During the week of May 24 through May 31st AustinLifestyles.com, The Spring, BHI, and RegistrationAssistant are hosting a visitor from the Netherlands, Paul Geurts of MyNameisE.com. He is bringing the first prototypes of a social networking and business card connector to Austin, Texas. If you’re around Austin next week and want a demo, call Paul at 512–699–4000 or email terry at spring dot net.
My Name is E
The E device can be used at conventions, trade shows, and meetings, in metropolitian areas like Austin and on college campuses like the University of Texas. There are over 1.2 million conventions, trade shows and events in the US every year.
What is the E device? In its current incarnation, E is small white, sleek looking device much like an ipod nano or USB storage device. With E, you can share your contact information and social networks in one simple gesture.
Connector allows you to safely transfer an online business card and your set of social networks in a simple gesture like a fist pump or a high five. Tap two Connectors together and you’re connected. Synchonize Connector by using the built-in USB plug with your PC or Mac. It is ideal for networking at large events and conferences.
During the week that Paul Geurts is visiting Austin, we will be meeting with venture investors, potential partners, customers and forming a team to distribute and promote E throught the US and North America.
There is no setup with connector, it can be used immediately out of the box. It’s equipped with a lithium polymer battery which allows you to use it for 72 hours on a 2 hour charge. It holds two of your E Business Cards (one for personal and one for professional) and connects to RFID tags as well as other Connectors and iphones. It gives you intuitive feedback through LED lighting. The RFID tag feature opens it up the world of “choice based advertising” and integrates these connections in to your social network activity stream. It connects you to objects and to the environment as well as to people.
Started in 2004, African Orphan Outreach works in Kenya to help address the AIDS orphan crisis, which has left nearly 1.7 million Kenyan children orphaned.
With the mission of bringing love, hope and care to orphaned children in East Africa, AOO has helped transform the lives of many children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Through a direct sponsorship program, $25 goes to individual children each month to assist in providing for their basic needs and giving them hope for a better future.In addition to building orphanages, AOO works to ensure children develop skills for income-producing opportunities that will enable them to eventually become self-sufficient and achieve sustainable growth.
For more information on African Orphan Outreach visit their website here.
AUSTIN, Texas (Feb 11, 2009) — OrgSync, Inc (OrgSync.com) is excited to announce its successful campaign to raise $1500 for Charity: Water using social media. On Tuesday, February 3, 2009, OrgSync’s team launched a social media campaign to raise awareness for the importance of clean, safe drinking water around the world. The team of 25 employees used Twitter, Facebook Newsfeeds and their company blog to rally the public behind the cause. OrgSync’s goal was to raise $1500 to donate to Charity: Water during the Austin Twestival event on February 12. Michelle Greer, well known Austin media figure and coordinator for Austin Twestival, says “Big problems like the lack of clean drinking water won’t get solved over night by the few. They will get solved by the many donating in bits and pieces towards a common goal. OrgSync pooled their resources and ended up being one of our top sponsors and I hope more companies follow this approach towards charitable giving.”
Over 175 cities around the world will be uniting on Thursday, February 12, 2009 to increase awareness and raise money for those in need of clean, safe drinking water. “This is a great cause and an opportunity to unite our Austin community with cities across the world to create social good. As a leader I am passionate about leveraging my understanding of social media to help create awareness and provide people the opportunity to give back,” said Fortenberry.
The OrgSync team was successful at meeting its goal of raising $1566 in 24 hours and is excited to contribute 100% of it to Charity: Water. Andrew Katz, Director of Community Relations feels, “It’s very important for our team to give back and get involved in the Austin Community. We feel that by being visibly active in the community, we can be positive role models for our students and clients to do the same!” OrgSync’s successful campaign proves how important online communication and networking is for increasing awareness and uniting individuals for a greater good.
