Donate, take a picture and upload it to www.happymind.ca once it goes live or the facebook, flickr groups already in place today.
2.) Inspire everyone in your personal network to donate food and a picture at work, home, friends and family and the world at large via all means possible on or before September 30th, 2009.
3.) Be creative, persistent and inspirational in your communications regarding this world changing challenge, we won’t stop after September 30th and we must surpass the 1 million photos. Hold tweetup food drives in your city on September 30th and post the pictures. Write a song, make a video to inspire others and post it on Youtube, (our channel).
4.) Be an Ambassador! Get your local organizations like the food bank, Second Harvest, Rotary Club, chamber of commerce, church, mass media, politicians, schools etc involved. Send them the link to this blog post or others that explain the goal and what to do.
5.) Use Social Media: On Twitter (@fusedlogic) please use the hashtag #happymind, on your blogs please consider posting a “happymind” badge. Spread the word through Facebook, with well over 200 million people, we can do it folks, take minute to inspire others.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please tag your photo with “HAPPYMIND.”
Small Business Week in Alberta
October is the month for Small Business Week festivities here in Alberta and across Canada for that matter. In years past there has always been lots of events to attend and people to meet and this year is no exception. Speaking of events across the province, here’s a list of many of the events as provided by the Business Link. Being that I’m a (proud) director of the Sherwood Park and District Chamber of Commerce I’d like to suggest to everyone in the Greater Edmonton Region that they consider being a member of this great organization which has over 900 members and 30 years of history. There’s nothing in the books that says you can only belong to one chamber. fusedlogic inc., has been a long-standing member of the Edmonton Chamber and I have friends that like me belong to both. Sherwood Park and the surrounding area of Strathcona County is a thriving northern Alberta business community and one that you should strongly consider doing business with.
In the spirit of sharing some business news during Small Business Week (and condensing posts because I’m so busy lately,) here’s some interesting new information for you. Some of you may remember a video I shot earlier this year with Peter Urban of Smibs (featured below.) At the time, SmibsNet (a collaboration and networking software for businesses) wasn’t ready for public beta. That all changed last Tuesday with the launch of the public beta and Peter asked me while on Twitter the other day if I’d blog about it. Peter provided me with a personal invite to sign-up for the beta and fusedlogic is now listed on the site. This software is very cool and helps to solve the business development collaboration issue that many companies have. I suggest that you consider signing up and trying it out.
Sidenote: Peter did agree to call me so I could asked him some specific questions as prep for a more in- depth blog post but if you know Peter, he’s hard working and a beta takes a lot of effort. I’m sure he wasn’t going out of his way to ignore me. 
Besides we bump into each other all the time at events and around the neighborhood. Maybe he’ll bring his SmibsTV crew down the Web 2.0 meetup and present SmibsNet there on Nov 6th. Below is the video interview with Peter some months ago on Whyte Ave in Edmonton.
Also, Peter if you’re reading this and I know you are, Smibs needs to be a Sherwood Park Chamber member right away…expect me to be relentless on this point.
