I’d Like to Redirect.

June 10th, 2010 | Posted by john in Digital 3-Day - (1 Comments)

I’m going to nerd it up a little bit in this post. Never fear, the next post I do should be a lot less nerdy! The next topic I’m going to cover in your digital 3-Day life is the redirect. This is one that I don’t think many people have started using, but I have found it immensely useful. I’ll start by explaining what it is:

When you give someone your URL to donate, you probably give them something in the form of http://the3day.org/goto/john. The user goes there, then clicks the donate button and donates and everything is fine. When I give people the URL to donate, I send them this: http://60miles3days.com/donate and this sends the donor directly to the donation form so that there is no thinking about it. It’s very handy, pretty useful and I’m going to talk about why you would do it and then how you would do it. First with the why.


Why?


Easy to Remember

If you have a web page already that people go to, it’s much easier for them to remember that site than to have to add another site to their memory. Not only that, they have to add a goto in there. I admit, this is probably the least compelling of my reasons. However, the donor doesn’t have to then look on the page for the donate button. Small item, I know but every little bit helps. We will have some better reasons next.


Repeat Offender

If you know that you are going to continue walking year after year, this may be the best reason. Wouldn’t it be great to just give the same URL every year. Yes, I know that you can choose the same URL year after year, but they changed the structure of it after 2008 (it used to have the year in it) so it’s possible that it may not remain the same. Also, if you are crazy like me and sign up for the next 3-Day at the event, you can immediately switch the URL to point to the new fund raising form instead of jumping through a few hoops to get it changed in the 3-Day system. This means that if you have people that wait until after the last minute to donate, they will be giving you a head start on the fund raising for next year.


Double Walker

This is the reason I started to use redirects. I’m walking in two different walks this year. Instead of having to give out one URL and then when I had my minimum for the first walk give out another URL, I used a redirect. Earlier in the year if you went to http://60miles3days.com/donate you would go to the donation form for my Boston walk. Now that I have raised the money for that, I can switch it to the Dallas walk and my donors don’t have to worry about which one I want them to go to. I automatically direct their traffic to the correct donation form.


Team Player

Another reason is that maybe you are a super star fund raiser and got all your fund raising done in a couple of weeks and now you want to help your teammates do their fund raising. Since you have awesome donating friends, you can easily change your redirect so that it points to one of your teammate’s donation pages instead of yours. They still have their own donation url, but now yours points to their donation form. Now you are helping them reach their goal!


How?

So there are a couple of things that you need to have in order to do the redirect.

  • First, you need a domain that you own. For instance, I own 60miles3days.com. In order to get a domain of your own, you can go through a hosting company. A lot of companies will provide you a free domain name when you host with them.
  • Next, you will need a domain host. I use a company called Hostmonster (http://hostmonster.com) This is where you will put the necessary files to do the redirect.

If you have the two above things, then you will need to make a folder that you want to use (named something like donate, to use the example of my redirect). In that folder, make a file named index.php and the contents of the file should look something like this:

<? php
header( ‘Location: URL’ ) ;
?>

Where URL is the actual location of your donate page. This is assuming that your web host uses PHP (most do).

Huh?

Now, what can you do if you don’t have a domain name or a host or the necessary technical skills to make this work? First, ask a friend that does know this stuff and they might be able to help. If you don’t have a friend like that, you can send me a mail (click contact at the top of the page) and for a certain number of people I can make some redirects for you off of the 60miles3days.com page.

 

The Speed Gamers

June 7th, 2010 | Posted by john in General - (3 Comments)

I have had a couple of messages lately asking me who the heck are The Speed Gamers and how on Earth did they donate over $10,000 to my fund raising. I’ve mentioned them here and there in several posts, I have verbally told many about them, but I never did a full fledged write up on how awesome they are. I think it’s time that I fix that!

It was early 2009 when a co-worker and good friend of mine name Bob approached me. He knew that I was starting to raise money for the 3-Day and had a suggestion for me. His nephew was a part of a group of guys that ran a web site and raised money for charities. I asked him how, and while I don’t really remember the exact words I’ll explain in my own words what they do:

They have a web site at http://thespeedgamers.com and on this web site they do video game marathons. That last term probably needs a little clarification. They will play a series of games (like Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Mother: Earthbound) for a solid 72 hours (usually, some have been 48 and they have a week long one they do over the summer). That’s 72 hours without stopping. They rotate players in and out so that they can get some rest. On their web site, they have a video feed of the game that they are playing that people can come and watch. In addition to that video feed, they have a feed of a commentator who is talking to the people in the next component of the site and that is the chat room.

