Well. This is it. Rock bottom. I told myself I’d never do one of those “I’m sorry I haven’t posted recently” posts and here I am! I haven’t posted lately! I feel terrible about it.

Actually that’s not entirely true. I do have a few pretty good reasons why I haven’t been blogging lately and since I really want to get over this hump, I thought it best to wipe the slate clean, to buck up and share what all has been going down in my world. The good, the bad and the ugly. And then we can move on to bigger and better things without the rigamarole of having to explain where I have been. Here we go!

5. I got engaged! No, I’m not going to go all Sheryl Sanberg on anyone. I’m still the same hard-working girl I have always been. But I have to admit, that being in love can really take a toll on your blog – that is if you blog is not about love and relationships. Taylor and I just have the best adventures together and we spend weekends out of the apartment, on foot, exploring where ever we happen to be on any given day. And to tell you the truth, it’s marvelous. So at the end of the weekends, where I used to spend a few hours writing and queuing up posts for the week, now I’m mostly too tired to sit in front of the computer and so by the time the weeks starts the same cycle begins again.

4. Dollar, dollar bills y’all. I have a really amazing job right now that requires 110% at all times, no if ands or buts. Yes, I did have a job before (Answer With Action), but it’s all very different when you go into an office Monday-Friday and anyone who has ever worked for themselves or as a consultant would agree with me. I’m five months in now, time flies when you’re working hard! I started as Director of Digital Marketing at Lippe Taylor (and her sister agency ShopPR) at the beginning of March and it’s been absolutely amazing ever since. I lead a (growing) team and I was really looking for a place where I felt like my contributions and opinions would be valued and I have found that at Lippe Taylor. What’s hard is coming home when I have zero brainspace left. So it’s hard to get into the mode to sit and write. I’m working on it.

3. I am loving living in New York! I have wanted to live in New York City my whole life. I really have. I didn’t make it right after college as I thought I would – instead taking a year in Pittsburgh, pitstop in Boston, 5 years in Los Angeles, one traveling and volunteering (well documented here) and all of last year in New Orleans. I love every step of my journey and certainly no place outshines another. I love LA for LA and NOLA for NOLA. I know my version of “home” is different from some other people – for me home is where my friends and family are. It’s not so much a physical place but a state of mind. Living in New York means exploring and discovering new arts and cultural things to do, restaurants to try, long walks to take and spending a good bit of time offline. It’s been so important for me to balance working online and living offline and just taking some time for myself.

2. Fear. Writer’s Block. That what I’m writing isn’t good enough. The usual feelings of “not being good enough” that all of us have. I have a piece of street art I love that says, “Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything.” That’s how I am. I want to be everywhere and everything to everyone all the time. So not writing for a week, then a month, then longer, well it just ends up feeling like I have so much to get out of my system that I don’t know where to start. So frankly, I don’t start at all. It’s a hard thing to get over. I have been working on it. I recently took a class for 8 Thursdays through The OpeEd Project about multimedia thought leadership. Surrounded by the same group of women for 8 weeks talking about various forms of media, how to get our voices heard and sharing our collective experiences. I wrote for them, I wrote for myself, but it’s time to step back in and share some of what I’m writing.

1. I’ve gone old school and started journaling again. That’s right, pen and paper. Crazy times we live in! I really needed a place I would write without abandon and needed to get back to find that chi inside of me. I’ve kept actual paper journals since the 7th grade and written at some points more frequently than others but it’s something that has always been really important to me.

There you have it! 5 reasons I’ve been a terrible blogger of late, but honestly, I’ve been a pretty great offline person. Now it’s time to balance the two a little better. Does this ever happen to you? I’d love to hear any stories or tips about you got through a down-point in blogging and came back!

Rock the causebah,
Sloane

I have long been passionate about women and women’s issues (including my new web project Help A Woman Out) and couldn’t be more excited to take my skills and experience to join the Lippe Taylor family. It’s an amazing agency with a great client base and I’m thrilled to be jumping right in, managing a team, and leading digital initiatives.

I have a lot more to share about Lippe Taylor and this new chapter in my life and I can’t wait to write more about it here. In the meantime, the full press release is below. Check it out. My mom said she learned things she didn’t know about me from reading it! And as always, thank you for coming along on this journey with me.

*****
Cause and Social Marketing Expert Sloane Berrent Joins Lippe Taylor Brand Communications as Director of Digital Marketing

NEW YORK – March 7, 2011 – Lippe Taylor Brand Communications announced a new addition to its digital marketing team with the addition of social entrepreneur and digital strategist Sloane Berrent as the agency’s new Director of Digital Marketing.