About OrgSync OrgSync is a co-curricular management tool that helps colleges and universities communicate more effectively across their entire campus. OrgSync offers a hosted service that provides the tools needed by campuses to easily organize, assess, track, and manage students and student organizations. OrgSync is currently helping over 100 campuses manage their student co-curricular management, leadership development and communication needs. OrgSync is headquartered in Austin, TX with satellite offices in Dallas, TX, Miami, FL, and Tucson, AZ. For more information about OrgSync, visit OrgSync.com. To schedule an interview with CEO Eric Fortenberry, contact Nicole Andreas at (512) 238-8534 or nicole@orgsync.com.
By rallying together globally, under short timescales, for a single aim on the same day, the Twestival hopes to bring awareness to the global water crisis. Live Earth is the global video partner for Twestival events occuring next Thursday, February 12 in more than 185 cities worldwide to benefit charity: water. Scott Harrison of charity: water discusses Twestival below:
Click here for more on charity: water. For an entertaining, in-depth explanation of Twestival, watch the slideshow below:
My cool app for today has to be “flickriver”; it’s well named as it delivers a river of pictures that just keep on going from flickr. I used their embed badge to create a river of Austin images. It’s fairly awesome.
Paul Terry Walhus and Kimberlie Dykeman interview folks at the Lynn Bender GeekAustin party on Sept 30, 2008 at the Union Park bar and restaurant on West 6th Street in Austin, Texas. Julie Gomoll of LaunchPad, Silona of the Transparent Federal Budget and Austin Aaron are a few of the people interviewed. Stay tuned for the entire series of interviews and some commentary on this night and on Lynn Bender’s terrific idea to start a “BarCollege”. Yes, you heard it right, BarCollege. It’s an awesome hyper extension of the BarCamp concept that Lynn hopes people will steal. They should. It’s an idea whose time has come and one that should spread like the co-working movement.
Here’s the schedule of events for Twestival 2009 at Ace’s in Austin, TX on Feb 12 8:00 Meet and mingle 8:50 A word from sponsors 9:00 Twestival Sumo Smackdown (see video below) 10:00 Presentation by Glimmer of Hope, a non-profit that drills wells in Africa 10:45 Performance by T-Bird and the Breaks, one of Austin’s most highly regarded up-and-coming bands. This 11 piece band won accolades from both ACL’s “Sound and the Jury” Awards as well as the Austin Music Awards. They’ve sold out their past two shows and just released a new album. See video below.
A donation of just $10 can provide someone in Africa clean drinking water for 12 years. Collectively, we can initiate substantial change for developing nations. Here are are a variety of ways you can make this happen:
Twestival is going to be held around the world on Thursday, March 12. It is the biggest twitter festival ever and has been set up to support the billion plus people in the world without clean drinking water. It’s a fundamental cause that needs your support. The Austin event will be at Ace’s on 6th Street at 8 pm on March 12.
Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.
Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying
WASHINGTON — Largely because of the AIDS crisis, nearly one-quarter of all children in Zimbabwe are orphans, a figure that approaches historic levels set in Rwanda after the genocide in 1994, according to a new national survey.
The study, specialists said, shows the accelerating devastation of families in a region that has the highest HIV-prevalence figures in the world. Zimbabwe is the second southern Africa country, after Lesotho, in which a recent national survey has found that roughly a quarter of all children are orphans, which is defined as having lost at least one parent.
“You have to wonder what does this mean for a generation of children growing up as adults,” said Christopher Dell , the outgoing US ambassador to Zimbabwe, in a telephone interview. “You wonder what it does to the future of the country.”
According to UNICEF, there are 143 million children in the world who have lost one or both parents.
Steven Curtis Chapman’s youngest daughter, Maria, who died in May.
In America alone, there are half a million children in foster care, and approximately 120,000 of these children are waiting to be adopted. In many countries, children are too often orphaned or abandoned because of poverty, disabilities and disease; every 15 seconds, a child loses a parent because of AIDS.
27 Apr 2009 by FXB USA
