X.commerce Innovate Conference: will you be there?

Carolyn Mellor, who we met at Jono Bacon et al's Community Leadership Summit, is the rockstar behind X.commerce, the PayPal+eBay+Magento commerce platform. At CLS, she told the Causeit team about the upcoming X.commerce Innovate conference coming up October 12/13/14 of this year, which has great tracks and an impressive speaker list.

Check out their innovative use of their conference-promo site crazy-brilliant, too—they've looped in a simple hashtag-scraping tool in a slick interface to prompt conversation and a thumbs-up/down about the emerging ideas of commerce which people are tweeting about.

Plan to see Matt, Jeremy and MJ at Innovate, and check in as we'll likely be blogging and tweeting a lot at the conference. We'll put our intended schedules up as we get a bit closer.

BlogHer BET

Kaplan University's Jacqueline Jones (Executive VP of New Product Development, and a Causeit client) speaks about "managing up" in your organization at BlogHer | bet

I'm here at BlogHer's blogher | bet 2011 conference. It's been great to see the amazing speakers talking about being a woman of power in business, how to "Manage Up" and how to deliver a pitch which is both effective and authentic. Here's the conference concept: 

If you're a woman who has a big idea that involves technology, the Internet or social media, we have an opportunity for you. With the leadership of 50 pioneering entrepreneurs, technologists and business leaders, BlogHer is hosting a special event for women who want to start something. Whether you're considering a start-up of your own, or innovating from inside a company, we invite you to join BlogHer's 2011 Business, Entrepreurism and Technology conference on March 24-25 in Silicon Valley.

Check it out by following @causeit and the hasthag #blogher or #blogherbet on Twitter.

New Vision, New Communities, New Offerings

Matt and I just spent the day in retreat to do what we always ask our clients to do: work on our business, and not just in it. 

Our new vision:

Causeit, Inc. is committed that human beings realize their full potential.

• We cause loving, powerful teams. 
• We work with technology which amplifies and 
extends human capacity.  
• We help humankind experience higher consciousness through awareness of our profound connection with others. 

Through our life-long work, we contribute to a world where people are loving, connected, effective and peaceful.

Our Values

• We are committed to the transformation of the individual in all aspects of their lives. 
• We live lives of service and work with people who contribute to the world. 
• We are committed that our clients and their teams 
are unstoppable. 
• We are committed to individuals being responsible for their lives. 
• Our conversations are about what works or doesn't work in service of world-changing, important visions. We don't dwell in the old paradigms of right/wrong, good/bad, blame, fault, guilt or shame. 
• We know that our clients are able to cause any result they want for themselves, their communities, and the world. 
• We are committed that people know themselves as 
perfect just as they are. 
• We love all people.

In the coming year, stay tuned for great new changes: 

CauseTalks

Causeit will be hosting CauseTalks, a showcase series of powerful, succinct, community-sourced meetups about everything from the architecture of teams to diversity to transformational communication. All that cool stuff we're always telling you about? We'll bring it to our new community space in Southeast Portland and will podcast it (and maybe even vodcast it) for you, as well as provide whitepapers online.

New offerings

Causeit will be unveiling new offerings in the realms of team development, cyborg anthropology, content strategy and community-building. They're top-secret for the time being, but we'll tell you more soon.

First Round Capital's Fall Party: Who's-Who

Causeit, Inc. had a blast at First Round Capital's [@firstround] Fall Party at 230 5th in NYC. We met a lot of great folks—and enjoyed showing off our project company Fliptography's event entertainment. 

Our first sampling of the many interesting companies we met:

Socialbomb

Socialbomb provides an API for the social web, and helps companies engage their audience, advocate their brand, and measure their social success. Read more on their site.

Knewco

Knewco's KnowNow! is a Content Discovery bubble that delivers semantically relevant links from your website to your readers, along with rich related content, video, and shopping choices, all without leaving the page.