Sloane is a former Kiva Fellow and has been recognized for her leadership in women’s issues and cause marketing by CNN, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, TechCrunch, Read/Write Web and Mashable and included in power lists She Takes on The World’s Women of the Year 2009 and Forbes’ 20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter. Most recently Sloane ran her own digital strategy consultancy, Answer With Action.

Sloane will join the digital marketing team led by David Binkowski, who joined Lippe Taylor as EVP, Digital Marketing in June 2010 from MS&LGroup. “I am excited to welcome Sloane to the Lippe Taylor digital team where she’ll bring her deep knowledge and insights of social and cause marketing to our clients. Sloane’s career history of focusing on women’s issues and rights significantly bolsters our core strength of marketing to women,” said Binkowski.

“As we have seen tremendous growth in our social marketing business, we are filling our teams with the best talent in the industry. Sloane is just that! Her expertise in marketing to women makes her a perfect fit,” says Jim Joseph, President of Lippe Taylor.

Sloane will continue to write about cause-filled living through her blog, The Causemopolitan. In addition, she will provide strategic oversight to the Lippe Taylor digital team, explore new business opportunities and expand her work as a thought leader on cause and social marketing at industry events. Sloane’s ability to connect women and causes has been highlighted through her attendance at the World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative and her speaking engagements at The California Endowment, South by Southwest (SXSW), Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology.

About Lippe Taylor Brand Communications:

Founded by Maureen Lippe, former editor at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue Magazines, Lippe Taylor creates award winning marketing and public relations campaigns for an impressive roster of clients in health, beauty, fashion and lifestyle. With a particular expertise in “Marketing to Women,” Lippe Taylor specializes in brand communications that engage women with exciting programs that cross traditional, digital, and social media. Since 1988, the independent agency has launched innovative programs for some of the world’s most significant and successful brands such as Proctor & Gamble, Kao Corporation, L’Oreal, Clairol, The Limited, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, David’s Bridal and IKEA.

Above is a slideshow of my first day in Haiti with the Fairwinds Trading and the #heartofhaiti bloggers. What’s amazing is that each picture tells a story. A photo is really just a moment in time and from the second before to the second after everything changes. It captures how you feel just then.

So when I was thinking about Haiti and the difference in the experience for me versus some of the other women bloggers who haven’t traveled as much to the developing world I couldn’t help but have an important revelation.

I process it differently now. Developing countries have a different affect on me now than before.

I’m still struck from the moment we land at how different the developing world is from the developed. And I’m still in awe at the differences. But certain aspects I see differently. I still see the trash on the streets and the lack of infrastructure (old cars, building falling down) but now I see past that a lot more quickly.

My eyes now focus on the kids playing, the laughter of women gathered on a street corner, the way people are helping each other cross the street and carry heavy loads.

People ask me what draws me to the developing world and what I say is that it sets me straight. It reminds me of what’s important in this world – people. And I simply love experiencing new places, my senses alive and taking in every moment, every sight and every smell. I like testing my internal compass, I like finding a way to connect with people when I don’t speak their language. And I love being able to debunk myths of what traveling to developing countries is like to people when I get back.

When you look at the photos above, I hope you see the life in them. I hope you see the hope, creativity and progress. There’s more than the ruins, you just have to look beyond the obvious. In other words, process it differently.

I haven’t been as good at keeping this meme as some others I know, but nonetheless, starting in 2009 I kept track of the cities where I traveled and wanted to continue that list for 2010.

I had spent 2009 without a permanent location traveling and volunteering so one of the biggest things I wanted this past year was continuity. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give myself a meager 5. The key is that while I FELT more at home, I physically still traveled quite a bit. Sometimes I loved it, ok, most of the time I loved it. One of my mottos is after all “have passport will travel!” Still, I did crave little things, like the ability to know where I would be one week to the next. The ability to take a four week tennis or sushi-making class and attend each week (that never ever could have happened in 2010). At the same rate, I traveled almost exclusively for work and for fabulous professional opportunities and for that I’m eternally grateful to be at a place in my career where my expertise is requested and valued in different markets. Plus a few trips were for weddings and birthdays with friends and experiencing those special days with those that I love was amazing. Last, there was an annual trip with my mom and little sisters (this year we went to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador) that always brings a smile to my face and the start of an annual humanitarian trip that Taylor and I are going to be taking (this year was Ghana).

All in all, an amazing 2010 of travel. The phrase we coined at NOLAlicious is “heart of a native, soul of a tourist.” Truthfully, I feel that way about most places I am. I’m always curious to go and see and explore no matter if I’m at home or in a brand new place. Without further ado, my cities for 2010:

January:
* New Orleans, LA (as a homebase, I’ll only mention it here in January. I do want to add that I moved apartments in New Orleans March 1st so I have two places to count as my own).
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as the MySpace & Wall St. Journal Citizen Journalist.

