Date Archives → March 31, 2009

My Love Letter To New Orleans

Frenchmen Street Institution

“Way down yonder in New Orleans
In the land of dreamy scenes
There’s a garden of Eden
You know what I mean.”
- Louis Armstrong

Dear New Orleans,

I have loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you. It was March of 2002 and I was being spontaneous, feeling full of adventure and madly in love, and madly in love with being madly in love and set off on a road trip from Pittsburgh, PA with the goal of hitting the coast. We drove through the night and hit the Florida panhandle. We lingered on the beach and stumbled upon Destin, and drove West until we found you.

I often talk of cities as if they were people. You know this about me. They take on human-like qualities and some become fast friends, others short-lived lovers, and hopefully one day I’ll find one to be with forever. But then there was you. It was the best first date I’ve ever been on. Everything was so funny, eye-opening, new. We laughed, we drank, we ate, we listened to music and we wandered the streets with not a care in the world! We’d been to so many of the same places, we liked the same random things “You like open courtyards, I LIKE open courtyards” and “You like brass bands playing on the street, I LOVE brass bands playing on the street!” It was like everything was falling into place just so we could have the perfect evening.

You lightly took my hand and led me through the crowd and looked over your shoulder to make sure I was ok. We didn’t have a destination in mind, we just let whatever happened happen. We talked closer and closer in the waning light that turned day to night and when you kissed me goodnight, my heart skipped a beat. I missed you the second we parted ways. We were inseparable that trip. Remember that nap we took in Jackson Square? In an afternoon daze, we looked up at the clouds and talked about what we wanted to do with our lives. We ate at Cafe Maspero and drank at Lafitte’s and meandered the cemetery for hours and took the streetcar and we were unstoppable!

We were so young. Such kids. It felt too soon to make a permanent change. I had so many things on my mind and a whole life taking off up North. I felt like I hadn’t even really begun yet. I wasn’t ready. So when I had to go, I’ll never forget you kicked and screamed and begged me to stay. “Life isn’t the same without you!” you said. Tore at my heartstrings. I almost did too. Almost stayed.

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Retaining Your Best Donors – Live Discussion

Giving Outside the Holidays

Attention Fundraisers! Or potential fundraisers. Or people who are wondering about this wild world of philanthropy that I talk about.

Let me start by saying that I’m hook, line and sinker all about the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It’s my Variety, my Financial Times, my Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s the industry rag for nonprofits and one that I’ve read religiously for years.

“The Chronicle” (as we call it) is hosting a live chat tomorrow, Tuesday, March 31st at 12 noon EST on Retaining Your Best Donors.

The recession is affecting all of us, and nonprofits are struggling to reach new donors, but they also have to worry about those who already give to their organization. It’s just as important to focus on your current donors as it it to look for new supporters during a trying economic climate.

How can this be done? How should fundraisers approach donors? What, and how often, are the best forms of communication?

You can ask your questions in advance here. The Chronicle will be discussing those topics and many more. I’ll be sitting in the live chat room, join me!

Charity Smackdown – Team Brea FTW!

YouTube Preview ImageGirls Rock Camp Austin

Have you donated to Charity Smackdown 2009 yet? What’s stopping you? It’s a quick and easy way to give back and best of all, you know that 100% of your donation is going to the cause you choose. Other perks, PayPal has agreed to give $5,000 to the nonprofit that raises the most money.

I’m on Team Brea, which includes the fabulous actor Brea Grant, social media maven, entrepreneur and all around awesome Laura Roeder, and Director of Community for Radian6 Amber Cadabra. Together we are supporting Girls Rock Camp Austin.

Girls Rock Camp Austin is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering girls and women of all backgrounds and abilities through musical education and performance. People who know me know two things I love are supporting girls education and music, so this team is a perfect fit for me!

Girls Rock Camp Austin Summer 2007We are battling against the other teams and it would mean a lot to me if you would take a moment to donate $5, $10 or ever $100 to the cause. I made my donation the first day and it was simple and easy to do through PayPal.

Last summer, Girls Rock Camp Austin helped 105 girls from low-income areas pick up an instrument, the money raised from Charity Smackdown could help send 20 girls to camp this summer.

Give today, now, by clicking here and leave a comment so I can say, “thanks friend!”

5 Tips On How To Rawk SXSW Music

Echo and the Bunnymen at the Spin Party @ Stubb's

My biggest complaint of SXSW Music is that it starts right after Interactive ends! For the second year in a row, I could have used a two-day break from the madness before diving into music. My focus leading up to SXSW is on what to do and see during Interactive, and this year pimping my Core Conversation on the LA Tech Community, that I miss many party invites and RSVP forwards because in the days leading up to music, I’m not at a computer all day exchanging emails.

Then again, one of the best days is what us interactive geeks call the “transition day.” The day music people roll in and interactive folks start to roll out. The conference center becomes this strange hodge-podge of music hipster meets geek-utantes and no one quite knows what to do with the other. Twitter is awash in blasting the music folks and complaints against them (mostly because geeks get all, uh, geeky around the music kids.) Then suddenly, Tuesday is over and by the time Wednesday night rolls around, 6th Street in Austin is closed and has this crazy, hyper energy that can only be created from the knowledge that 1,900 (a record this year) bands are converging on SXSW to perform sets every hour on the hour for four days straight at over 50 venues around town.

When Sunday morning rolled around, I made a list of all the bands I had seen since Wednesday and was amazed that the total was 48 bands in 4 days. Wowzers, right? Making that list was arduous, I should have done it every day I was there. A bunch of my friends asked me the “method to my madness” and how in the world I made it to so many bands and how I knew what to see. I wanted to share those insight here:

1) PACE YOURSELF

Astroid Galaxy Tour chilling at the Zync PartyI paced myself slightly better from Interactive to Music this year, last year when music hit I was fried to the point of not coming back and couldn’t put together any schedule instead wandering the streets and popping into random places. This worked, kind of, but I missed a lot of things I would have really liked to see.

I didn’t do as many day parties as I would have liked. Then again that is what saved me. It would have been hard to do after four days of already being in Austin (and out until crazy hours) and then expect myself to stay through night with the kind of schedule I roll with. I know there is sched.org and I use it, but during music (vs. film or interactive where I rely on my phone) I like to go analog. I write out what I’m interested in by time slot with sometimes up to 4 picks for every hour. Most days I started at 6pm and saw bands every hour until 1AM and then after-party somewhere resulting in an average of 12 bands per day.

I try to drink water between most alcoholic drinks. This doesn’t last all night, but I try. I even took one night off from drinking entirely but this was more because of the sheer pain from the night before and not as much a personal choice.

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