Personal | Totally Incorrect

David November 17, 2009

Big 12for12k bash – Live in Lowell

For the December “Homeless” theme, the New England 12for12k team would love to invite you to Live in Lowell! – a special 12for12k event.

Live in Lowell! takes place on Thursday, December 10th and will be an evening of music, networking and fun in support of MA Coalition for the Homeless.

There will be live music all night with some of the coolest local musicians as well as raffles and auctions.

All in all, a great opportunity to meet with other social media enthusiasts, support a great cause at a time of year they need the help and have a good time as well.

Our venue, The Mambo Grill, is right in Downtown Lowell, Mass – where the American Industrial Revolution was born. Lowell is easy to get to from all the main highways and there is parking on the street or in the garage just around the corner.

Live in Lowell!

At the Mambo Grill
129 Merrimack Street
Lowell, MA 01852

December 10th, 2009
Starting at 7.00PM
$10.00 donation (more if you like) at the door.

If you can’t make it to Lowell, we plan to stream the event live on the 12for12k site.

Want to help out? Great – you can contribute right here:

Free video streaming by Ustream

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 12for12k, charity, live in lowell, mch Leave a Comment

David November 1, 2009

12for12k Live!

Getting 12for12k out of our computers and right to real people – my friend Rich Marti organized a great live music event at The Rock Cafe in Rocky Hill, CT. This was all in support of Musicians on call – the 12for12k charity for October.

If you missed the event, you can check out my slideshow of images with the soundtrack coming from the live band.

Musicians on Call is a group of great people making life better for unwell people. Please support them. I have 8 Google Wave invites left and if you leave me a message in the comments that you’ve donated $35 or more, I’ll add you to the invite list. How’s that for a win-win!! (November 1st only)

Use the Chip-In widget below to contribute.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 12for12k, charities, musicians on call 2 Comments

David October 10, 2009

12for12k Musicians on Call

Music is incredibly powerful and can be enjoyed by everyone. We are really pleased to be supporting Musicians on Call – a unique group of musicians bring the healing power of music to bedsides in healthcare facilities. Musicians On Call uses music to promote and complement the healing process for patients, families and caregivers.

Currently Musicians on Call has chapters in New York, Philadelphia, Nashville and Miami and provides services in a number of ways:

Bedside Performance Program

Volunteer artists give live performances in-room for patients that are too ill to leave their beds. To date, Musicians on Call have played for more than 150,000 individuals and their families. They also have 32 regular scheduled weekly performances at 27 facilities throughout the four cities they currently cover.

CD Pharmacy Program

Musicians on Call also provide hospitals with complete CD libraries, as well as personal CD players for the patients to use – all free of charge. Thanks to this, there are currently 310 CD Pharmacies throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico and Dublin in Ireland.
Project Playback Program

As well as the volunteer artists who help Musicians on Call achieve their aim, the charity also has a program that gives patients the chance to have their own music recorded and produced. By using special software, patients can compose their own songs and work with volunteer professionals – artists, producers and more – and get help in the writing an recording process

How Can WE Help?

Now in its tenth year, Musicians on Call has recently launched their One Song campaign. For just $10, Musicians on Call can bring one song to the bedside of those the charity benefits the most. Our donations will mean the following:

$10 brings one song to the bedside of a patient in a healthcare facility

$50 brings 5 songs to the bedsides of patients in a healthcare facility

$150 brings music to 15 patients through MOC’s Bedside Performance Program

$250 buys 20 “Discmen” for a CD Pharmacy so patients can listen to music in their beds

$500 brings the Performance Program for three weeks to a healthcare facility

$1000 brings the Performance Program for six weeks to a healthcare facility

$2500 creates a CD Pharmacy in your name or in honour of someone

$5000 brings the Performance Program for six months to a healthcare facility

$10000 brings the Bedside Performance Program to a healthcare facility for one year

Want to contribute to this great cause? You can do so right here:

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 12for12k.charities, musicians on call Leave a Comment

David October 9, 2009

UniqueDay Events – Caren Interview

My interview with Caren Holliday – done for 12for12k Doctors Without Borders Event

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David September 23, 2009

I Love Barbara Talisman!

When I was heading out to the office this morning, I glanced at the 12for12k Twitter stream and saw a response from Danny Brown to a blog post that had been written by someone called Barbara Talisman.

Knowing that there is nothing like a good fight to start the day, I felt compelled to read the posts by both parties – Ms. Talisman first.