February
Why leave New Orleans? Election, Super Bowl, Mardi Gras!

March
Austin, TX (RISE Austin and SXSW)
Los Angeles, CA (Spoke at CalTech)

April
Pittsburgh, PA (Received award from my high school)

May
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Chattanooga, TN
Luray, VA

June
New York, NY (Spoke at Philanthropy Day NY)
Pittsburgh, PA (My grandpa’s 90th birthday!)
Palm Springs, CA

July
Seattle, WA (SummerMash)
San Francisco, CA (SummerMash)
Alexandria, VA
Washington, DC (World Bank Synoposis & SummerMash)
Luray, VA

August
New York, NY (SummerMash)
Chicago, IL (SummerMash)
Milford, CT
High Falls, NY
Brooklyn, NY

September
Bloomington, IN (Spoke at The Combine)
Brooklyn, NY (Clinton Global Initiative)

October
Kittery, ME
New York, NY
Luray, VA
Dublin, Ireland (Spoke at Dublin Web Summit, Founders and taught workshops with ezetop

November
New York, NY
Accra, Ghana (Delivered malaria nets from Cause It’s My Birthday Series)
Atorkor, Ghana
Late Bosumtwi, Ghana
Kumasi, Ghana
Cape Coast, Ghana
Pittsburgh, PA
Hidden Valley, PA

December
New York, NY
Pittsburgh, PA
Luray, Virginia

What a year! Here’s to an equally fantastic 2011. What is on your 2010 cities list? Where should I visit this year?

Photo courtesy of Taylor Davidson

As December came to a close and January kicks in, I looked around for inspiration on how I could structure a post summing up the year that was or looking forward to the upcoming year. Especially since I just wrote about having a bit of a block about how best to do this. I often find myself with tabs open across my browser and when I did this exercise just now I found a few really moving posts that I wanted to share because we can all use some inspiration to get into the right mood for 2011. Right?

Here are my favorite posts from some of the best of the best and why I love them.

1. Danielle LaPorte’s it’s been very real, 2010: a white hot retrospective

Words with resonance. Testimonials that made me glow. And a couple surprise wildfires. Here’s a glimpse.

Danielle rocks. She has a way of writing, of creating and of being that just makes me excited. Her simple post of highlights from the past year show me that this “summing up the year that was” can be simpler than I thought while still deeply gratifying.

2. Felicia Day’s Five Things About 2010

I know I’m the guiltiest of all for setting unrealistic expectations for resolutions (Last year on my list were: Learn Chinese, and Trapeze Lessons. Huh?) but this year I decided to, before making a list, look back on 2010 and figure out what things I actually LEARNED as a human being.

Felicia took her year and summed her accomplishments into lessons she learned. I love this! It allowed an entire year of experiences, hardships and triumphs to be put into five lessons. Too often I think we do something and move on without thinking about the consequences or what we learned from the experience. Felicia encouraged me to think not about specific experiences, but what I learned from them.

3. Gina Trapani’s 2010 Lessons Learned

Don’t waste your time on stuff that doesn’t matter. I learn and re-learn this lesson every single year, and I swear the universe will continue to flog me about the head and shoulders with it till I get it right.

Gina is brutally honest with herself and poignant in how she writes about it. I really related to her reflections on having thought life was going to go one way and instead it went another way. I admired her honesty, but also her ability to unabashedly take credit for her success. That’s hugely important and a good reminder to step up and step into what I did well last year.

4. Jade Craven’s How I Kicked Arse In 2010

I bloody rocked it this year. At times everything was crumbling around me and I persevered. I shone. I kept on going when my mind and body were screaming at me to give up.

Like whoa. Jade packs all the punches and true grit of a survivor. I’m rooting for her as much as I’m in awe of her as much as I just want to sit and share a meal with her and gab. How many people can make you feel this way? Reading her post inspired me to think about the BIG triumphs from 2010 because the embracing jealousy and learning to love are the real lifelong deal.

5. Chris Guillebeau’s 2010 Annual Review: Looking Back

Last year I identified 2010 as the year of scale and reach. In previous years I had the Year of Convergence, the Year of the Revolution, and the Year of the Cantaloupe (long story). In 2008 I started AONC and built it to a respectable level in the blogging community.

Where would a post rounding up annual review posts be without highlighting Chris’ series on Annual Reviews? Chris was a huge inspiration to me and I was honored to be highlighted in the book he published this year, The Art of Non-Conformity. His dedication to his craft, his book, his blogging and, as no surprise, his review of the past year are the defacto start to reading about how to reflect upon the year that was.

