Sunset Stories

It takes a village: using cross-functional social media engagement to run a non-profit network

We're already super busy people: we're moms, corporate executives, students; lawyers, entrepreneurs, high-tech workers.

We have a thousand commitments, a family to support, many interests, and probably a long commute. So how could we possibly find the time to add yet another thing— social media networking— to our to-do lists? Because we can't afford to not to! Otherwise, it'd be impossible to connect, stay connected, and participate in the conversations both in person and online.

And, it'd be impossible to run a networking group for women in business, without EVERYONE socializing online. As founder of the non-profit business networking group WIB for German-American women in the Bay Area, the group could not run without social media engagement. Organizers, speakers, moderators— we're all volunteers— and every "department" builds this community through social media: "sales" reaches out to members, partners and sponsors via the LinkedIn and Facebook groups; "product management" collects feedback after events via SurveyMonkey; "marketing" posts event photos and videos to Flickr and blip.tv, and announcements to Twitter. And nearly every operation to create and execute the quarterly panel discussion sessions, involving dozens of women, each with very busy schedules and living in various locations, uses social media.

It makes sense that businesses would discount the need for social media to be cross functional. Better to outsource than involve every single department, right? Wrong. The online conversation affects every department, each customer, all constituents. And whether corporate or non-profit, entrepreneur or individual, no one can afford to "outsource."

What do you think about the current state of social media, and should it be cross-functional? Please share!

* Illustration courtesy of cartoonist and social media panelist Betsy Streeter

GABA Women in Business: international career transitions

GABA's Women in Business group hosted "Your Transition Toolbox: International Career Changes, Relocation, and Other Stories" featuring Katharina Rock, SAP Labs, Nyna Pais-Caputi, Upwardly Global, Susanne Babbel and Susanne Stolcke, European Counseling, Lara Abrams, Lara Abrams Communications LLC, and Bettina Jetter, Mindjet LLC.

Attendees from various working and ethnic backgrounds were engaged by the speakers-- with several inspired to tell their own stories-- all led by our thoughtful moderator, in a beautiful setting.

Check out this video of our discussion at the event.

Spring cleaning

April flowers are in full bloom,

birds are chirping,

and the house is ready to be cleaned.

Dust bunnies,

hairballs,

roommates,

clutter,

energy...

This is the time of Equinox, Easter, Beltane, springtime...

Hybrid America

In elementary school it was called the "melting pot," the heterogeneous ingredients of cultures, races and religions becoming homogeneous.

In high school it was called the "salad bowl," the juxtaposition of various cultures into a mosaic like a salad, as opposed to the more prolific notion of the melting pot.

In science, it's called diffusion, an instantaneous and effective mixture of unlike gases in a closed container.

Andrei Codrescu calls this the age of the hybrids in America, people made of flesh and wired to iPods, GPS devices and the Internet, just like their cars. America has always been a place of mixed nations of peoples and differences for centuries. Codrescu claims "the hybrid reality has always been a part of us." Artists mix paint and newspapers for collage, sculptors combine steel and foam, mixed-race Creoles create jazz in New Orleans, one of the most American of all arts. Artists, he says, have made obvious what everyone knows: there isn't a single human being or any living thing that isn't a combination of things.

There are no pure races, nations or tribes. Zeus is a psychedelic quilt composed of earlier gods; we are all mutations of what once was. No one is purely anything, rather mutts, combinations of races, nations and tribes of past. Better and stronger than before. Our hyphenated identities are common-language labels that identify us to one another, each our own particular brand of ethnic mix, accepting the idea that we have more in common than what separates us.

Within the next 15 years, the U.S. Census projects that more than half of all children in the U.S. will be minorities. Everyone has a story about being part of this shifting culture, about being preached that the world is a salad bowl rather than melting pot, pockets of races scattered across the landscape. Still, we've found that rather than promoting unity, these pockets promote fear with labels, and degradation. That rather than lower our fences, we build walls.

Living in a multi-cultural city like San Francisco affords us the opportunity to experience all kinds of cultural events, dine at hundreds of restaurants with distinct and different cuisines, and work side by side with people who consider you American first, immigrant second.

