My Name is Kate

Freedom to Marry Week

I am so incredibly fortunate to live in Canada - a country where my marriage is recognized as legal and equal.  It's one of the reasons that we concluded our ceremony with the singing of "Oh, Canada" - to show our gratitude to a country and a society that sees the bigger picture of human rights and human dignity.

Americans are not yet so fortunate.  So there is a national Freedom to Marry Week - Feb 10 to 16, 2008.

The 2008 TED Conference starts in a few weeks - returning this year is Al Gore, a man whom I admire greatly.  Below is a video where he speaks about equal marriage and its value to American society.

Why the Internet is the best thing in the whole world ...

No marketing here this morning.  Just love, Canada, some really fantastic people, Craigslist and an accordion. 

Joey tells the story of he and Wendy finding an ad on Craigslist from two young women coming up from Philadelphia to get legally married who needed witnesses at City Hall.  Joey and Wendy decided to go, accordion in hand ...

Read the story and see the videos on Joey's blog.

The Toronto Star does a write up as well.

Big congrats to Amanda and Julie!  I'm so glad Canada (and Accordion Guy) could be there for you!

Big hat-tip to Bargainista for the head's-up.

Doing something positive for young women in IT - ChicTech

And now I move from sorrow to action.

Through my colleague, Michael Fergusson, I recently learned about ChicTech, a webdesign competition for girls in computer science.  ChicTech pairs a three or four person team of young women with a university mentor to create a website for a non-profit organization.  The websites are then judged, the teams are rewarded and hopefully these girls are encouraged to stay in a technical field.  Or at least see the potential a career in IT has.

ChicTech is currently for Vancouver-area girls, in Grades 9 or 10.  This year's competition is underway.  The organizing team is still looking for sponsors and contributions to the final prizes.

Here's a positive step we can all take ... let's encourage these young women to stay in a technical career.

What can you or your organization offer to ChicTech as a prize or contribution?  Their fundraising letter is here.  Take a quick peak and see what you can offer.

I'm working with the one of the organizers here in Vancouver.  If you have something to contribute, email me at kate [at] mynameiskate [dot] ca, and I can put you directly in contact with Cathy.

Threats against our lives, our security, our selves ...

Innocence has been lost today in the blogosphere, at least in my naive little corner of it.  I have, in the past, railed in frustration at marketing conferences that don't include enough women speakers ... and then I read about what Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users is going through, and I know that the problem extends far beyond these old boys clubs simply not knowing how to find engaging women to speak.

There is still a fundamental inequality raging through our society that allows the death threats and horrible insults that she has received to be "ok" in someone's mind.

I applaud her courage for speaking out and telling the story.

I understand the fear she is now experiencing which has caused her to withdraw from public appearances.

I hope that she will one day return to the speaking circuit and to blogging ... she is a bright light we cannot lose.

Photo Credit: Compound Eye

Update: Ron from Brand Curve has created a way you can show your support for Kathy.

Remembering June 4, 1989 ... and seeing the way forward

Global Voices Online is an incredible site that "seeks to amplify, curate and aggregate the global conversation online - with a focus on countries and communities outside the U.S. and Western Europe."  Frank Dai, one of Global Voices Online's Chinese bloggers has an informative, link-rich and moving post on the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  We forget, I forget, and take for granted the freedom we have to post our thoughts, theories, rants, commentary and other fragments to the blogosphere. 

Dai quotes (in translation) Zheng, another Chinese blogger; it is a particularly forward-looking view of what we should commemorate today:

The thing needed to magnify is the voice, the continuity, not the boring and faded mourning and commemoration year after year. History won’t repeat. New questions are ahead in front of us, and it’s these new questions that make the voice resurrect.

So here's to the continued asking of new questions, and the preservation of the freedoms that allow us to do so.

Bonus Links:

1. Adopt a Blogger - put your extra blog space to work and adopt a blogger who cannot host their own.
2. Sinosplice, an amazing site by John (an American grad student living in China) that includes Chinese language resources, English & Chinese blogs, photos and other resources to offer a apolitical view of life in China.

Tags: china, 8964, freedom of speech, chinese bloggers, global voices

Happy Solstice! And asking for your vote ...

Happy Solstice!  Hopefully everyone survived the longest night of the year (with or without Bruce Cockburn). 