I’m incredibly excited to share with you a brand new version of The Causemopolitan. The Causemopolitan will still provide you with information about philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and cause-filled living opportunities for you to find ways to give back and continue to build cause into your life. Only now, it’s brighter, bigger and better than ever! There are more ways to find the content you want, stronger category and tagging infrastructure, interviews, and more targeted content to match the reader base. The layout and design have been given a facelift. New logo, new design, new colors. I hope you enjoy the new look and feel as much as I do, and would love to hear what you think in the comments!

Another great addition! The Causemopolitan has gone social! You can ‘like” posts, share on Twitter and add to StumbleUpon all at the top of every post. I’ve created a page on Facebook for The Causemopolitan and that is going to be the main portal for sharing cause-based videos, events and information and I’d love you to join the conversation.

If you’re not signed up to receive FREE updates from The Causemopolitan what are you waiting for? Sign up takes less than one minute and you can do it here! Of course, You can still add The Causemopolitan to your RSS feeder as well.

When I first started The Causemopolitan in February of 2009, I was looking for a little place on the web to call my own. I launched the site with encouragement and assistance from good friends Jonathan Dingman (designed the first wordpress site), Erica O’Grady, (the big push) Mike Prasad and Jeff Henderson (hosting and support). Since then so much has happened. From New Orleans to the Philippines and back, I have shared over 300 posts and connected with countless people who have left comments or reached out to me because of The Causemopolitan.

My blogging history didn’t start with The Causemopolitan. I had been blogging as the Lifestyle Editor for the leading Los Angeles blog LAist (part of the Gothamist network) since 2005, and had kept up with my Tumblr blog in addition to being active on social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, but I wanted more. I was on a journey after all spending 2009 giving back in volunteer projects around the world.

Here’s the funny thing about blogging. I know mine is just one of millions of post-it notes on a wall, but it’s my post-it note, and it’s come to mean the world to me.

I haven’t gotten everything right all of the time, haven’t blogged every day, haven’t shared everything I wanted to, but I have tried my best to grow the community around The Causemopolitan. As my yoga teacher says, “You might lose your balance, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t try your best.”

Some truly incredible things have happened over the last year and a half including:

• Expanding my experiential marketing and online communications consulting practice, Answer With Action.
• Accepting a Kiva Fellowship in the Philippines for the summer of 2009 with Ahon sa Hirap, Inc., the oldest microfinance institution in the Philippines.
• The EPIC Cause It’s My Birthday series last October where Doug Campbell and I raised $19,500 for Netting Nations to provide malaria nets to families in Ghana.
• Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2010 as the MySpace and Wall St. Journal Citizen Journalist.
• Launching NOLAlicious, a weekly enewsletter in New Orleans with friends Carl Nelson and Taylor Davidson. NOLAlicious has since been named the “best newsletter in New Orleans” in the annual Web Awards by The Gambit.
• Co-created and produced two series of benefits, raising over $60,000, for fishermen and their families in the wake of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill through the platform, Gulf Coast Benefit. All donations went to support the Gulf Restoration Network and Catholic Charities of New Orleans.
• Created a public speaking practice around cause-filled living, and how to build online communities around cause. I’ve loved this and engagements have including Fundraising Day NYC, TribeCon, SXSW, The Combine and SocialDevCamp Chicago and lecturing at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and CalTech.
• Create relationships and blogged for publications including PopTech, WhatGives!?, GOOD Magazine, and Socialbrite.

Another great resource to follow along is my blogroll. Updated every month, I add links and resources as a benefit to those in the public and private sector to help identify ways to give back. It also has lists for other publications I write for, nonprofits I support and inspiring cause-based writers.

I welcome your feedback and looking forward to this next chapter for me, you, and The Causemopolitan.

Yours in cause,
Sloane

P.S. Last, you can always follow the latest in cause news that I share on my Twitter (@sloane) and on now also through The Causemopolitan on Facebook.

When I attended the Clinton Global Initiative last week, I told all of my friends (online and off) that it was a dream come true for me. On my life bucket list was the World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative. The idea that I got to attend both while I’m 30 is just remarkable to me.

While at CGI last week, I operated very differently than I do at a lot of conferences. What I mean by that is that while I did network and connect with people, I was very focused on sharing and telling stories.

So when I was there, I decided that while I’m not a full-time journalist, I wanted to be the best version I could using the skills that I have. I thought it would be valuable to live tweet most of CGI because I know for many people in circle and network, they would love to attend, and soak in the information like I did. But most people CAN’T be there, for a variety of reasons.

Something I’ve learned from my time spent volunteering in developing countries and year of travel is that people love to share in the experience. So blogging and taking photos and videos, using Facebook and Twitter, all of these online tools allow many who are just as deserving (if not more so) to be able to go, see and attend events I’m at, simply can’t.

