Momentum of the Muse

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on my blog yet, but I’m pretty smitten kitten over the world of wine. It’s a fairly recent interest – I’ve only been seriously delving into this business for about a year now – but an interest I am quite keenly pursuing. I worked at The Wine Room in Vancouver, and just completed my Beginner level of the WSET. I was also lucky enough to find a part-time gig pouring for the Advanced level, and absorbed as much of the info and wine as possibly.

Recently, I started The Vancouver Wine Meetup. If you’re from Vancouver, you love wine, and you want to join us for some fun events then please join up.

If you know of any fun events, let me know. I can pass the message onto the group, or just provide my own eager presence.

It’s been awhile, but a worthy cause brings me back to my trusty old blog.

My man, Michael-James Pennie, is hiking up Mt Kilimanjaro in September. Now, he wouldn’t bring his Brioni clad butt into unknown and potentially treacherous territory for any old reason. He’s making the climb to raise monies ($10,000) and awareness for the Alzheimer’s Society of B.C. It’s a cause that’s close to his heart since his Dad has been living with Alzheimer’s for nearly a decade.

Over the next month I’m helping him conduct a fund raising blitz. We’re going to raise $10,000 in one month. The kicker? Michael won’t just be fighting his way up African mountains. He’s going to make his way up our own local ass-blasting trail, the Grouse Grind, carrying the $10,000 in loonies with him.

How much does 10,000 loonies weigh, anyways?

Somewhere around 150 pounds.

I wonder what gave him that crazy idea! Or, rather WHO gave him that crazy idea. It’s rather amusing so it seems to have muse written all over it. Evil, evil muse…

Anyways, we’re going to be running a myriad of events this month, both online and in Vancouver. So, head over to his site and keep up with the campaign.

Post, link, tweet, stumble, digg your support and feel the good karma rushing in, ladies and gents.

So, I did end up going to the Vancouver Twestival. Over 4, 000 CDN was raised in Vancouver, and 250, 000 USD worldwide – so far. There are still 80 cities pending out of 202 cities.

I contributed with my ticket purchase, the purchase of raffle tickets, and sipping on a few tasty cocktails, seeing as Opus was contributing 6% of liquor sales to charity:water as well. I had a great time, won twice in the raffle, and enjoyed my cocktails plenty. How cool is it to couple an awesome night on the town with helping for a great cause?

It was a terrific event – kudos to Miss 604 for running it. I was super impressed with how smoothly everything went, how well put together it was, and had lots of fun.

Can’t wait for the next one!

Last week I went to the inaugural VEF Momentum event. Momentum is like the younger brother/sister to

Ladies Love This Guy

Vancouver Enterprise Forum; it was created “to connect, mentor and inspire young and aspiring entrepreneurs.” How did someone with a pre-packaged blogger template and inability to install even a simple widget end up at a tech event?

My friend, Arnold Leung was one of the people running it, and wanted to “get more chicks out.” In true Arnold-style, he did not consider that I might also be a young and aspiring entrepreneur, but rather confined me to a female number. I’ll forgive him; it’s not his fault I’m so adorable it’s hard to take me seriously.

Fair enough! I was bored a couple of times. I must have looked like a 4 year old flower girl at a wedding, tugging on her dress until it ends up over her head. I also didn’t get the punchlines of jokes.

“So, any questions?”
“Yeah … huhuh hahaha huh … where can I get a quantum computer?”

Uproarious laughter ensues. Wtf?

It reminds me of a time in university, I was sitting in a hot tub at an engineering party and two guys started talking in 1’s and 0’s, apparently communicating in binary. There were people crying, they were laughing so hard. Wtf? A girl did a math problem? Witch, witch, witch.

However, the keynotes speaker, Dr Geordie Rose, had four steps to success, and three of them could be put to work for me. I’m just going to give a general idea of them.

1. Have a BIG idea. Make sure it’s exciting. Make sure it’s global, huge, important and cool. Take whatever idea you have – it’s not big enough. Make it 20 times bigger. Apparently, a project is more likely to get funding if it’s huge, rather than small, and you’re more likely to be passionate about the end result. This kind of talk gets me fired up. Forget realistic and boring; let’s get crazy and create.
2. Get help. Find a mentor, someone who’s done it before. Let them guide you. Use their wisdom, and profit from their experience.
3. Pitch Cascadia. N/A in this case.
4. Do not give up. Keep trying, work out the kinks and never, ever give up. Until you’re dead, like a female octopus. Er. Well, just be tenacious.

I really enjoyed this speech. It was very straightforward, simple, yet there were no mistakes made about how much work would be involved in any worthwhile and rewarding endeavor.

What is your formula for success, if any? Oooo, or what ISN’T your formula for success?