Some happy news I just discovered ... I was nominated for a KBCafe Blog Award - Best Marketing Blog.  I'm in there with Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion and Seth Godin's own marketing blog, so I have no delusions of "winning", but, like the young Hollywood starlet, I'm thrilled to be nominated (what *will* I wear to the awards?).

So ... if you've enjoyed my blog, found some insightful tidbit to share with colleagues, or even significantly disagreed with anything I've said, I'd appreciate your vote.  And thanks to all of you whose own insightful comments greatly added to the conversation here at MyNameIsKate.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!!! 

Reflecting ...

This time of year is normally a time of reflection for me.  But a recent death of a colleague's parent as well as a death in my own family have made it even more so.

In tandem with the inherent spirituality of the season, there is call and motivation to unshackle from the materiality of it all.  Echoing the good work of organizations like the Canadian buynothingchristmas.org and Alternatives for Simple Living, Roro and I are trying to reduce the consumption, reduce the clutter and focus on something different.  We were discussing Solstice gifts this year and neither of us *want* anything.  We are doubly, trebly blessed and to "add to" seems untoward.

Luckily, World Vision Canada has a great alternative that satisfies the desire to both give a gift as well to do something more.  Their gift catalog lets me give a goat or olive trees or school backpacks to people who are simply trying to survive.

We're not eliminating our gift exchange, either between us or our familes.  But we're cutting back, and we're trying to buy local, sustainable and reusable.  Comondi.com is a great example.  Started by some friends of ours, Comondi sells vegan and organic products with an eye towards creating a sustainable lifestyle and a better future.  I'm really proud of those guys for starting it!  Beyond Rivalry has a great post on "the whatever christmas" and ideas for changing behaviour.

Happy holidays to all of you; hug your moms, dads, kids and kin extra hard this time of year.

Photo by ketz33

Technorati Tags: sustainable, solstice, anticonsumerism, simple living, anticonsumerism, family

Marketers never *really* vacation ...

Roro and I are taking a break, visiting family for American Thanksgiving and catching up on R&R. We're spending several days in central Virginia .. a state I hadn't previously spent a lot of time in. We've done a few historic things .. visiting Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's home ... sparked some thoughts about the current state of politics) and an olde timey tavern where we had "authentic" colonial-times food.

The scenery is breathtaking. We're staying at a ski-lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Every day the weather changes, the light changes and the same scene will look completely different. This is a picture from the valley near our resort. It was incredible light that day.

As we were tooling around near Charlottesville, I couldn't resist snapping this pic of a 7-up cooler I saw in front of a convenience store. Nothing earthshattering, but it certainly caught my attention as I was gassing up the car. Even this very small experience is completely owned by 7-up. Very cool.

Technorati Tags: virginia, marketing, beauty, pastoral

Thank you, Rosa Parks ...

For having moral courage in an uncertain time; for inspiring us to have moral courage now.

NY Times Obit

And, because I'm a blogger, Blogpulse's tribute.

Followup on Katrina & Rita Relief ... Two Niche Causes

On September 1st, I participated in the blogosphere's "Blogging for Relief" for Katrina victims.  Just over a month later, we're starting to fully appreciate the effort it will take to rebuild people's lives.  Niche causes and like-group-helping-like-group are starting to emerge ... to take care of their own, so to speak.  Two of these are near and dear to my heart.

First, as a creampuff, I know the difficulty of getting quality clothing that fits on a good day when the mall is open, fully stocked and not under multiple feet of water.  This is a lot harder for us plus-size gals when we're living in shelters and the local goodwill only has size 6 t-shirts and leggings.  The SWAN project in the states has set up a program through Friend Ships to get plus-size clothing to people who need it.  This program involves you shipping stuff somewhere, often difficult for us in far-away places like Canada.  A great woman-owned plus-size shop in California called Making It Big has made it dead-easy to donate a care package.  You give 'em some money and they do the rest -- coordinating efforts with SWAN and the Red Cross.

The second relief effort is by First Book, an organization dedicated to getting children from low-income families reading and owning books. They are organizing publishers in the states who are donating books.  Again, the issue is shipping.  So, for every 50 cents, they will send 1 book.  If you belong to Book Crossing (a whole 'nuther reason I love the Internet and a whole 'nuther post), First Book has set up a special page to donate and then track the books.