That’s where sharing the experience comes into play. By live-tweeting CGI, I received scores of messages from people saying simply “THANK YOU.” Thank you for sharing the information presented there to us. Yes, CGI had a simulcast, but we all know that for most people watching a video all day while they are at work is not feasible. Pulling quotes and stats from speakers and sharing them in 120 character bites (less than 140 so they could be retweeted and shared further) is a great way to spread the CGI mission – and indeed the mission of any conference or closed-invite event.

My simple JOY in sharing all of those messages with you last week just got even better! Waggener Edstrom, one of the largest and most well-known communications firms in the world, named me one of the top 10 influencer on Twitter during CGI. Which, when you look at the list is kind of ridiculous. I mean the company I’m keeping is large organizations like Ashoka and Echoing Green and then the likes of John Wood and Lance Armstrong.

And then there is me. @sloane.

But when I think about it, good for the little guy. Good for me, and good for Twitter and my online community for being interested enough to share and retweet the content I provided last week. It’s like the biggest high-five! So this is really a thank you to my online communities for sharing the messages from last week and caring enough to follow along.

I think that is what President Clinton meant when he asked, “How can each person and each organization leverage their core strengths in the most effective way, turning good intentions into real changes?”

From the Waggener Edstrom blog, Innovation Conversations:

If you were following the CGI Twitter dialogue last week, you know there was A LOT of content being shared and a lot of messages competing for air time.  I thought it would be interesting to use twendz pro™ to see who were the most influential people in the Twittersphere.

Below are the top 10 Twitter influencers* from CGI gleaned from twendz pro™, who were seen to have a strong voice in their respective areas of influence. Keep in mind, a person’s influence ranking changes day to day, given the fluidity of the Twitter landscape. These people were the most engaged influencers during the CGI because not only did they have a high number of followers, they were actively engaged in questions, replies, shared links, and constantly used hashtags in their tweets. Most of these influencers were retweeted at a high volume, demonstrating their broad reach.

CGI’s Top Ten Twitter Influencers

1. @changemakers (307,137 followers)- Ashoka Changemakers is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation.
2. @ClintonTweet (11,282 followers)- The host of last week’s events, the Clinton Foundation addresses urgent global problems through collaboration with the private sector, NGOs and other government entities. CGI gathers world leaders annually to turn ideas into action.
3. @echoinggreen (330,900 followers)- Echoing Green is a global nonprofit that provides seed funding and technical assistance to emerging social entrepreneurs with ideas for social change.
4. @johnwoodRTR (317,672 followers)- John Wood is the Founder of Room to Read and author of ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.’
5. @witnessorg (273,673 followers)- WITNESS is a human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns.
6. @lancearmstrong (2,654,892 followers) – This iconic, 7-time Tour de France winner and full time cancer fighter is the spokesperson for LIVESTRONG.
7. @sloane (7,721 followers)- A KIVA fellow, Sloane Berrent is a cause-based marketing and social branding consultant who blogs at The Causemopolitan.
8. @VanJones68 (6,217 followers) – Van Jones is the award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He wrote the NYTimes bestseller: Green Collar Economy.
9. @WomenforWomen (4,733 followers) – WomenforWomen International helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives. Zainab Salbi is the ever-inspiring Founder and CEO.
10. @govgranholm (16,325 followers)- Jennifer Granholm is the Canadian-born American Governor of Michigan (D).

I’ve also created a Twitter list with all of the amazing people above that you can follow HERE.

Photo courtesy of Taylor Davidson, Founder of Narratively.

Houston We Have An Error

Let me start by saying this is a rare, but necessary rant stemming from the launch Monday of Pepsi’s Refresh Everything for the Gulf contest, to which I have a project in the running. The contest launched Monday on an unstable platform, lacking key functionality, changing the URLs given to entrants to share after it was launched and without updates to any of the entrants about why the site was unstable, when it would be up and running and why it only worked periodically those crucial first 48 hours.

Interested? Read on. It gets better.

Ok, so Pepsi decides to do something cool this year. They launch the Refresh Everything project. They have $1.3 million to give away in grants every month to projects ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. Voters receive 10 votes they can use daily. After the oil spill, they announce a special contest awarding $1.3 million just to the Gulf. I have, frankly, been torn about the contest from the start. On one hand it’s money to organizations and individuals with good ideas. On the other hand, it promotes this “popular kid in high school” mentality for nonprofits where they have to focus on asking people to vote for them (a simple action requiring nothing monetary) and then the person feels like they’ve helped, but if the organization doesn’t win they spent time and resources on something with a zero return. This is a serious problem for organizations with already thin resources and an industry-wide problem that has been written about extensively, but I won’t touch on here. This is focused on the debacle of the Refresh for the Gulf campaign.

Let’s talk about what went wrong.

