This evening at Third Tuesday, Mhairi Petrovic lead a talk about “Marketing New Media to Traditional Decision Makers: Overcoming the Challenges“. She had 10 main talking points, which lead to a rousing discussion throughout the group of about 50 attendees. Using your website to do more than list an email address for your company, how to use Google Alerts to see what others are saying about you, joining the conversation online, dealing with feedback and misconceptions about the internet were all discussed. You can read Raul’s post for all of the details (since my MacBook didn’t seem to want to connect to the network).

Earlier that evening I was collecting donations for a Food Bank food drive. As you can see, the 12 boxes I received from the food bank a few days ago are now completely full, and we have 2-3 more cloth bags full of canned goods. It was so nice to see everyone chip in, whatever they could, to support this cause.

Since the silent auction for the Canucks tickets was a little too silent in the bid department, I decided to raffle them off with all proceeds going directly to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. I would like to keep the raffle going for a little while longer to give others a chance to donate. You can purchase entries, 3 for $5 or 7 for $10. Should you wish to have a chance at these (row 25, section 103, this Saturday versus the Edmonton Oilers) please donate online and send me your confirmation and I will assign you a raffle ticket (exactly like the ones that were given out tonight). I will keep this open until 9:00am tomorrow Wednesday, October 22nd.

These are $100 tickets (each!) and you could have them for $5 or $10. Every $1.00 donated allows The Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society to purchase $3.00 worth of food.

Thank you to Reachd, Kate, Kulpreet Singh, and the Vancouver Giants for donating prizes, to Tanya and Monica for organizing the event, Mhairi for her talk, and Jenn Lowther for giving the donations and me a lift.

I will update this post at 9:05am tomorrow with the winning raffle ticket number. Good luck, and thank you!

Update: By special request from Kulpreet (which he can do since he donated the tickets) this will be held over until 10:00am today. You can still donate and enter to win the tickets until that time.

Update: We have a winner! 548247. And for the record… Cameron is actually not very excited…. maybe cause he didn’t win 😉

This morning I woke up to Tweets from several people who were excited to see snow dusted across the tops of the local mountains.

Photo credit: Keira on Flickr

I’m gearing up for another season at Mt. Seymour as well as a trip to Keira’s beloved Mt. Washington to celebrate the start of the season.

Even though it’s still October, when it comes to local skiing, boarding and tubing – where are you going for the best powder experience?

[poll=16]

A part of my job that I love the most is helping others – and since another part of my job is blogging, I love being able to combine the two.

Tomorrow at Third Tuesday I will be holding a food drive for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society on top of providing the live blog of Mhari Petrovic’s talk. To encourage attendees to bring a non-perishable food item to donate, I also have a great collection of prizes to give away. Here’s how it will work:

– Come to Republic tomorrow at 7:00pm for Third Tuesday – “Canada’s Social Media Meetup” – Anyone can attend and the event is free.

– When you arrive you’ll have the chance to donate a food item for the Food Bank

– Should you donate an item you will get a ticket for a prize draw (one ticket per item so bring more to donate and have more chances to win).

Prizes include:
– CARE by Stella McCartney gift pack
– WordPress t-shirts
– (4) tickets for a Vancouver Giants game of your choice this season
– Seth Godin‘s new book Tribes (donated by Kate)
– A signed copy of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s book (donated by Reachd)

– We will also have a silent auction for the Food Bank – the prize is two tickets for this Saturday’s Canucks game (lower bowl!). Leave your bid on the auction sheet and at the end of the night, the highest bidder/donor walk away with the tickets. Big HUGE thanks go to Kulpreet Singh for donating the tickets.

Update: Raincoaster has submitted the following “Practical suggestions for FoodBank donations” which are entirely fantastic: Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

As previously noted, there will be a by-election in BC in the Vancouver-Burrard and Vancouver-Fairview provincial ridings on October 29th. I am currently lining up interviews with some of the candidates for Vancouver-Burrard and was wondering what my readers would like me to ask them.

A few key points: Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Is it just me or are the only laptop bags available for women absolutely huge, or covered in silly retina-burning patterns? (I’ve found the same thing with iPhone cases as well). Last year when I was on the hunt for a new bag to suit my MacBook it took me ages to find something that was a) small b) light c) not “briefcasey”.

I ended up in the purse department of Hbc downtown with a cute little over-the-shoulder purse that perfectly fit my 13 inch MacBook. I’ve found that since then, purses have made the best options – especially since I use a neoprene sleeve for water protection/padding. The only drawback is that they’re not the most durable, especially for carrying such a consistent weight all the time.

I was recently sent a link on Delicious to a Macworld article about ladies laptop cases, “There’s no shortage of durable laptop bags—backpacks, messenger bags, briefcases, you name it—on the market. Unfortunately they’re not always, well, pretty.” They link to the Pocket Full of Puter (which is really cute however still to “briefcasey” for me) as does Kate, who highlighted a bunch of cases back in 2005:

Melissa Beth Designs is a Toronto designer who has her bags in Canadian and American boutiques.  She designs laptop bags as well as iPod cases.  One of my favourites is her “Pocket Full of Puter” bag (shown here).  The article also showcases Acme Made who is the original designer of the Veer bag, Casuri Cases, and Case Closed – a New York bag designer.  I must admit, my affections have moved from the Acme Made bag to Case Closed. [My Name is Kate]

Kate also links to her post on Squidoo, which features a plethora of ladies laptop cases, as well as this one about sleeves. She is definitely a trusted source on the matter.

My faves on that page are “The Veronica London Tote from CareerBags.com” and “The Luca Bella Laptop Bag by Gina B”.

Yesterday I picked up a Nine West shopper tote bag ($18.00 at Bellis Fair, yay America!) and although I underestimated the tapering at the top, it still fit my MacBook. I’m just not sure how long it will last.

I’m really hoping that stores around here start carrying more of these styles that can double as purses so that when I’m walking around with one of my most-prized/most-needed possessions (and main tool for work) I’m not actually advertising, “Hey, I have a computer in here!”