Monthly Archives: November 2009
It’s a beer foam blocker. A soup strainer. The manliest of face fungi. Now, the mustache is something else – it’s a potent fundraising tool.
CMers in Chicago, London and Toronto are participating in Movember – a month-long celebration of the mustache, which also serves to highlight and raise money for men’s health issues.
We’re showing our commitment by growing mustaches during Movember, the month formerly known as November. It’s a commitment to men’s health, solidarity, and, frankly, awesomeness.
It seems silly, but the cause is serious. 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 18-35. If you are a dude, or know or love a dude, it’s likely your life could be affected.
CMers have collectively raised over $15,000 during the last two Movembers and we are excited to participate for a third year.
But we need your help. We’re raising money through Movember for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. And we’d like you to donate to our cause.
Donate online with your credit card or Paypal account. You can donate generally to a team, or to the individual you think best represents the Movember spirit.
Give to a team in these CM cities:
Chicago
London
Toronto
Or donate to an individual CMer. Here’s why some of us chose to grow a ‘stache this Movember:
Tim: For the third consecutive Movember I’m archiving my facial hair growth patterns in hopes of finding secrets of the universe. (Donate to Tim.)
Rob: I have two reasons for doing this. The charity is very worthwhile while being incredibly easy to do with social media. Second, my wife actually thinks the moustache is hot because she grew up in the middle of rural Ohio and is, sadly, damaged by the experience. (Donate to Rob.)
Greg: Recently shaved my hair down short. How to best accent my new look? Shaved head + Fat ‘stache = BADASS. And, cancer runs in my family, so I wanted to do some good. Suck it, Cancer. (Donate to Greg.)
DJ: Cancer runs in my family, so I wanted to give back using one of my best skills: being able to grow a luxurious, testosterone-soaked handlebar mustache. Dig it. (Donate to DJ.)
Sabrina: What better way to build awareness then to see a city full of ‘stache and a donation page full of cash? (Donate to Sabrina.)
Johnathan: Cancer in any shape or form is an emotional and physically taxing thing to deal with, and being part of a potential solution is what motivates me to help. Plus, I’ve always wanted to look like a pirate (even though my mustache takes forever to grow). (Donate to Johnathan.)
Jason: I feel like I should be wearing a Vote for Pedro shirt, due to the adolescent nature of my current moustache. It is an embarrassment I wear with pride, knowing it pales in comparison to what my Dad endured as he (successfully) fought off prostate cancer a few years ago. This is such a great cause, and growing a moustache in this day and age is a REAL conversation starter. Please donate to Prostate Cancer Research, and if you’re so inclined use this link. (Donate to Jason.)
Richard: Growing a mustache is something of an austerity, but nothing compared to the ordeal of having to endure something as painful as prostate cancer. I wouldn’t really know how that feels, and hopefully never will, but with the odds at 1 in 6 I figured I’d join in the effort to try and find a cure. (Donate to Richard.)
Jarrod: I’m wearing this dead squirrel on my lip to support my Dad who suffers daily because of this indiscriminate blight. Please donate what you can to Cancer Research. (Donate to Jarrod.)
Critical Mass is all about compelling user experiences. And what experience isn’t accentuated by a thick mass of man-fuzz across the upper-lip?
Even the anti-mustachio crowd can get involved, donating on behalf of our poor significant others who tolerate our hairy smooches during the month. Let’s face it: there’s no excuse not to get involved.
Please show your support this Movember. Thanks!
People go to high school reunions to evaluate other people. I pick evaluate because ‘judge me’ seems a little harsh but lets face it, we are a fickle society.
I tend to play amateur psychiatrist so the thought of walking around a room of people I used to know and of whom I have 20-year-old opinions of was appealing. I looked forward to forming new, cynical & unbiased opinions. Enter Facebook.
I didn’t receive an invitation to the reunion. I was friended by HEHS Class of 1989. Within two weeks I went from having zero high school friends to about 50. That’s a good thing, right? Not so fast. Would Facebook remove the curiosity factor? Would it jade me more than I was already jaded?
I attended the reunion a few weeks ago. It was made up of two separate events. On Friday night was what was billed as a Pre-Reunion Reunion at the restaurant of a classmate. Cash bar, no name tags (which lead to me saying “Who the hell is that?” a lot) and good food. The reunion itself was the next night. Open bar with name tags (but $90 to get in). What is the difference between the two? Friday night I got home at 3:00am. Saturday night I got home at 11:00pm. Enough said.
As a Copywriter in the advertising and marketing industry, having good ideas is the foundation of my day-to-day. But for many organizations, good ideas save lives.
Starting Saturday, 11/14 and for one week, I’m going to donate ideas to Idea Aid – the world’s first online global brainstorming benefit. In addition, Critical Mass will harness its creativity for the cause through flash-brainstorms.
For Idea Aid’s inaugural year, participants around the globe will identify solutions to help Heifer International raise $1 billion annually to eradicate global poverty.
From the latest press release:
According to the World Bank, 1.2 billion people – 20 percent of the world’s population – survive on less than $1 a day. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day and 300 million of them are children.
Heifer International has said that one thing that makes a difference is, indeed, money – but at this point, there’s no single way to efficiently and consistently generate necessary funds for the cause.
Critical Mass is signed up. Will you participate too?
Twitter announced last week that it would be using CT3 (community, crowdsourced and collaborative translation) to make its content available in the FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish) group of languages. They’re stepping on ground that brought some trouble to LinkedIn some time ago. Despite specific website approaches, the CT3 matter will be sure to generate a lot of debate in the times to come. So it would be nice to start understanding the factors that surround it.
The first factor is resistance. Professional translators may feel their market is at risk. To be honest, as a web developer, I felt the same in the past, when potential clients started considering the option of having their nephews, who “knew a bit of HTML”, build their corporate sites. So they probably question how people, who are not even professionals in the language area, can do their work for free, especially for-profit corporations. On the other hand, this kind of initiative can even bring more work for language professionals, as it can create opportunities for proofreading content which didn’t exist before.
On the CT3 defense side, it’s said that costs are not the motivation of crowdsourcing. CT3 is desired because it’s faster, better, wider and democratic. The article about LinkedIn I mention above goes deeper into this discussion, but I’ll try to summarize it below.
It’s faster: whoever has worked with contracting services for a specific business knows how long and painful the process can be. Vendor selection, contract process, prototype design, implementation and tests can take months. CT3 can bring results in a fraction of this time, as you can check out in this article about the Facebook experience.
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