1) Launch was disorganized. This is PEPSI mind you. As an proposed project, no one was told at what time the contest was going live (8AM EST? 3PM PST). In fact when I filled out the form, I did get a confirmation screen but no email and no correspondence at all the past month. I assumed my project was accepted but couldn’t be sure. The site only said that voting would launch 8/2, not what time. I saw some projects start promoting in the morning, before it launched telling people to get ready. By my accounts, it went live around 10AM. I was given this extension to use in promoting the site: http://refresheverything.com/votenow (I chose the votenow when I filled out the form, most people put their organization’s name) and then on the live page, this was the shortcode: http://pep.si/cwPSej.

2) Site was unstable the first 48 hours. Everyone who knows about these contests knows that you have to get ahead early. Since one of their pulldown menus is “Current Leaders” projects want to get their fans voting from the very second the flood gates open to get their votes up. This means that marketing strategies are done in advance of the launch if you’re good and know what’s up. For me, this was built into the second series of Gulf Coast Benefits happening on August 25th. When we were building this second series of benefits, there were three calls to action: Attend, Donate or Vote. 100% of this effort is volunteered time from experts in the cause space who agreed to push out the Gulf Coast Benefit shortcode once it was live and use in their own blog posts and across the web. The site worked fine the first few hours, then this happened:

Live Screenshot From URL Pepsi Refresh Provided http://refresheverything.com/votenow

Uhm, sorry? I looked around at other projects I was supporting and some worked, some didn’t I tried the full URL and the shortcode given to me by Pepsi. Same error. A few hours later, everything seemed fine again and so we all thought it was a slight glitch.

We were wrong.

By Tuesday morning, the links we were given were rendered useless by that error page. Let me tell you what I had done in the meantime and where I had put those wrong links:

• Changed my email signature on my three emails inboxes
• Created customized away messages for all three acconts
• Updated my status on the 4 Facebook accounts I’m admininstrator on
• Updated my Facebook profiles
• Updated my Twitter profile
• Updated all three Gchat status messages and my Skype status update
• Voted for 10 projects and left a comment with a link to my project
• Left comments for 10 other projects supporting them and leaving a link to my project
• Emailed 145 of my closest and most high profile friends with a plea for their help with the links
• Written 3 blog posts
• Posted a link to my weekly newsletter going to thousands.
• Posted 50+ direct messages to friends asking for a retweet about my campaign
• Gchated with 10 friends asking them to support my campaign.

(This doesn’t even take into account the personal support I’ve given the campaign, the blog posts I’ve written encouraging people to submit ideas and support the initiative – all of which is frankly, now an embarrassment).

If it sounds like a lot of work. It is. What happens next is crazier.

3) Pepsi Refresh CHANGES the URL for all of the projects, without updating the shortcode. When I realize the links I’ve been given aren’t working, I email my Pepsi Refresh contact, who says she passed my message to tech support and to “hang in there.” A friend who’s working on another project calls me. Her tech support finally got through to someone at HUGE, Inc. (the agency that runs the tech side) and says they are aware there are “major isues” on the platform (another friend who knows someone at Weber Shanwick the PR agency responsible for the PR around the campaign tells me they know it’s QUOTE – A MESS – UNQUOTE) and that the new URL will have gulf. at the beginning. For all of yesterday, my Pepsi shortcode still failed (as I miserably had to sit through watching friends tweet it and post to their Facebook wall a wrong link and as others emailed me saying the message they got Monday had a bad link). So my new URL became: http://gulf.refresheverything.com/ but the Pepsi shortcode didn’t change. (It was only THIS morning that without warning, email update or anywhere on the Refresh blog that my Pepsi shortcode magically changed to http://pep.si/blR7L0).

I’m no SEO god, but this is total bullshit. If you change the URL, it’s dead across the board. You can salvage it with 404 redirects, but as of THIS VERY MOMENT I’M WRITING THIS POST that hasn’t been the case.

What I do know about is people. And let me tell you this, our attention span is short, people got that first code from me and no matter how I email them or message them, that wrong link will continue to be spread around. For my social media rockstar friends that helped me promote the first few days, the reach was well over 100,000 people that I’ve now lost as votes and might never get back. That initial momentum is gone.

4) The Gulf Projects page lacks category or search functionality. Why Pepsi Refresh didn’t copy their existing contest for the Gulf page, I have no idea. But what I can tell you is that the page is useless for any kind of search. See the two boxes below:

Gulf Projects Page

Refresh Projects With Search and Categories

Do you see? No search. Nothing to browse the project. I can’t look for “education” or “St. Bernard” or “Sloane” for that matter. I can’t really find any projects except for searching “Current Leaders” (ERGO) and “Shuffle.” Search is what matters! It is a search and discovery world we live in. How can I find cool projects?

Worse, again I feel duped by Pepsi. From the look and the feel of the other site, I thought we were getting THAT. I put my time and effort into a poorly done rendering of the original.

