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!

No bigger compliment than a Tweet

Last night I went to an opening party in Liberty Village for WIDEawake Entertainment, a new Toronto-based record label, also the parent company of Death Row Records, founded by Suge Knight and Dr Dre. There is actually major controversy and lawsuits surrounding them and the woman, Lara Ann Lavi who apparently started WIDEawake. (BTW, If you go to their under construction website, all that is posted on the site is three copies of the Court's rulings - STRANGE.)

Aaaaaanyways, the event was really fun and well organized and the office space is beautiful! But two interesting I reconnected with a few PR ladies I met over the years, but I was really excited to run into one in particular, Chrissy, Founder and Principal of VOCAB Communications. We rehashed old memories from when we used to work together as Beer Girls for Molson. Then I commended her on her career and told her I've been following her progress and that her client list is impressive! Chrissy blushed and said she was really flattered and said we should stay in touch. I thought to myself, ten years ago, telling someone that you are following their internet presence wouldn't have been a from of flattery.

Then there were these wonderful jewelery makers SOOS Rocks, they were promoting themselves by giving a piece of jewelery to everyone at the party. We even got to choose out of hundreds of pieces. Later on in the evening, I browsed passed the jewelery table and saw another sexy necklace, and the lovely girls just gave it to me - SWEET! So I Tweeted about them and told them. Again, they were SO grateful and asked my name and told me to email them.

The point I am getting at is social media has become a language in itself AND I would even dare to say it is one of the highest forms of flattery. Crazy!

New music Tuesday

Off the Hook Mixtape - Telephoned

My wonderful boyfriend Dropbox'd me this mixtape last week, and I finally got around to syncing my iPod on the weekend. It is off the hook!

Telephoned is made up of my fave DJ, Sammy Bananas and the magnificent voice of Maggie Horn, and together they just tear up this 18-track mixtape.

Get on it.

I hope you haven't heard

Canadian singer and song writer, Gordon Lightfoot DIDN'T die!

But on Thursday, February 18th, 2010, news that he had was all over my Twitterfeed and Facebook. The rumor may have originated from "a tweet out of Ottawa," but there is no way to know. Bottom line, he is still kicking it on earth and you cant believe everything you read on the internet.

It's amazing how fast information travels over Web 2.0. Some even that say a major revolt was was averted in Iran by Michael Jackson's death, as stated by Queen Rania. Remember last week when Kevin Smith Twittered about how Southwestern airlines said he was too "fat to fly". Or the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21 was all over YouTube they finally had to take the clip down.

As much as I love social media and the internet sometimes I wonder what's to become of us...

I'm in this video

Live and learn

Boy, do I feel like this year has gotten off to s slow start. It's been super hard to get motivated to do anything and everything,working out, homework, socializing, I KNOW I'm not alone. I wish I could blame it on the snow, but anyone in TO knows there isn't any. I have taken a few steps to help jump-start the ol' motivation train and wanted to share:

1. Doubled your dose of vitamin D
2. Limit the amount of television you watch per day
3. Limit your internet creeping, being a voyeur is depressing
   
4. Sign up for some workout classes or join a gym and actually go
5. Be social, plan dinner with friends and if money is an issue, take turns hosting
6. Take part in networking events in your industry

Hope you enjoyed my pointers!

Song of the day

Happy Tuesday!

And on that note, I would like you all to meet "Happy Socks".

I was first introduced to them in June 2009 by my super cool boyfriend and the love affair has been blazing strong ever since. Unfortunately, they aren't yet easily found in in Canada. GOTSTYLE does sell a limited selection, but being a menswear store, they don't have small sizes. If all else fails, you can order them online and I recommend it, the socks are sooo pretty and soft and perfect to wear under your UGGS because they are nice and thin.

So now you know.

Featured Valentines sockies!

Mother nature strikes again

On Tuesday, January 12^th, 2010, Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake – 7.0 in magnitude on the Richter Scale. The quake that struck less than ten miles from the capital city of Port-au-Prince was followed, so far by 12 aftershocks. Buildings all over have crumbled and collapsed everywhere killing and trapping hundreds of people; just 15 days after the earthquake a man was rescued who said he was trapped by an aftershock.

No one knows the death toll yet, but some estimates are as high as 200,000 people. Countless children have found themselves orphans in a matter of minutes, not to mention the horror of a child dying before its mother or father. January 12^th, 2010 was definitely a day that reaped horror upon the island of Hispaniola.

An army of aid workers has flooded into Haiti, but the relief is not coming quick enough. Displaced citizens are so hungry they are flooding the food and water trucks; Canadian Troops have been sent to Haiti to help maintain control of the food distribution and that everyone gets their share.

On another note, Royal Caribbean Cruise line has taken a rather opposite approach by docking in Haiti on a private beach just 60-miles from Port-au-Prince. The decision to keep the scheduled stop just six days after the earthquake divided passengers on the ship and only about half ended up on the beach. Despite the fact that the ship dropped 40 pallets of goods, this controversial move has really tattered the cruise line’s reputation.

More recently, Haitian police have charged ten American with child trafficking in this disastrous country. On Friday, these ten members of a US charity group were arrested while trying to cross over the border into the Dominican Republic with 33 children without proper papers. These children who survived the quake ranged in age from two months to 14 years, as it turned out, all have living family members in Haiti. The New Life Children’s Refuge, an Idaho-base charity claimed they were taking children to temporary shelter.

Despite these two negative happenings in Haiti just discussed, I think I think the world has done an amazing job at coming together to help a country in dire straits. But it is also important that we remember the job isn’t even close to being finished yet. If you recall the major earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, the country still hasn’t completely been restored to its original state after aid efforts pulled out.

If you would like to donate to Haiti, here are some acknowledged organizations that you can donate to:

§ World Vision

§ Red Cross

§ Doctor’s Without Borders

New Year, New Leaf.

OK! Happy new year! I have decided to jump back on the wagon, goal: one post a week.

Stay tuned for more... :p