So people come, chat, listen to the commentator, watch the video game being played and then donate. The guys don’t take ANY money out of the donations, they donate every single penny to the charity that they are playing for. All funds for paying for their site hosting and everything are generated by selling t-shirts between the marathons (you can buy shirts at http://store.thespeedgamers.com/ if you want to help them out!).

I’ll be totally honest here when I say that when Bob told me about these guys, I was a little skeptical. I couldn’t see how that could raise the type of money that he was telling me about. At the time he thought that they could maybe help me raise $2,000-$3,000. Despite my uncertainty I went ahead and talked with Britt to see if they would do a marathon for me. I figured that even if they raise $100, it would be $100 more than I would have raised without them.

I met with Britt, Bob’s nephew, a couple of weeks after they had done a marathon for Ally’s House and raised over $5,000. This was the most that they had ever raised in a marathon. I was starting to come around, because this was a marathon that they had done working with Bob, so there weren’t any smoke and mirrors to be had. This was in fact the real deal. So I met with Britt. I have to say that I really wish that I had a tenth of the humility and grounding that he has when I was his age. He was soft spoken, he wasn’t bragging at all about the money that he had raised in the past. When I asked him how much he thought the marathon could possibly raise, he answered in a softly spoken voice that he thought it might be able to raise $3,000. That year, the marathon raised $3,000 before the first day was over and $10,586 by the end of three days.

We had another marathon this year and it was only 48 hours long because of some scheduling difficulties, but they still raised over $10,000. I still don’t know that I completely understand it, but these guys are amazing and you should really go check out their site and see if there are other marathons coming up and take a look. I have watched several and it can become kind of addictive.

They do more than just breast cancer fund raising, they help out autism, childhood cancer, and much more. Check out the marathons they have done and the amazing amounts of money that they have raised here: http://www.thespeedgamers.com/past-marathons

The last thing that I want to say is thank you to The Speed Gamers. They took something that they enjoy doing, that a lot of people enjoy doing, and molded that into an immense force of good. You guys rock.

Hopefully I will have an interview with Britt from The Speed Gamers up here in the very near future and we can talk about how they got started, where they are going and anything in between!

 

Kristen Scincotta’s 3-Day Moment

June 4th, 2010 | Posted by john in Interviews - (1 Comments)

I had a great time today being able to listen to how Kristen’s 3-Day for the Cure team got started and also her two favorite 3-Day moments. Enjoy! If you would like information about joining Kristen’s team, send her a message on twitter at: http://twitter.com/kscincotta

 

You Got an A for Participation!

June 2nd, 2010 | Posted by john in General - (2 Comments)

If it’s your first year for the 3-Day for the Cure, or even if you have participated in it before, you may not be aware of all the things that the participant center has to offer you. In this column, the first of a series on your digital 3-Day life, I’m going to go over several of the features, some well used and some possibly not, to help you get the most out of your participant center. In this, I’m going to try and stick to the rough order that I do things in my participant center when I first sign up for the 3-Day.


GOAL!!!!

First thing’s first when I get a new participant center and that is to set a goal. It’s on the right hand side of the page and is fairly noticeable when you first log in. I usually try to give myself a goal higher than the minimum to give me something to shoot for. This year I gave myself a goal of $5,000 for each walk and I’m over that goal on one and $1400 away from it on another. Setting a goal is good not only for you, but also for people you are going to be sending to your site so that they can see that it’s no small amount that you are going for and you’re serious about fund raising.


It’s Says It’s Personal, But You’ll Share it With Everyone

Directly under the update goal button is a link to update your “personal URLs”. This is an excellent place to go to next. It’s much easier to give people a link that looks like this:

http://the3day.org/goto/john

Than it is to give them a link that looks like this:

http://www.the3day.org/site/TR?px=1337365&fr_id=1465&pg=personal

So go to this link as quickly as possible to change this to something that your friends and family will more easily recognize. If you are a team captain, this is the same location that you will go to in order to change the URL for your team (so that you can easily direct people to a place where they can learn about your team and possibly decide to join!).


Let’s Get Stuck in the Middle for a Little While

The middle of your participant center has some useful links too. This is where you need to go if you want to do stuff like read your walker handbook (or if your a team captain, your team captain handbook). If you scroll down, it will also give you links to this month’s 3-Day news and a PDF for 3-Day business cards. However, for business cards, I usually prefer to use VistaPrint with their free cards that you pay for shipping with.