I’m not taking it personally against my project, what I’m saying is this is NOT good business. Pepsi should have tested the site, they should have put more thought into this campaign and acted responsibly to put out a good product. People, like me, put our trust into Pepsi that the time, thought, energy and resources we’d put into creating these ideas, entering the contest and then promoting it would be honored by them, not thrown together and launched full of bugs. It’s brand loyalty 101. They’ve gone from hero to zero in 48 hours and I had to speak up! Someone has to tell Pepsi that this is wrong.

Overall, to make an analogy, Pepsi Refresh is that person that you had a bad vibe from in the very beginning (picture someone to be friends with, date or work for). But they kept popping up, friends kept mentioning you should know them and they did seem to be doing something cool that you could dig on. So you give them a chance, how it could be so bad after all? Sure enough, just when you let you guard down, BAM, the sky falls. Their true nature shows. You’re left feeling used and worse about them than you did when you didn’t really know them but were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt from afar. Now, up close, it’s obvious that no matter what their intentions they can’t seem to straighten themselves up enough to make up for some act that violated your trust.

THIS is Pepsi Refresh and me. I was willing to support (online and off) and share the message of what they were doing but from a slight distance. I didn’t want to have a project in the running. I had my epic online voting contest fo 2010 (my first time ever entering any kind of online competition ever) and that experience yielded me a trip to the World Economic Forum as a citizen journalist. I’ve been extremely cautious all year not to go to the social media well and ask for votes again. I’ve turned down three paid offers to be an evangelist for others Pepsi Refresh projects and turned down an offer to support Pepsi Refresh at SXSW 2010. Finally, after the oil spill and the announcement of the contest exclusively for the Gulf Coast. I relented. The Gulf Coast Benefit Concert series I co-produced July 1st was amazing, raising $45,000 for fishermen and their families through Gulf Restoration Network. We are at it again August 25th to do the same thing, take giving back to the Gulf on a national scale and hopefully raise $100k for Catholic Charities of New Orleans. I’ve been wanting to find a way to incorporate my past project, Cause It’s My Birthday into an upcoming campaign. I relented. I gave in. BAM!

What should happen? I’m torn. Personally, I want to back out of my project and not talk about it online or ask people to vote for it, but at the same time, I have the whole Gulf Coast Benefit team behind me and that’s not fair to them. Plus, the project is a good idea and as I’m tireless in helping do what I can to support the Gulf Coast, the $25,000 would go to extremely good use. As for the entire platform and Pepsi, I think they should double the winnings and give away $2.6 million. Their error should be turned into an added reward for the region.

I’m curious what YOU think should happen, please leave a comment if you have a good idea to share.

Gulf Coast Expertise: I’m certainly not true born and raised New Orleanian, but I have a long love affair with New Orleans and am deeply passionate about the area and moved my whole life to New Orleans in December 2009. In that time, I co-created a weekly enewsletter (NOLAlicious), joined forces with a local marketing agency, have clients in the greater New Orleans, have contributed to the local webshow dedicated to entrepreneurs, co-produced campaigns to help build awareness and financial support for the Gulf Oil Spill response (Gulf Coast Benefit Concerts, Citizen Gulf, and tirelessly evangelized about New Orleans on my blog, in talks I give and to visitors who have come to town from far and wide. I recognize that support to the area from outside the area is a necessary objective and in no way am detracting from the good intentions of the overall campaign or others who are looking to get involved.

Full disclosure: I am personal friends with one of the Pepsi Refresh Ambassadors. I have contributed to GOOD Magazine (their partner). I have personal and professional connections with the marketing, PR and tech agencies that are advising Pepsi Refresh and was approached by Pepsi Refresh to represent them during SXSW 2010. Basically what I’m saying is that by most accounts, I should keep my mouth shut, but I simply can’t any longer. I hope all of the people representing the entities above understand or can at least respect my decision to write this post.

So that’s what I got. I’d like to thank BoltBus for allowing me to write this as I travel from NYC to DC and providing free wifi and I’d like to thank my friends I consulted about this post for giving me the courage to stand up and write it.

Update: Director of Social Media at Pepsi Responds To My Post

Please welcome me in introducing Answer With Action to the world! Contact me about getting started on your big ideas at sloane (at) answerwithaction.com.

What is Answer With Action?
ANSWER WITH ACTION is about taking big ideas and making them happen. Answer With Action is about inspiring you to take your small business, company or nonprofit to the next level. Answer With Action is about combining online tools with offline engagement and creating a robust conversation about you, your brand, your services, your products, and your events.

