Give Cancer the Bird! Video for the Cause

I have had the pleasure of working with this awesome organization and event since last Aug/Sept of 2008. I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as I enjoyed making it and working with these wonderful people. Here it is... Check it out!





Planet Cancer, an advocacy and support community serving young adults with cancer, will be having their annual fundraising event, Flamingo-a-Go-Go, on May 2 in the courtyard atrium of the Monarch Luxury Living Apartments on 5th Street in downtown Austin. This event is expected to draw over 800 attendees, making it the largest fundraiser to date for the organization. Their signature plastic pink flamingos, pink boas, and pink flamingo-tini drinks will be tickling everyone pink.

Flamingo-a-Go-Go is a one-of-a-kind party and Planet Cancer’s only fundraising event for the year. Planet Cancer serves young adults with cancer between the ages of 18 and 40. This is the only cancer demographic that has not seen improvements in survival rates since 1975. Planet Cancer offers three program areas to support young adults with cancer: online support through its Web site (http://www.planetcancer.org/); face-to-face support through its exemplary weekend retreat programs; and advocacy and awareness efforts around the country.

"Flamingo-a-Go-Go is a perfect expression of Planet Cancer's irreverence and spirit," says executive director Heidi Adams. "It's an UN-gala—fun and quirky, and our own contribution to keeping Austin weird while raising awareness about young adults with cancer."

Local music icon Kasey Crowley, herself a young adult survivor of cancer, will perform live at the event, and DJ Manny will provide live entertainment. Catering will be provided by several local eateries, including Whole Foods and Moonshine. A silent auction will be held with an array of items, including a trip to the San Diego Zoo, complete with airfare and hotel accommodations; and a weekend at a Lake Travis lake house retreat.

The guest list this year includes Eric Shanteau, an Olympic Swimmer who learned he had testicular cancer just before the 2008 Olympics but, under doctor supervision, delayed treatment to participate in the games. On March 11, the rehabilitated Shanteau broke the pool record in the 200-meter breaststroke at the Austin Grand Prix. Other guests include, Tyler Sieswerda, nightly news anchor at KVUE Austin, and Paul Carrozza, founder of RunTex. This year’s party is sponsored by SKYY Spirits and Mix 94.7. Other corporate and media sponsors include Hulsey IP, Austin Ventures and News 8 Austin. The full list of sponsors can be viewed on the Flamingo-a-Go-Go Web site (www.FlamingoAGoGo.com).

More details - including sponsor packages and online ticket sales - are available at www.FlamingoAGoGo.com, and the most current updates on the event can be found on Facebook at www.causes.com/flamingoagogo. You can also follow the Flamingo on Twitter at #flamingoagogo.

About Planet Cancer: Planet Cancer is a non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas, that provides a one-of-a-kind community for young adults between the ages of 18 and 40 with cancer. It is a national leader in advocacy for this forgotten demographic. Founded by Heidi Adams after her own diagnosis with bone cancer at age 26, Adams experienced firsthand the void in support and resources for young adults. Planet Cancer is a founding member of the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF)-sponsored LiveSTRONG Young Adult Alliance, a national coalition of organizations working to improve survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer.


Credits for photos, music, and audio special effects are listed here and on the video. This is everything I used, but not everything made it into the final cut for class. I am still working on a longer version for the event, so this version may be edited at some point. I'll try to keep it as true to original form as possible!

Just a short note here: This video was made using Animoto. An awesome tool, but there are a few quirks. You can't see a preview of how it is going to turn out and you cannot control the timing of the picture placement. This was the 2nd program I tried and it turned out great, but the lack of control and editing can be frustrating! Good luck.

So I'm working on my Video Project this weekend and I found this funny video. It made me laugh because my husband swears that a few months ago, he was getting out of his car, and the "Google" videographers were trolling through the neighborhood. Now when you enter my address, you see a blur of a person in front of my house that my husband swears is him, because he saw them as they were passing by.



How do you feel about Google Earth and Google Maps having a specific picture of your home for anyone in the world to see? What happens if they happen to drive by on an off week that you haven't mowed your lawn? How long with those images stay there?



For example, I was looking up an address for research on a potential business opportunity, and unfortunately, this was the case. The person's house was what seemed to be in a state of disrepair. It was not kept up and quite scary. Thank goodness my lawn was clean cut the day they drove through our neighborhood!! But what are the implications for Google? Are they putting innocent by-standers on the chopping block as they mosey on through your neighborhood? Have you checked out your lawn on Google Maps? Maybe you should. And what can we do to change the images if we aren't happy with those on the web? What if we don't want images of our homes on the internet anyway? What rights do we have?

I think they should at least be required to notify the home owners, renters, tenents, etc. prior to the "drive by-s" that result in permanent (?) images being available on the web.

Take a peek...






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE&feature=fvsr

Blogging Busy

One thing (among many!) for sure that COMM4352 has taught me is that blogging on a weekly basis is hard. I completely understand the excercise of blogging on a regular basis. I totally believe in the necessity of it in the PR field and in just about any field these days, but dang, it is hard to do if you aren't already in the habit of doing it all the time. It gives me a better insight to the time commitment of bloggers, too; and a greater understanding of how we, as PR professionals, need to appreciate their time and effort in publishing meaningful information.

The power of the effective and popular blogger is an important thing to keep in mind, especially if these are the people to whom we need to be able to reach our target audience. They hold the key to distributing meaningful information, but their sensitivity to being "pitched" to is a little confusing and daunting.

I get that blogging and commenting is about joining the conversation, but at the same time, don't bloggers have a responsibility to their audiences? Don't you think that they should be more accessible? There are so many "rules" about reaching out to bloggers, I have to wonder how much valuable information is being lost because bloggers are too sensitive to being pitched to so no one really tries? I think that if in the future, I become a popular enough blogger to have a large audience, I will advertise that I am approachable, and pitch-to-able. Let them pitch to me and I will accept and decline that which I choose, just the same as other writers do. However, at the rate I'm going, I'm lucky to get my 2 posts in for the week. I'm just too blogging busy!

Sorry Second Life, My First Life is Already Too Full

I don't get it. And I'm not sure that many other people do either. With technology moving and evolving at lightning speed, and life as we know it is more productive and efficient as a result, who has time to have a Second Life? My first life is already so full, that I can barely keep up. That and it seems to me that you sort of have to have a forum of people to really do anything on Second Life, but not a single person I know is on there. The population on Second Life are supposedly gamers and the (highly) technically savvy, but my husband is a gamer, he makes video games, and I have had to tell him what the heck this is all about. He doesn't know anyone on Second Life either. Maybe it's a generation gap, but really? We aren't so far out of the younger "Internet" generation that we don't have a lot of friends that would supposedly be on Second Life. We are also not at all so technically un-savvy that Second Life would be one of those elusive technologies that we would never grasp, except that I really am not grasping the full reasoning or so-called popularity of it.

I think with the popularity of Facebook and Twitter growing by leaps and bounds, I'll stick to the conversations I have with my friends, over conversations that I may have with "furry" people or Avatars that may or may not look like the person with whom they are associated. It seems a little weird, and maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. But I like my normal conversations with my friends and collegues. At least this way, I know with whom I am talking. See ya later Second Life. I'll keep my first.

Let me know if anyone can give me a real life example of how Second Life can help me or make my life easier. I'm all ears.