Just below the business cards is a section to start fund raising with Facebook. I’m going to cover some 3-Day social media information next week, but please feel free to add this now if you would like. The last thing I will cover about the middle is at the bottom where it tells you how many days you have left until your event. A good thing to keep in mind for fund raising AND training purposes.


My Web Page Was Made By Acme

The next thing I usually take note of is my personal page itself. The Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure has done a pretty good job of giving you a participant page that you can use to do fund raising with no additional work. HOWEVER, you should really take some time to tweak this page. For instance, your friends and family would probably be a lot more interested in reading about the challenges and decision making that you went through to decide to walk in the 3-Day for the Cure. They’re not necessarily going to be interested in the two sentence blurb that is there by default.

While you are changing the text on the page, you may as well go ahead and put up a new picture. My friends would rather look at me surrounded buy a bunch of guys wearing pink with fake boobs than the sneaker of some complete stranger. Make this page your own!

So to do this, there is a handy button at the top of the screen that says Personal Page. When you click on this, you will have a link near the top that says “Click here to open this page for editing”. Once you click there, you will be on your way to having your own personalized personal page.

There are a couple of things to note on the editing for this page: First, you have the option to add a blog to the bottom of your page. I’ll be talking about blogs, hopefully next week as well, but if you want to add a blog to your 3-Day participant center, by all means go ahead. I’ll just say that some of the blog tools in true blog software or sites is going to be more robust and allow you to do more. It just depends on what you want to do with this. Second, there is the option instead of having a picture on your page, you can have a video. I really like video because it allows people to see something that tells them more than a picture would, if you have a video go ahead and put it up there!


The Electronic Mail Man Isn’t Afraid of Dogs

Now that you have your personal page URL and you have your goal set and you have your personal page customized so that it looks just like something you would do, you can start telling people about it. Your participant center has a built in address book and e-mail system that you can use to send out mail asking for donations. You can import your existing contacts from Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail and CSV among others, so you don’t have to worry about typing addresses all over again. The advantage of doing mail through your participant center is that it all goes out with 3-Day for the cure branding and pictures. It will also include the appropriate links to your personal page and team page, however it doesn’t appear to use the personal URLs that you define. I personally only use the e-mail system for thanking people for their donations and use my own e-mail client for sending out fund raising e-mails. I don’t know why, it’s just a personal preference.

To access the address book and import users from your own address book, just click the Address Book button at the top of the page. To send e-mails using your own pre-defined text or to start with a template that the 3-Day provides for you, just click the e-mail button right next to that.


Leaning Towards the Left In a Non-Political Way

Ok, the last section that we are going to talk about is the resources section of the participant center. It’s on the top left of the page. This has a variety of things that you can use, and I’ll try to go through them quickly here:

  • Donation Form: Just what it says it is. It’s a PDF of your donation form so that if you have someone that doesn’t want to or can’t donate online, they can fill out the form and mail in a check.
  • Event Info: Incredibly useful, especially if you are out of town. This is where you check for information on the event, things like where it will start, where it will end, and where you should probably get a hotel so that you can ride a bus to and from the event.
  • Online Check-In: This is where you go when they finally open the online check-in for your event.
  • Fundraising: Great place to go for tips and tricks to help you super charge your fund raising efforts
  • Training: Gives you links for a training check list as well as a variety of resources for your training questions. Everything from Achilles Tendonitis to Warm Weather training tips can be found here
  • Outfitters: If you live in or near a host city for the 3-Day, this will provide you with a list of stores that you can go to that will help you with all of your gear needs
  • Clinics and Calendar: These two links will provide you information on upcoming clinics, training walks, getting started meetings and more. These meetings are great for beginner and veteran walkers alike.
  • Legacy Pins: You can get several different kinds of pins for doing things with the 3-Day. From being a walker, to raising a lot of money to having to take the sag bus, there is probably a legacy pin that you can earn. Check here to see what they all are!
  • Komen Toolkit: The toolkit will take you to a page on the Susan G. Komen site with links to information about breast cancer facts, risk factors, detection and more.
  • Share List: Want to do a training walk, but you don’t know anyone on the 3-Day? The share list give you a searchable page to find other walkers, crew members or team captains near you that you can contact for training walks or support. Even if you do know people near you, this is a great way to reach out to other walkers that may not have a team.
  • Widget: The widget is a slightly customizable image that you can use in your e-mails or on your web site to drive people directly to your donation form.
  • Select Another Event: If you are one of those people that felt the urge to sign up for more than one 3-Day for the Cure walk, then this is the link that you need to click in order to go to your participant center for those other walks.