Answer With Action is a New Orleans-based integrated marketing, digital media and public relations consultancy. Create campaigns and events that have an immediate impact on your business and learn how building relationships online using new strategies and tools can transform the way you communicate with customers, vendors and donors. Answer With Action creates opportunities for you to learn, adopt and implement new media into your existing business. Answer With Action will help you build cause marketing campaigns to broaden your audience and create more depth and sincere story-telling into your current strategy. We provide short and long-term engagements with clients including website reviews, training sessions, webinars, and speaking opportunities to help your business go to the next level by understanding how your content is consumed and make it accessible to your target audience.

Take a look, below are a sample of the services I’m offering:

Strategic Planning
Answer With Action helps you to strategize, think big and then execute on your ideas to create effective campaigns and more cohesive relationships within your business, company or nonprofit. From campaigns to reinventing how you operate in the online space, let us be your partner-in-crime to take your wish list and put it into ACTION!

Relationship Building
It helps when you have a connector guiding you in the right direction, teaching you how to be a better communicator and reaching into their networks to open doors and ignite conversations for you. Services include community engagement, blogger, media relations and influencer outreach and targeting online and offline individuals and groups to help you grow your brand.

Event Planning
Years of experience in planning corporate events and nonprofits galas (plus volunteer events and salons) taught us the importance of attention to detail, strong relationships with vendors and remaining calm in the face of adversity. Let us create the experience, you keep the memory!

Social Media Branding
Listening, monitoring, engaging in conversation. It all seems like so much to handle! Don’t get lost in the social media vortex. We’ll tell you what to look for (we can build out those tools for you), how to respond, and most importantly how to quantify it all so that your CFO will be on board and go “Yes, I get it!”

Philanthropy Matchmaking
You should feel empowered by what you can do, not guilty for what you can’t. Cause, the art of giving back, doesn’t have to be something on your “one day” list any longer. We’ll work with you to identify target nonprofits to partner with and then help build relationships that matter. From volunteering to board placement, cause marketing campaigns to major gifts, we can help make your gift of giving matter.

Website & Technology Review
You think you know what works and what doesn’t about your website, but you’re not sure. You want a blog but don’t know where to start. You know you should be more fascinated by analytics but you don’t know what to look for. You need help! Let us review your business, company, personal or nonprofit website and give you specifics on what you can do to improve your site, gain traffic and feel confident to tell people where they can find you online.

Keynote & Speaking Engagements
Let’s get your tribe excited and motivated! For a list of speaking topics, check out the next section Speaking.

Spokesperson/Evangelist
From conferences to private events, we can evangelize your product or services and walk away with meaningful contacts who are excited to hear more about your company.

FYI it’s the incredible Jeremy Yuricek at electrocinema that put together my new site, thank you to the incredible Taylor Davidson for connecting us!

When I think back on the beginning of 2010 years from now, I will remember it as a whirlwind. How else can I ever explain moving to a new city, diving into new projects and clients, entering my first contest (EVER) and then winning and finding myself in Switzerland days later for the World Economic Forum then jumping back to New Orleans for festivities already described?

Through it all, my main and most important constant has been the amazing Taylor Davidson and Carl Nelson. Without these two NOLAlicious wouldn’t have happened, would not have grown and I would be experiencing this new city without them – an idea so preposterous I can’t even imagine it.

It’s not just their spirit, it’s their ability to launch new projects, take ideas and make them happen and be tremendous friends.

The influences I’ve had this quarter are many. The Young Global Leaders I met at Davos moved and shook me, and the opportunity to connect with incredible individuals at talks I’ve given this Spring including at Rise Austin and SXSW. But if I had to pick two, it would be Taylor and Carl.

And (selfishly) I want them to stay in New Orleans as long as possible, which means they need support for their projects. Let me share…

Narratively: Taylor’s a true photographer. In high school he wrapped his own film, shot it and then developed it himself. As a photographer he’s shot landscapes and weddings, creative series and had public shows and self-published a book. As a lover of photography, he knows cameras and how to promote photography and has written extensively about how to make money as a photographer, the future of the stock photo industry and where the industry is going. In addition to photograhy, he now offers his services as consulting to share experience and wisdom for other aspiring and established photographers and also online strategy and marketing for brands. His approach is analytical yet thoughtful and I recommend hiring him in any capacity you can.

The Dancing Nomad: Carl is an amazing dancer, to be sure, but the fact that he can teach dance makes his contribution to both New Orleans and the dance community that much stronger. Classes in Lindy Hop and Charleston can be had out of his Shiny Step Studios and he consults to other dancers and dance studios about how to navigate the social web and find a space online to promote their business and services. You can sometimes find him busking on Royal Street in the French Quarter on the weekends or at The Orange Couch in the Marigny. I completely recommend taking one of his classes or hiring him for online services.

Here’s to many more experiences with both of them and to more reflections and posts about those who move and inspire me in the months and years to come.