CJ Jouhal

CJ is a bright and engaging entrepreneur and technology strategist. He works with companies needing direction and expertise when selecting technology solutions. Are you an e-commerce-dependent business but know little (or care little) about e-commerce? CJ can help you. Find out more at jouhal.net

Tag Man

The crew from Tag Man was there for the event—all the way from the UK—and excitedly explaining their tag-consolidation software. If you create dynamic, data-driven and higlhy-analyzed sites needing a container supertag to decrease load times while increasing efficiency and reliability, check them out. If not, you'll probably end up using a site powered by their software without knowing it. 

We're running a million miles an hour today with all of the great contacts we made, so we'll add more to the post later!

job openings: fliptography

A Causeit, Inc. project company, Fliptography, LLC, is hiring flipbook-makers and shift leads. Fliptography's mission is to create joy and create jobs—which they do by making awesome instant flipbooks live at events. Like a photo booth (but with video), the Fliptography crew records a short seven-second clip of guests at an event, and then quickly constructs a paper flipbook as a great memento and party favor. Fliptography staff work in Portland, Central Oregon, Seattle and the Bay Area. Our team is full of interesting folk, such as students, part-time small business owners and/or non-profit staff committed to having fun with a great time.

Pay ranges from $12 to $15 per hour, and work is generally part-time. Applicants' exact availability can vary from week to week, as long as evenings and weekends are generally available. A brief cover letter and resume can be sent to jobs2010 [at] fliptography [dot] net. Customer service experience is a plus. No specific photography experience is required. Diverse applicants of all backgrounds and groups are strongly encouraged to apply, including women, people of LGBTQ communities, people of color, and more. 

You are why we do what we do.

Causeit is about having businesses be a form of self-expression. We're here to help people have their innate desire to be of service to community happen every day, not just once or twice a month at a volunteer position. The desire to be creative doesn't need to be encapsulated in dusty art supplies or a forgotten guitar. The desire to use the word love in regular conversation needn't be at odds with a 'day job.' Causeit is about finding your vision, making it happen in the real world, and building a team around it to make it bigger than it ever was going to be before! We exist to be of service of your dreams. We know you have a vision for the world and for your life—and we're here to make sure that your dreams happen. We bring the best of coaching, consulting and branding to bear on the real work of your life: making a difference.

Jess Bogli Featured on OPB Piece on Sarah Palin and Sex Education

One of Causeit's clients, Jess Bogli, a highly regarded K-12 health education consultant was interviewed on OPB today. Think Out Loud aired a piece on health education as it relates to Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Palin's stance on abstinence education in schools, and how sex education fits into an overall health curriculum. 

Find out more at OPB and meet Jess Bogli; read her blog post below: 

Today I was interviewed by Emily Harris of OPB’s Think Out Loud. It was a great experience and I hope that people listen and take out of it the following:

Teens are having sex. Not all, not even the majority. But, many are sexually active.

Family and community support is important; when you have it. Some of our teens are homeless, living in horrible living conditions, do not speak English well enough to navigate our health system, etc.

Abstinence-Only programs are ineffective. They have been proven ineffective over and over again. They work for intent, but do not lead to behavior change.

Abstinent-Based programs are effective and promote abstinence, but include contraception lessons. They have lead to behavior change and abstinence for a longer period of time.

Sexuality Education should be skills-based, not just basic biology where students learn information and are tested out of a textbook.

In Oregon, we need teachers to be supported through professional development opportunities by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Currently there is no health education specialist on staff and we’ve recently lost our school health team lead. We need to advocate to ODE to support school health programs. Because healthy kids learn better…

causeit, inc. principal now blogging for just out!

Causeit, Inc. principal MJ Petroni now blogs for Just Out, Portland's LGBTQ newsmagazine and website. Find out more by going to blogout.justout.com. Recent articles include T-Job Bank, MI5 to recruit gay spies, and more!