Caring for Our Parents (and others), and the partnerships that make it easier

I received an email this morning that really drove home the power of alliances — between the internet, brilliant technology, thoughtful people, public television, a corporate sponsor, and a marcomm/PR agency that brought it all together. This alliance promotes an issue that potentially impacts all of us — caring for our parents.

Thanks and kudos to Sandy Lish (co-founder of The Castle Group and fellow alum of UMass Amherst), for helping to get the word out on such an important issue and providing access to some great resources that can help. Check out Sandy’s message:

( Friends and colleagues:

Recently, one of our Castle clients, HouseWorks, (www.house-works.com) sponsored a public television broadcast that many of us here found to be highly informative and moving. “Caring for Your Parents,” which ran locally on WGBH-TV, featured five families all dealing with the challenges of caring for their aging parents.  Following the documentary, WGBH aired a panel discussion which covered many of the issues involved, specifically, caregiving and related financial, interpersonal and health challenges.

As someone who, a few years ago, had to address an aging parent’s changing health and housing needs, I personally found this insightful and helpful to watch.  I know many of my friends and colleagues can relate to this issue, and if you haven’t dealt with it already, may have to eventually.  So I send this as a “public service” to those of you that might need guidance and insight.

The program is on WGBH’s website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/caringforyourparents/).

If you are in a caregiving role yourself, or are concerned about someone who is, you may also be interested in visiting www.lotsahelpinghands.com (another client), which provides a tool for online caregiver support.

Sandy

Personal note:  Lotshelpinghands ROCKS. Not only do they help caregivers organize their own efforts and help them focus on giving care instead of managing the details, they eliminate huge hurdles and provide an incredibly easy and unobtrusive way for us on the outside to assist without getting in the way. How powerful is that ?! Check ‘em out.

             

FreshBooks: Partnering, Web 2.0 and social networks to find great talent

 

FreshBooks is using US to help THEM find great talent!! 

Partnering with the web-connected world to virally promote their needs is a smart option indeed for FreshBooks, a rising star in the web-based services-on-demand world. Their use of Social Networking tools to find an ace developer for their online billing solutions, and a finder’s fee to those who serve up the winning candidates, seems to be working – they’ve had thousands of views of their video on YouTube alone!

Not only is Mike McDerment (CEO/Founder) using Web 2.0-ishness to push his agenda, he’s using the community!!

To me, this is a no-brainer. I love the fact that FreshBooks is using their blog to find talent, and they’re showing a fun, personal video (hosted on YouTube) to promote the FreshBooks way of life. I’m a huge proponent of SaaS (software-as-a-service), hosted services, and Web/Enterprise 2.0 solutions too, and FreshBooks is using all of these to put the right content out there, for the appropriate audience, so it can be useful, actionable, and valuable.

Great solutions, low barriers to entry, fun and people-friendly tools to explain what they do and actually help people be successful using their stuff…

Wow!! I’m glad I found you. Keep up the great work and let us know how it goes!! I’d love to hear from you re other cool partnering initiatives FreshBook (and others) are running to drive business, communities, and growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebyj_idJbgc

Thanks! Happy Spring!

Melinda

Spinning It Up! Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my new blog. It’s my way of sharing all the great stuff I’m learning about every day, and helping to support the creative, smart, fun, energetic people out there creating synergy through well-planned and smartly-executed alliances.

I’m a person with a 20+ year career working with applications and technology solutions that make life easier – at work, at home, at play.  A creative bent, a well-honed ability to focus in on the different values between and across participants, and a serious interest in being a power user of the apps that I work with every day, has evolved into the “me” that I am. Well, the ‘working’ me, anyway.

I’m hoping that this blog will serve as another way to share and gather insights, meet some of you great people out there, and start ’spinning it up.’ After all, the best results come from the energy we put into our work and our lives.

Thanks for stopping by. See you soon!

Melinda