To say I was surprised was an understatement. You can read her contribution to American literature here. I had no idea at all who this person is, but there was a rather rude person on the weekend 12for12k conference call and I believe it was her. Check out Danny Brown’s much more dignified response on his blog here.

My first assumption was that she must have been drinking when she typed the post – I can imagine anything more bizarre. As a supporter of 12for12k and Danny Brown I was also somewhat offended by what she said.

Anyone that has connected with Danny knows that her accusations are a long way from the truth. Yes, there are quite a lot of social media “experts” that take every opportunity to promote themselves and their businesses, but Danny Brown isn’t one of them. I don’t ever recall him even mentioning his marketing business at the same time as 12for12k, I don’t see him trying to flog his latest book and I don’t see his blog full of affiliate links (well, other than the Headway theme one, but I have a Studiopress theme link so I can’t complain about that).

I often can almost feel the embarrassment of Danny when he responds to those “oooh you are soooo great @DannyBrown” Tweets and he always makes a point of highlighting the fact that 12for12k isn’t Danny Brown, it is a team of dedicated people.

Is 12for12k perfect? Heck no! I don’t believe Danny had any non-profit experience when he came up with the idea and the whole thing is a work in progress – albeit with some expert guidance from people such as Jon Aston, Rich Marti, John Haydon, Mickey Gomez, Sarah Robinson and the unique (but totally crazy) Henie Reisinger.

So why to I love Barbara Talisman?

For a couple of reasons.

First, while she timed her attack for her own reasons, she has done nothing but make Danny Brown and 12for12k look good. A lot of very influential people have come to Danny’s defence and pointed out the gaping holes in her argument.

Second, with the launch of the big Go Global 24 hour event to support Doctors Without Border, 12for12k needed every possible bit of attention on the blogs and social media sites. Barbara made sure we got it.

Thirdly, Ms. Talisman had the good sense to apologize. See this later post on her blog. She is even offering to help – we’ll see if it happens.

Finally, there is one point she made that I do agree with. Where were all these supporters of Danny Brown when they were needed to support the charities? There should have been more raised than there has been and I’m hoping that the 12for12k team (including Barbara, if she is serious about helping) can get to grips with this. The great ideas being put forward for next year are going to make a huge difference so the future looks good!

Oh, one more thing – I was reminded of the huge value there is in thinking before clicking on the Publish button – thanks Barbara, no wonder I love you!

Anyway, what is much more important right now is Go Global 24 hours. Please check the 12for12k Events page for info of how you can help!

Would you like to leverage your social media experience to help others? Support 12for12k!!

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 12for12k, Barbara Talisman, charities, Danny Brown, social media 11 Comments

David September 22, 2009

12for12k Global Event #GG24

I’ve already written about the program that the 12for12k team has been putting together to support our September charity, Doctors Without Borders,

The month has started really well with the Music as Medicine events proving to be a huge success and going a long way to meeting our goals. It is going to be up to the social media community to take over and finish the month on a high note.

12for12k is planning a gala Go Global 24 hour event that will be accessed from the Go Global 24 portal on the 12for12k site. The host for the whole 24 hours will be Henie Reisinger – one of twitter’s most dynamic and engaging personalities.

Go Global 24 (#GG24) Starts: 3 am Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, September 29 and Ends: 2:59:59 am Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday, September 30.

It is really important that all the friends of 12for12k support the event by blogging and tweeting about what is going on.

We are going to offering sponsorships for 1 hour segments of the event. These can be purchased in advance by business wanting to take part and they will also be auctioned on eBay. The #GG24 sponsorships will offer some huge advantages to the sponsoring businesses.

Sponsors can use #12for12K’s collective global reach to introduce themselves, their latest innovation, their hottest new promotion, their brand… all in a way that adds value.

For example, in their hour, sponsors might conduct a question and answer session, run a contest, host a moderated panel discussion, and/or point fans and prospects to relevant information on their blog, or website, or microsite.

In addition sponsors will receive:

Real-time introductions, comments and thank yous
Will be featured on our event portal during their hour
Permanent thank yous on 12for12K.org
Lots of tweets and retweets and blog posts: before, during, and after the event

This is a huge opportunity for a business established in social media, or just getting started to create a really big impression, get out their message and have fun doing it.

However you choose to support 12for12k, you’ll get to meet a lot of influential social media people and (my favorite part) have a great time while helping others!!

There will be more information released over the next few days, so I’ll be updating this post from time to time.

