Author: Phil

 I’ve been swamped lately and haven’t taken the time to blog for some time, but this is definately something I have time to stop and share with everyone.

I don’t know Tom very well, our paths cross several times a year at Utah networking and other events (he’s a regular at the CTO Breakfast), but I do know he’s a good man and someone I could be friends with.  About a month ago while we were at the Oncology clinic with Serenity I saw him in the hall and had a quick chat with him.  His son Tobin was in the ICS ward where Serenity had been in-patient a month or so earlier.  Tom explained to me that Tobin had neuroblastoma (a type of brain cancer) and I could tell by his demeanor that things were not going well.  Today I received an email from Tom that yesterday Tobin moved on to a place of no pain and suffering. 

Tobin was diagnosed in December of 2007, only 8 months ago, he would have turned 4 years old later this month. 

There will be a viewing this Wednesday evening with Funeral services on Thursday (Aug 21) Tom has posted details on his blog here.  I hope the Utah geek community can help support the Gregory family the way that it has my family. 

Tobin has a memorial fund at Washington Mutual Bank (ask to deposit into the Tobin Gregory memorial fund at any Washington Mutual). 

This obviously strikes very close to home for me – my heart and prayers go out to the Gregory family.  I can vividly imagine what they’re going through and my heart aches for their loss. 

Share This (AJAX Form)
Gregarious FeedFlare
Retweet This Post

The Serenity Foundation’s first National Bloggers Blood Drive was a big, fun success!  We collected 23 units of blood which, by the numbers from ARUP, calculates to saving 69 lives – not bad for a quickly organized event! 

 I’ve uploaded the photos I took of several donors, they’re available on my Flickr Feed here.

Twelve Horses hosted the event for us and provided food and drinks (unfortunately we found out that RockStars are a no-no after you’ve donated blood – they bought a bunch of them for us and we couldn’t drink them!) they also let us have Rock Band setup so everyone could play during the 5 hours the blood drive was going on.  HUGE thanks to Twelve Horses!  If you need internet marketing done, drop them a line!

We had The Serenity Foundation’s mascot on hand for the whole blood drive, she had a lot of fun meeting everyone!

I’m feeling particularly drained from donating, so instead of reporting on the whole day, I’m going to just tell my story.  Check out the link to my Flickr feed for more pictures of donors.

This was the first time I’ve donated blood since I was a teenager.  I decided to organize the blood drive after my daughter, Serenity, received multiple life-saving blood transfusions while being treated for Leukemia.  As much as I hated doing it, I’m really glad that I was able to and I’m extremely grateful for all those that donate blood – both those that did today (many for the first time) and those that have donated in the past. 

I was really freaked out today about the whole donating thing, literally scared senseless about getting poked with a needle.  It’s amazing how such a tiny thing can cause such discomfort before it’s even inserted!  I put off donating until pretty much the last minute and it was with great trepidation that I filled out the forms and sat down.  Fortunately, Brad Baldwin came in to donate for his first time and I used his bravery to motivate me to get on with it.  Charlie Oliver also came in and became my “blood brother” as we were stuck and drained at pretty much the same time.  Here’s how freaked out I was (click the picture for a bigger image):

(and yes, I’m wearing a Captain Hammer shirt from Dr. Horrible!) Even once the needle was in, it was still a pretty intense time for me. 

 

So, for all those of you who thought I was tough or whatever, there’s proof that I’m a big sissy!  And for those of you who have told me that you’re too squemmish for needles/donating – hey, I did it and so can you!

Our next Blood Drive will be in early October (I’ll be announcing a date at the end of this week).  This time we only had Salt Lake going on, next time in Utah we’re planning on having Ogden, Salt Lake and Provo all going at the same time and hopefully Seattle, Phoenix, San Francisco, New York and many other cities all going at the same time.  If we managed to save 69 lives this time, just think how many lives we’ll be able to save if you help us spread the word!  If you have already installed the widget on your blog, please leave it there, the banner will update with the next date as soon as we have it set – if you don’t have it installed yet, please consider installing it!

Blogging for good and saving lives, quite a concept!

#TSFBlood

Share This (AJAX Form)
Gregarious FeedFlare
Retweet This Post

I’m really excited about this and I think it’s going to be REALLY cool! 

July 30th will be the first quarterly National Bloggers Blood Drive, this is a new project we’re organizing at The Serenity Foundation. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been working on organizing a new twist on blood drives and blogger/twitter meetups.  It turns out that someone else recently did something similar in Austin, TX.  Michelle Greer just hosted a blood drive Tweetup in honor of her sister who has ALL (the same Leukemia that Serenity has).  They had a great response and turnout and I hope that we will as well! 

The big idea here is to make this a national, or even global, effort.  Bloggers around the world unite to save lives!  We’ve already had people volunteer to host local blood drives in 2 other locations: KirstenP wants to host one in Seattle and Michele is working to put one together in Chandler, AZ!  If you’re in either of those locations and want to help out, I’ll connect you with Kirsten and Michele.  If you would like to put one together in your location, let me know and we’ll help you with organization as much as we can. 

The goal is to use social networking, web 2.0 and all these new shiny things to really make a difference!  We’ll post stats about how much blood we collectively donated in one afternoon – and how many lives that blood will be able to save.  During the blood drive people will hopefully be blogging and tweeting the experience, sharing photos of the different locations, registering with Takes All Types, etc.  We should be able to make donating blood into a fun, cool, social experience.

Here’s the key to making this all work – every tweet, blog post, digg entry, stumble review, etc needs to be tagged with a common id.  I’ll be setting up aggregators that will scour the social web looking for entries that are tagged exactly like this: #tsfblood 

TSF is for The Serenity Foundation which is the new legacy project for Serenity.  The aggregators will be set up on the Serenity foundation’s website which is still being built but is at: http://www.TheSerenityFoundation.org once the site is finished all the updates and info about the blood drive and other projects will come from there. 

So that’s all the background info, here’s the info about the Utah drive. 

 July 30th, 2008 from 3pm to 8pm MST at Twelve Horses, 13961 Minuteman Dr. Suite 125.  We’re very grateful to 12 Horses for allowing us to use their offices and their wifi.

ARUP has some pretty cool stuff going on!  Everyone who donates blood at the Utah location (twelve horses) will be entered into two raffles – one is a raffle to win a car (2 year lease free) from Ken Garff Mitsubishi, this raffle goes on all summer and the winner will be drawn after September 12th.  The other raffle is for a $50 gas card at Maverick and will be just for our event – one of the people who donate with us will win the card!  In addition to that we’ll be serving food and watching movies during the event.  If you or your company are interested in sponsoring food purchases, please let me know and we’ll make sure you get plenty of coverage at the drive. 

And here’s the call to action:

Help spread the word!  Please Digg, Stumble, ReTweet and Reddit this post, invite all your friends to the Facebook event page, blog about it, post the plug-in or banner ad where-ever you can, install the soon to come facebook app or just mark your calendar and be a participant!  We should be able to get a great turnout and make a huge dent in the current blood shortage – and make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives!

Click here for all the info including the WordPress Plugin and banner ads for the event.

#TSFBlood

Share This (AJAX Form)
Gregarious FeedFlare
Retweet This Post