everything designed

Fair Trade Market – September Weekends in November @woodlandschurch

Here’s the scoop from “Trade as One”: We’d like to say they were our idea, but really we just kept hearing the same thing from people at event after event. Women were determined to change their spending habits, and buy their olive oil, chocolate, coffee, and tea through only fair trade channels, but they didn’t know where to get them. So we set up the program to allow any church or coffee shop to keep fair trade items in stock all year round. It’s a great way to make fair trade convenient. Now we have churches all over the country that are known in their communities as the place to go for Fair Trade in their communities. We think that’s pretty cool.  It’s about changing habits.  Host a Trading Post in your area. Trading Posts are about giving people quick, easy, convenient ways to change their spending habits.

Interested? Email kevin@tradeasone.com to get more info.

Auto dealership photo from wired.

Revolutionary Change and Brilliance for $1
What if we all pitched in $1 each and hired Seth Godin and Malcom Gladwell to speak at a live stream “tv, radio, internet” event in Chicago reviewing the next 3-5 year strategy and business plan for The Big Three automakers. I say yes. It is time for GM, Chrysler and Ford to hire the best. Or better yet we can “lease” them for a 2-day summit. Leasing is always better, except when it’s not.

Or we can save our money if they will just empower some of the visionary minds and hearts already in their organizations to help them re-invent.  Your thoughts?

Just in case your in for $1

While we are at it. Let’s apply the same concept to the church.

READ ARTICLE HERE @time http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html

Finishing up the book Tribes by Seth Godin (excellent), purchasing this book by Rands. Anyone else read this one?

http://managinghumans.com

CreativeMYK.com is an excellent online resource for designers looking to network, organizations looking for designers to tackle freelance design projects or even a little head hunting if your game. There are some seriously talented designers on this site. Check out some of the portfolios and resources.

Link here:  http://www.creativemyk.com/

Myra and I had an amazing time last night at The Living Water International Gayla. A friend from church invited us to attend and learn more about what Living Water is doing for people around the world. These guys have been around since 1998 and have completed over 7,300 projects. They have impacted conservatively hundreds of thousands of people in 26 countries. It was truly amazing to see people give so sacrificially to help those in need. We are praying about funding one water well project and one pump project for 2008-2009. We will see where we go from here. I have never seen a better process for helping people. 83% of funds received go directly to projects with the other 17% going towards administrative and research.

Recently Completed Water Well in El Salvador

Link: http://www.water.cc
Mission Trip Schedule: http://water.cc/living-water/get-involved/trips/
Training Schedule: http://water.cc/living-water/get-involved/training/
Facebook: http://apps.new.facebook.com/causes/5398?m=a9688&recruiter_id=14335667

What are you involved in that will outlast you?

Seriously.

“Sethisms” are now posted:

“You are either the best in the world or invisible.”

“When times are good buying is a sport.”

“When times are not so good we buy somethings because things will never be this cheap again.”

Link here: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on September 25

They call it “Customer Service”, I called it jacked. I just found out what happens when you let a domain expire. I know, very much old news for those who have already been jacked.

Domain Registrars are offering a really helpful feature called domain recovery. Instead of deleting your domain like in the old days, they hold on to your domain for a period of days as a service and all you have to do is pay the small fee to have it recovered. I had four domains that were set for auto-renewal and somehow the domains were not “auto-renewed”. So “Steve” kindly asked me to take out my wallet and hand it over (he did say please).  $80 x 4 plus regular annual domain registration fees. Sorry, bro but I work for a living. I canceled the domains and purchased some comparable names for the client. We will see if that will fly for now.

After a quick search at Google.com I found that registrar recovery fees compare from $150 and $260 dollars per domain.  What in the world? Is everyone smoking crack out of heavy-duty Tupperware? ICANN has recognized a Redemption Grace Period or RGP probably with good intentions (grace) and registrars took it a ran with it.

“Registrar-level ‘grace’ periods differ from registrar to registrar. It could be 0 (yes, zero) days or up to 45 -1 days (usually 30 – 40 days). Registry-level (ICANN endorsed) RGP (Redemption Grace Periods) last exactly 30 calendar days, during which BOTH the registry AND the registrar are entitled to charge extra ‘recovery fees’.”

Whew-we! That sounds like a solid way to make all kinds of extra cash. Who wants to go in with me a start a Domain Wreckovery Service. I’ll get DWS airbrushed on the new Mac Book Pro and hang some fuzzy dice on the desk lamp and we are in business. It’s all about the money.

So the short version is as soon as we are free from OPEC, ICANN steps in. Ah si, comprendo. Gracias. I  would seriously be interested to hear who has stumbled on to this already and how much did it co$t you?

(ICANN; Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; www.icann.org)
(OPEX; Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries; www.opec.org)

The news is labeling Hurricane Ike as a #freak. Intersting. We were not even expecting the storm to hit Galveston until 12 hours before. Kind of scary to see peoples faces and reactions when the news started predicting the path to hit us, directly. We scrambled and put together emergency plans and communication channels just before the storm hit. National Geographic sums it up well. Right before it hit us, it smacked right into Cuba and Haiti. Check out the shots and video:

“Hurricane Ike will be entered into the record books for the severe damage it inflicted in and around Galveston, Texas, experts say. “This one’s going to be famous for a long time, if for no other reason than it hit Texas, which hadn’t gotten a strike by a damaging hurricane in 25 years,” said Jeff Masters, director of Weather Underground, a private commercial forecasting service.”

The shot above is from the video “Giant Waves Crash Over Buildings” in Cuba.

link here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080915-hurricane-ike.html