Gulf Coast Benefit Concerts on CNN’s iReport...

A huge thank you to Jill Foster, Geoff Livingston, Dan Morrison, and May Yu. Through Citizen Effect’s #CitizenGulf campaign, they came to explore the Gulf Coast, meet with nonprofits and find out how they could best help the efforts going on here for recovery and to encourage citizen philanthropy (a favorite topic of mine you all know).

Since I’m smack in the middle of co-producing tomorrow night’s Gulf Benefit Concerts (85 and counting in 11 countries), I couldn’t be with them during the day as they went to St. Bernard Community Center, to visit Catholic Charities and other wonderful groups, but we did get together for dinner last night at Cochon to talk about giving, New Orleans, my experiences here (and frankly travel stories I hadn’t told in awhile including tales from my Burma trip last summer).
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Nationwide Gulf Benefit Concerts July 1st to Benef...

I’m really excited to officially announce that I’m part of the team producing a series of nationwide benefit concerts July 1st benefiting the fishermen & wildlife affected by the Gulf Coast Oil Spill called Gulf Coast Benefit Presents Coast to Coast. < -- VISIT THE WEBSITE!

What to help and GET INVOLVED? Read more or skip to the get involved part!

Along with Nic Adler, owner of The Roxy on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, CA; Megan Jacobs of The Roxy, Casey Phillips, talent buyer for venues including Tipitina’s in New Orleans and Viper Room & The Mint in Los Angeles, and a terrific support team, we have over 25 venues on board nationally to support this effort with 100% of proceeds going DIRECTLY to the Gulf Restoration Network (@healthygulf on Twitter) and their community-based effort called Gulf Future.

Daryl Hannah, Dave Faustino, Ed Begley Jr., Rebelution, Nicky Avalon and venues like The Roxy, Viper Room, Spaceland, The Echo, The Mint, Fais Do Do, The Comedy Store, Tipitina’s, Press Room and more are involved have enlisted their efforts to help! Volunteers in each city and music industry heavy-hitters are jumping in. Now it’s YOUR TURN!

Is it ambitious to gather music venues around the country to donate ticket sales on July 1st and create an online giving platform that encourages donations to the relief efforts? You betcha. But the people, wildlife and wetlands affected need our support and we’ve combined efforts and networks to make this successful and meaningful for those in the Gulf Coast.

Revenues from ticket sales will be donated to help the fishermen and their families along the Gulf Coast cope with this disaster and aid wildlife and wetlands restoration for the Gulf Coast. Over 25 venues have been confirmed and more are being added every day. Artists performing include national as well as local acts across the US.

“We know through music and the generosity of people that we can help make a difference in the Gulf Coast.” Adler says. “We hope this inspires others to make a donation, attend an event and get involved.”

The wetlands and wildlife are in desperate need of our attention now and we can’t wait for BP to take care of those in need. Many of our fellow Americans will have no livelihood, are preparing to leave their homes and are now lining up for food handouts. With hurricane season on the horizon, there is reason for great concern and it’s crucial the affected communities be prepared for the worst.

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Building Community Using the Next Generation of We...

I was recently invited to speak at the Association of Fund Raising Professionals (AFP) Fund Raising Day NYC. It’s their largest single-day conference dedicated to the development and fund raising professionals and a huge honor. I was invited into the Internet and Technology track and presented on emerging technologies and tools that nonprofits could use to help fundraising online.

Full details:

Emerging Channels, Emerging Prospects: Building Community Using the Next Generation of Web Marketing and Social Networking Tools.

Questions like “Why aren’t you on Twitter? What’s your Facebook or YouTube strategy? How do we monetize our investments in social media?” are increasingly common. It’s not enough to just have a presence. Organizations need to have clear direction for maximizing their social media resources. Two experts in this emerging field will provide real world case studies for devising effective social media strategies and integrating these channels into your sustainable marketing efforts and what this all means for your budget and staffing.
You’ll Learn:

* To look at social media as part of your overall donor cultivation strategy.
* Strategy tips and case study examples for fundraising campaigns that have been a success, those that haven’t and the why & why nots.
* Tech tools, APIs and tools from the insider’s toolbox to use at your organization, no matter the size or bandwidth.