Important Update: Along with the sponsorships we are also seeking items to be auctioned on eBay at the same time as the event.

If you have something you’d like to have included, you can send details to Jon Aston (jonaston@gmail.com) and he will include on the 12for12k auction site. As an alternative, you can set up the auction on your own account and set it up to donate directly to Doctors Without Borders. (I’m going to be setting one of these myself so once I know how to do it, I’ll post here again).

Should you set up your own auction, please let @12for12k know so we can include links to it. Also let us know the total you raise to update the grand totals.

If you’d like to make a direct contribution to Doctors Without Borders, you can do so via this 12for12k page.

Thanks for the support – as Jon Aston would say “You Rock!”

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: #GG24, 12for12k, charity, doctors without frontiers, global event, social media 1 Comment

David August 10, 2009

Social Media – keeping it under control

It seems to be ironic writing this on the day that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, but I have to say, I’m feeling that social media has been taking up too much of my time.

To be honest my use of social networking sites is a lot less than many people, but I’m finding that 3 blogs, 2 Twitter accounts, 2 FriendFeed accounts, Posterous, Facebook etc is getting to be way too much. Of course this is without my full-time sales and marketing job and our part-time wedding business (trying to help out with 12for12k as well)! I have a feeling of being overwhelmed with the whole social media thing and it is time to make it fun again. The question is; how to deal with it before I turn into a whiny complainer!

So I have a plan that seems to be working. It is actually working because I’ve added two new tools to my already full toolbox:

Posterous – which I wrote about the other day.

Bit.ly – a great way to post to Twitter and to the Labeling News blog.

So here is how it all works:

Personal stuff.

I’m mainly interested in networking on Twitter with a little Facebook thrown in – mainly for family connections. I’m not quite as active on Twitter as before, mainly because of work pressures, but I’m still there quite often. Posterous is really helping with this because I can post one of my photos there and have it auto post to both my Twitter and Facebook accounts – very nice. Posting to Posterous is so fast (send image as an email attachment), that keeping up with my goal of one image per day is no problem. To be fair, the fact that my Posterous posts seem to be about one or two words long seems to help as well.

I’ve been slacking a bit with post to Totally Incorrect, which I need to work on getting back on track. When I do post here, I’ll often mention the fact on Twitter as well as post a link on Facebook.

I currently have Totally Incorrect and my Twitter account both post to FriendFeed as well so I have a presence there, albeit in auto post only mode – I don’t do anything else on FriendFeed and rarely visit the site. It is worth noting that I can’t currently auto post from Facebook to FriendFeed after the Facebook guys messed about with the feeds. I’m sure this will change soon

My accounts on Linkin and Scribnia are pretty much dormant at the moment, although one or another of my blogs is updated in my profile there. Linkedin seems to be full of people either looking for a job or trying to sell me their schemes, I’m not interested in either. Scribnia I like a lot, but I feel it takes time to really get involved there. I plan to get back to it after the end of our wedding season here.

Winco ID Social Media

Our social media marketing efforts at Winco ID are built around the Labeling News blog. This has been working out very well and is well worth the time invested. I’m really lucky to have Kathy and Linda involved in this project which is only going to get better. One thing I try to do is to post at least 4 or 5 links of news about labeling or RFID to the Labeling News Twitter account everyday. These are also posted to the Labeling News FriendFeed account and from there to the FrendFeed widget in the Labeling News sidebar.

Because I’m blocked from Twitter at work (yes, really see my post about social media and the IT guy) I use Bit.ly to both shorten the links and to post to the Twitter account – brilliant move, it I say so myself! There isn’t really much conversation going on in the Labeling News Twitter account – I use my @_djh account for that – but it is getting a steady stream of new followers, even if most of them seem to want me to check out their nude profile!

I like to post the Labeling News blog stories in our business Facebook page too – currently this is a manual operation that I’ll automate soon. I’m really hoping that we will see more automation between Facebook and FriendFeed after the acquisition.

UniqueDay Blog

Currently this blog which I use for my wedding business is very much standalone. This is something that really needs a total refresh which I’m sure will happen this winter. I also have the @UniqueDay Twitter account which is really just a placeholder at this time.

So there it is – my complete social media strategy. Adding Posterous and Bit.ly to the mix has really helped, along with the easy integration that FriendFeed offers. How does my plan compare compare to yours? Do you find time to get involved in a lot of networks or do you focus on just a couple?

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: social media 3 Comments