Song of the day

I managed to make it in to this concert last night - it was incredible! Best show in a looooong tiiiiiime. Tra, laa, laaaaaa!

To all of my friends at Bonaroo:
YOU BETTER SEE THEM OR WE AREN'T FRIENDS ANYMORE.

Home for Life Auction - MAY 27, 2010!

Hi friends:

I am volunteering for an event called Home for Life on May 27 at the Brickworks, in support of Eva’s Initiatives - www.evasinitiatives.com (a local youth shelter with a variety of service programs).

This year, I am a member of the Organizing Committee and we have done some great things leading up to the event. We are aiming to raise $200,000 over the course of the evening and we need your help.

I wanted to share a few opportunities for you too to support this great cause:

ATTEND HOME FOR LIFE - it’s a really great and unique event for new home owners. Stroll through fabulously styled rooms and scoop up top-of-the-line designer housewares, furniture, home improvement services and garden accessories for a good deal and great cause. Bid on home themed, one-of-a-kind experiences, such as a muskoka canoe trip, a Guys Night out adventure, a Golf Package or in-house Indian cooking lessons. The event is on May 27 from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m., tickets are $70 with a $40 tax receipt. More information is available at: http://homeforlife.evasinitiatives.com/auctiongallery.html

Buy a Raffle Ticket ($20 each) – to win 100,000 Aeroplan points (2 flights anywhere in North America). Note: you do not need to be there to win, and I have tickets available.

Enter our Free Contest – we are running a contest for a Blackberry or LG phone if you join our Facebook group, Twitter page, buy a ticket online or submit your contact info to Eva’s. We REALLY want to grow our fan base, so if MONEY is tight then no worries, just take part in our Helps us Build and Grow Contest! More information can be found at: http://homeforlife.evasinitiatives.com/contest.html

Thanks for the opportunity to share and support some of the great work that we are doing!

New MIA

The 411 on blogging to get you places

This is something I wrote for my online PR class it's about an "unconference-conference" that Centennial has been organizing for the past three years and this year I was lucky enough to be a part of it. Here is my reflection on my favourite session...

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend one session at Talk is Cheap; luckily for me, it was a great session and left me content. I attended Parker Mason’s seminar entitled “Music Blogging”, which really interested me because I often blog about music and was hoping he would show us how to post music clips and how to go about disclaimers, etc. The session ended up not only touching on music blogging, but also the importance of blogging about what you know and love, which in turn, will help to promote your career in PR (even if it isn’t a blog focused on PR). This proved very helpful, interesting and motivating.

Parker started off by asking how many people have started a blog and quit, so many people raised their hands. He said, this is because you aren’t blogging about something that interests or inspires you. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to blog about PR to promote your (aspiring) career. Rather, blog about something you love, something that you think about everyday, something that you want to learn more about, something that you feel confidant writing about. This will get your creative juices flowing.

Right away my ears pricked up, because I also took a hiatus from blogging – twice! First, I was trying to solely blog about current events, then I started a “lifestyle” themed blog and picked up the pace until I got to school and we had to start PR-related blogs. Both times I became less inspired to write and my entries were few and far between.

Then I attended this session. Now, I have SO many ideas:

I see the importance of cutting down on the number of tags I use, this is to keep it simple for readers and so I don’t look scattered. I want to appear organized and credible to my readers. It’s been tedious going back through my blog entries and trying to come up with more general tags, but in the end it will make my blog that much stronger and a better read.

I’ve also decided that I really DO want to be able to put my blog address on my resume or business cards. This way potential employers or new contacts will be able to have a glimpse of who I am and what I have to offer outside of formal settings.

What also stuck out to me in Parker’s session, was that he initially started a blog about PR, which he still contributes to but not so regularly because of the aforementioned reasons. Then he decided to blog about what interests him and that is: electro music and sci-fi…. This let to the creation of 199x.org, his new blog.

After the session I checked out his blog and was fascinated to see that he was blogging about some underground music that I have blogged about, but didn’t feel it was appropriate to share professionally. The conclusion I came to from this is: it doesn’t really matter what you are blogging about as long as it is something you actually care about and this will be apparent in your writing.

Lastly, just in case I took ownership of my same blog title/name, SeriousInquiriesOnly on Tumblr, just in case I decide I need a new look and the revamping of my current blog becomes a tad bit too much. Whatever I choose, it’s all super exciting! And I am that much more confident after the Talk is Cheap session.

Now please excuse me while I go blog!

YELP!

Is now in Canada!

I first heard of Yelp! in NYC when I visited my boyfriend and we were looking for a place to eat. But the problem was we had no knowledge of the city or his new neighborhood.

So, we went online entered our address and searched for restaurants near by: there were tons of results. We narrowed it down by reading the reviews of the restaurants and the type of food we were interested in. What is also really cool about Yelp! is that there are default searches, such as drugstores, restaurants and Cafes, to name a few.

You can also install it on your phone where it then uses your GPS location (if your mobile device is equipted with one) tells you what is close.

It's really easy to get sucked into reading the reviews, especially when you find a resto you really like or really don't.

My conclusion: Yelp! FTW!

Song of the day!

It's International Woman's Day!