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We Need Your Vote! NOLAlicious is a finalist for T...

NOLAlicious has been named one of three finalists for best e-newsletter in New Orleans in The Gambit’s 2010 Web Awards. Click here to vote for NOLAlicious and check out the rest of the finalists where so many of our friends are nominated in other categories.

You can read more about the nomination on our Tumblr for NOLAlicious.

As many of you know, NOLAlicious is my baby. It’s my passionate side project. It’s one of my favorite things about 2010 and a creation I am deeply proud of. It’s a collaboration effort with two friends that is a daily learning experience and opportunity to share all the things we love about New Orleans with the rest of the world. To think of how far we’ve come in six months is incredible!

To those who don’t know…NOLAlicious is a free weekly email newsletter created with collaborators (and fellow new-to-New Orleans residents) Taylor Davidson and Carl Nelson. We give you five things to do, eat and see around town every week, through the eye of the tourist and the soul of native. We also give you job and travel tips and some pretty awesome photography each week too (if I may say so myself). It’s a little bit for everyone and for the native New Orleanians, recent transplants, expats living around the country, to those who have visited once and got bitten by the bug, NOLAlicious is your way to take a little bite out of New Orleans every week and explore, just like us.

Win or lose, we’ll keep sending the newsletter every Tuesday, but man, I really hope we win because I KNOW it would mean so much to everyone involved and we promise to keep growing and listening to YOU and giving you the best content we can find and deliver each week. Plus, we have new features launching soon that are amazing, so what do you say, can we have your vote?

Here’s what you can do:

1) VOTE
2) Post to your Facebook wall or Twitter this message:

I just voted for @NOLAlicious to win @The_Gambit ’s web awards for best e-newsletter. Your turn! http://bit.ly/GambitWebAwards

3) TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

Thanks everyone, and keep sending in tips for what we can do to make NOLAlicious better and ideas for what to feature. I love reading our emails from the community!

Launch Fest 2010: The Art of Storytelling...

The week between Jazz Fest weekends is known to be the stomping grounds for fests of all kinds and this year was no exception. Fests rule the day when the weather is nice but not too sticky here in New Orleans! I was asked to give a talk at a newcomer to the Fest scene” Launch Fest: A fun conference for serious entrepreneurs. In the social entrepreneurship talk on Tuesday I gave a talk called: The Art of Storytelling. I talked about how storytelling is the new elevator pitch and showed examples of compelling stories on the market as well as gave tips, tricks and resources for everyone to discover and cultivate their own story around what they do, why they do it and who they are.

Reference websites from my slides:

• Kiva
• Vittana
• Microsoft BizSpark
• Microsoft Give Camp
• Microsoft DigiGirlz
• Charity Challenge Weekend
• Donate Life PA
• Step Up To Speak Up
• Donate Life Pennsylvania Facebook
• Walt Disney World Public Affairs
• Disney’s Friends for Change
• Citizen Effect
• Do Something
• Volunteer Spot
• KaBoom
• Story Navigation
• More Than Myth
• Answer With Action

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Join Me TONIGHT 7pm EST: The 21st Century Classroo...

Join me tonight at 7pm EST for online discussion about education and technology, called The 21st Century Classroom. I’m really excited to be moderating this conversation!

Log in and participate in the conversation at 7pm!

Joining me in the chat tonight are:
Adelma Stanford, Social Media Marketing Strategist, Promethean USA: @prometheanUSA
Karen Bantuveris, CEO, VolunteerSpot: @volunteerspot
Kevin Prentiss, Founder, Red Rover: @kprentiss
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Introducing Answer With Action...

I have an exciting announcement to make! My marketing and strategy consulting website is now live. It’s been a long dream of mine. Answer With Action started as a boutique networking group in Los Angeles for socially conscious young professionals offering volunteer events and networking opportunities with my good friends Alexa Brandt and Joey Soto. Putting action to our ideas about how to get people more involved with cause inspired us. This new direction is really exciting for Answer With Action and the sky is the limit, but I wouldn’t be here today with those two amazing ladies and I’ll never forget that. So there you go! Answer With Action.