1+1=

To sum up, the participant center is a page that you can really use to help out with fund raising and preparing for the 3-Day for the Cure. Definitely spend some time looking through it to see what tools will work best for you.

 

It’s Potty Time!

May 24th, 2010 | Posted by john in At the Walk - (21 Comments)

If you’ve been on the 3-Day before, you already know to expect the lines and lines of blue port-o-potties just waiting for you to start your three day journey. It’s pretty amazing to me the number of people that I have met who had never used a port-o-potty until they came on the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. Even excluding those people, most of us have never relied on port-o-potties as our only toilet for 3 days straight. Yeah, maybe you have used them at a concert or something, but 3-DAYS, that’s a whole different story. It may seem unpleasant to use these big blue boxes to go to the bathroom for three days, but I’ve put together some suggestions to make your (and everyone else’s) port-o-potty experience more pleasant. So in no particular order, here’s the top port-o-potty rules for the 3-Day.


Rule 1: I’m Not Going in After That

You probably have great teammates. They are your friends and family and they are great. No matter how great they are, they will never go after something that you dropped into the port-o-potty. When you take your bathroom break, make sure that all of your personal belongings are secure. This means that you should not be trying to text when your in the bathroom. Aside from the fact that people probably don’t want to receive texts about your bowel movement, if you drop that phone into the pit that is the core of the port-o-potty, it’s not coming back. And lets face it, if it did would you really want to use it?

Some things that I have heard of being dropped into the potty include: cell phones, flash lights, rings, and so much more. My suggestion for flash lights is to try and get one with a strap and keep it around your wrist when you go to the bathroom at night.


Rule 2: It’s Not a Trash Can

Ok, this rule has parts for both men and women. We’ll deal with the women first.

Women, when you are sitting down and going to the bathroom and you look to the side and see what kind of looks like a little cup, this is NOT a trash can. This is the urinal. If you throw your trash in the urinal, I’ll give you one guess where guys are going to pee instead. I’ve always been told that the two bathroom pet peeves that women have for men are that they don’t raise the seat and that they don’t put it back down after they are done. I can guaranty you that even though you would like it, men are not going to become perfect bathroom people over the course of three days. So keep the urinal free of trash.

Men, this next part is for you. If the urinal has no trash in it, use the urinal to pee! Don’t mess with the port-o-potty seat and all that, take the easy way out!


Rule 3: Chivalry is Not Dead

Picture this: you’ve been walking all day. You get to a pit stop and stand in line to go to the bathroom. By the time you get up to where it is your turn wouldn’t it be nice if the person coming out of the port-o-potty held the door open for you? Three things happen when you hold the door open for the next person:

1. It makes that person’s life that much easier. They don’t have to open the door now!
2. It reduces the number of bangs that people have to hear as the door closes because instead of closing twice, it only has to close once!
3. It enhances the 3-Day community. I realize that it may seem silly, but the 3-Day is a community of people all striving towards the same goal. We help each other all the time, why wouldn’t we include holding the door open for someone as part of helping them?

Ok, I realize that most people see chivalry as a guy thing, but I think that women, especially on the 3-Day, can be chivalrous and hold the door open for the next woman (or man) that’s going to use the bathroom.


Rule 4: That’s a Stretch

If you have watched the check in video, you have already seen this. But I still need to put it in so that someone doesn’t come and get me and say I didn’t include it. There will be certain pit stops on the 3-Day where it seems that everyone’s bladders are just in sync and had to go at the same time. There will occasionally be long lines. Use these lines to your advantage and stretch! Stretching is very important on the 3-Day, so you may as well use this waiting time productively.


Rule 5: She’s Got a Potty Mouth

Before you make assumptions here, I’m not advocating cursing while you’re going to the bathroom. Again, this is very much about the wait time at the port-o-potties. Be productive with this time. Meet the people that are waiting in line with you and talk to them about something other than your bathroom habits. The next thing you know, you will have met someone new and the line will be practically gone.

I think it’s sometimes much easier to strike up a conversation with someone while in line than it is while you’re walking. When you’re walking you will only get the chance to talk to someone if they are walking the same pace as you. Standing in line, everyone is going the same pace as you so it’s a lot easier!

So these are my five rules for bathroom happiness at the 3-Day. Yes, I could have easily added more rules in there like don’t slam the door at night because people are sleeping, but there are a lot of people that will cover those. Most of these I haven’t seen people mention. They aren’t the most pleasant of places to go to the bathroom, but they certainly the least pleasant. So make the best of your port-o-potty experience!