Lowther Rinse Repeat

 

Bootcamp, BBQ Off and a Blogathon July 17, 2008

Filed under: Events, bootcamp, charity — Jenn @ 10:27 pm

This week has been a particularly busy one.  It is my last week at bootcamp - tomorrow we are redoing our measurements and fitness test and  I’ll post the results and the overall inches lost.  I’ve already noticed a huge difference in my stamina and overall muscle tone.  So much so, that I’ve already signed up for another month.  It starts on Monday - so no break for me, but well worth it.

At work, we like to do off’s.  We started with a soup off, then progressed to a slow cooker off - which we aptly named Rock Out with Your Crock Out.  That one was so good, that we did it twice - the mix of slow cookers and guitar hero is amazingly fun.  To celebrate the final arrival of summer in our fair little city, we’ve decided to do a BBQ off.  As I type, I am parboiling some ribs and am about to make a BBQ sauce to marinate them in over night.

Yesterday, I signed Invoke up for the 2008 24 hour blogathon for charity. Basically, we will be posting a blog post every 30 minutes for 24 hours. This year, the blogathon was arranged by Vancouver’s very own Miss604 and the last time I checked, there were 12 bloggers signed up.  I know Vancouver can do a lot better than this and I encourage any bloggers out there to participate.  I will be writing in Invoke’s blog for the event if you would like to check it out during the event.  The Invoke team with begin posting at 10 pm July 26, and we will upload our last post at 10 pm July 27.

We’ve chosen a charity that helps villages in Mali.  I will have more information on the charity and an actual page where you can donate tomorrow.  It’s going to a great cause, so any bit that you can help with would be much appreciated.

**Update:

Invoke has set a fund raising goal of $1000 for the blogathon.  If you would like to support our efforts - which we would greatly appreciate - you can make a donation to the cause here (the page will be going live later today).  Invoke has chosen a charity that is very close to Invoke’s heart - The Lochmaddy Foundation.  Invoke is connected to this charity through Dario Meli and David Tedman who sit on the board. Through the Lochmaddy Foundation, all donations will be directed to a community in Mali, West Africa. Families in N’Gouraba are working hard to improve their lives and the lives of their children through a special agricultural project. Your donation will empower and enable them to realize increased crops, more family income with new opportunities and a brighter future.

We are collecting donations through Plan Canada who are our partner on the ground there.  I would like to thank them and specifically Heather for all of their hard work in helping Invoke bring this all together.

Bootcamp, BBQ Off and a Blogathon. www.lowtherrinserepeat.com
 
 

last weeks crazy week of conferences, meetings and an awards gala May 26, 2008

Filed under: Events — Jenn @ 6:54 pm

Well last week was crazy topped off with the best Friday night I’ve had in a really long time. The week started off with 6am Hot Yoga at West Coast Hot Yoga. It is definitely a lot harder than it looks and really gave me a hard time - especially when I find out later that I’ve got a fractured foot and am now on crutches:(. Tuesday ended with an excellent Third Tuesday featuring Darren Barefoot giving an excellent presentation on blogger outreach. If you ever have the chance to see Darren speak take it - I’ve seen him a couple of times now and each time he’s been great.

Wednesday afternoon/evening saw me at 3 events. We started the afternoon off at Republic for the TechVibes start up career fair. Amielle, a good friend of mine, was there representing her new start up Tagga, they are still in stealth pre-launch mode, but expect to hear a lot more of them soon. I then headed over to the VidFest/VIGS Opening Reception at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was a great mix of marketers, techies, and video game people. The venue was excellent for the party. It was then back to Republic for Launch Party 4. The evening was a bit quieter than the previous ones, but given the event packed week we had in Vancouver, it is understandable. LP4 had a great group and it was great to see everyone at the events- Nadia, Amielle, Raul, Bradley, Rebecca, John, Tod, Alexa, Rastin, Arash, Monica, Phillip, Vincent, and there are many more that I’m sure I forgot (if I’ve left you off, let me know and I’ll add you:).

Thursday saw partner events going on at Granville Island. The VidFest IPF and Cossette Convergence 2008. I was in meetings all day with VidFest and unfortunately unable to see the great speaker line up at Convergence - Omar make sure that they don’t overlap next year so I can attend both:). After the day of meetings the happy hour was much appreciated. There we chatted with the people that we met all day and got some cross over from the Convergence people. We ended the evening at the new gastown Restaurant Revel. It was really good and great to chat with the awesome girls from Cambrian House a bit more and talk with Omar about twitter and blogger outreach.
Friday saw the final day of VidFest. Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief, WIRED gave an excellent keynote speech on The Economics of Free. As someone who did a double major with Economics occupying half of it, I really found the topic fascinating. The rest of the day was filled with great speakers and sessions. The only downside was that they didn’t feed us. So Dustin, Colleen, Nadia, and I headed over to the pub and grabbed a quick lunch (thanks for grabbing the tab Dustin - you were my hero all day on Friday:).




























Photo Credit: Dustin Sacks Silly Soft Games

We ended the week at the New Media BC PopVox Awards at the Hanger in the Great Northern Way Campus. Invoke was up for the People’s Choice 2008 Award for Best User Generated Content or Crowdsourced Content Site for memelabs.com - and we WON. It was fabulous. Nadia and I had an amazing time and were beyond ecstatic at the honour of winning. We were floating all night (the alcohol may have helped with that as well). I think when we were announced the winners Nadia and I cheered like little school girls. It was AWESOME!! I’m down for winning awards any day. I’ll have pics up of the event as soon as Colleen comes over and fixes my word press for me - for some reason it won’t let me insert images into the post. Thank goodness for techie friends:)
I’ve also covered the awards ceremony at Invoke and meme.
Jenn and Nadia at PopVox









































Photo Credit: Phillip Jeffery - Fade to Play