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.
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First Quarter Review: Changes and Upgrades To The ...

This is the first of three posts reviewing the first quarter.

Life goes by fast and I’ve found if you don’t stop and smell the roses, well, it passes fast and it’s hard to look back and remember things. Remark on them. Tell those you care about how much those moments COUNT for something.

A friend of mine told me of an exercise where she takes the printout of her calendar and at the end of each month writes on the back what she is most proud of, who she is happy she connect with or who impacted her the most that month and then looks forward to the next month.

I’ve been wanting to do that for every month of 2010, which of course didn’t happen. It was a whirlwind and instead of fighting the wind, I succumbed to it. I was wrapped up and twisted into post-Davos, Superbowl, local election, Mardi Gras mayhem, trips to Los Angeles and SXSW and wouldn’t you know, a truly terrific cold and cough that once I recovered from, I was staring down the face of mountains of work. The work I love! It just leaves little time to post, to write, to share.

No matter. I can go back and recount what happened a few weeks ago, a few months ago. I’m no less busy now, but sometimes you just have to force yourself to MAKE time. This is me making time.

So looking back on the first three months of this year, I’ve decided to break the posts into three parts:
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25 Free Educational Resources Online...

Secret revealing time! My early usernames on sites (before we all went back to using our real names) was InfoJunkette. Why? Because I love learning. I always have. I’ve always been more of a applicable learner. More of a learner on my own and for the joy of learning versus school and tests. When I saw yesterday’s New York Times special section, Education Life, called Downloadable Education, it awakened something inside of me that was alert and alive and excited. Learning from elite universities online is nothing new to me. Listening to Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership Series has been a weekly habit of mine for years, as have countless other resources and tools.

This excitement towards learning is inside all of us. And thanks to the Internet, it’s free (or close) and available when and how you want it. I’ve listed first the resources from The New York Times this weekend (aggregated together from a few articles) and then a list of my personal favorites. If you have one you’d like to share, please leave a note in the comments!

What They’re Watching (Top YouTube classes online):

• Moral Reasoning 22: Justice Harvard
• Integrative Biology 131: General Human Anatomy University of California, Berkeley
• Physics 10: Physics for Future Presidents University of California, Berkeley
• Physics 1: Classical Mechanics M.I.T.
• Introduction to Basic Electronics Indian Institutes of Technology
• SIMS 141: Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business University of California, Berkeley
• Computer Science 106A: Programming Methodology Stanford
• Mathematics 18.03: Differential Equations M.I.T.
• Modern Theoretical Physics: Einstein Stanford Continuing Studies
• Math 18.06: Linear Algebra M.I.T.

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NOLAlicious Logo Contest – Enter Today!...

My weekly newsletter about New Orleans, NOLAlicious, is running a contest that ends tonight and I wanted to share the details.

Here’s what’s up. We’re stepping it up! We’re going big. To do that, we are looking first for a spanking new logo. After that we’ll be revamping our website and starting to include select advertisers into the site, as they make sense to our content. We’ve been fielding requests, and we wanted to get our ducks in a row first, and plus grow our base, before taking this turn.

So what’s up with the contest? Honestly, Carl, Taylor and I all have design experience to varying levels, but we wanted to make this collaborative and inclusive. After all, all three of us have struggled and continue to grow into our own careers but aren’t that far away from the tooth and nail of getting your name out there. So we thought a logo contest, for an up and coming artists or a small firm would be great exposure. Or an introduction to us to possibly reward the website redesign.

I posted before about website work and the post was successful in awarding the website redesign to two design firms.

For today’s logo contest, reminder it ends tonight. Here’s the deal:

* Send all submissions in .jpeg or .png format to editor@nolalicious.com. Submissions close Monday at 5pm CST. It’s an open platform and we’re looking for a creative and fresh take on what you see when you think “NOLAlicious.”
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