Now America has a hybrid, black and white leader, ready to drive us hybrids of the 21st century to new sources of energy, inspiration and accomplishment. Lets see what kind of wonderful we can create together... Hopefully our children's generation will shift enough to know how merge these hybrid colors, instead of keep them separate.

Watershed ridge hike

A rainy Sunday morning made the perfect setting for a rare stroll through the only recently-opened Fifield-Cahill Ridge Trail at the San Francisco Peninsula Watershed in San Mateo County, 13 miles south of SF.

Hiking six miles of the 23,000-acre strip of forested hills, coastal scrub, and grasslands, this piece of watershed is a protected endangered-species wildlife refuge and contains three drinking water reservoirs that feed faucets across the Peninsula and San Francisco. Closed to the public for 100 years, SFPUC opened the area to reservation hiking, biking and riding five years ago. 

Pristine old-growth Douglas Fir, mythical lime-green strands of lichen, bright yellow banana slugs, sweeping Monterey cypress, hardened parasitic fungus, expansive vistas, a particularly snappy trail leader, and our small group of 7, spent about 3 hours together this morning on the wet trail. Tim told the group, FYI, that all the lichen growing here meant this was pure air... Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

We've vowed to make this a more regular excursion. 

Top Three of 2008

Headstand at yoga in the park (photo courtesy of Purusha Yoga)

Cylcing with the Velo Girls (photo courtesy of Chris F.)

Job at Lyris

Sunset socks, loosened pedal, and other cycling stories

Wool blend socks and liners for windy-weather riding.

Loosened petal for clipping lead foot in and out.

Counter-clockwise adjusted right cleat, to compensate for right knee cork-screw.

And another gorgeous practice ride around Lake Merced and GGPark.

Thanks, Roaring Mouse!

A little art and culture

Last night I sat among German-Americans on the Steinway / Sherman Clay showroom floor in Santa Clara, as a world-class pianist created raw human emotion on the keys of a magnificent handmade stacked maple masterpiece in front of us.

And last month, I sat among Italian-Americans in front of a VIP art panel in a VIP after-hours at the de Young, listening in fascination to an award-winning architect describe the creation of a computer program to translate countless photos of trees in the park onto the random, continuous copper embossing of the museum's skin.

Art that moves us, removes us from our everyday to inspire us to look at the world anew,ignite profound discovery, and touch us deeply... with sadness, beauty, innovation -- movingly human.

Klatarismenophobia - fear of flat tire

Friday, five o'clock. I'm leaving the office in a hurry to beat rush-hour traffic. No sooner than I'm happily heading toward the parking garage gate, then I feel a funny, frumpy thumpity-thump roll on the right side. Pulling over across two handicapped spots just inside and to the right of the gate, I hop out to confirm that yes, it is in fact what I feared it'd be: flat tire.

My name is Sunset, and I am a Klatarismenophobiac.

I admit it, I think about flat tires all the time. Every time I buckle into my car, every time I snap into my bike... That I'm not fully prepared in case of being stranded with a flat! Even when I'm in other people's cars, and together with other people cycling. Are THEY prepared for being stranded with a flat?

The sight of someone on the side of the road with a flat tire sends chills up my spine. I imagine scenarios where I've been completely stranded with a flat tire, alone and in remote place, the day growing darker, I'm becoming colder and hungrier. Stranded, with a flat.

In college, I borrowed a friend's Honda and took an incompetent turn straight into a curb. Over the long college graduation weekend, I drove my parents all over town on important outings-- with both back tires low on air, galloping the whole car as if an axle was loose. A few years ago, while mountain biking in the lower Eastern Sierra, a saddle-ride-parking-lot thorn tore a huge hole in my front tire, botching the entire outing and very nearly our return trip to camp.

So on this Friday night, as I wait in the growing dusk outside the parking garage for my gold card-carrying membership of AAA to work, the first 15 minutes go by, then the next half hour, and finally I get a call... that they'd be even longer. As the minute tick by, those stranded road-side scenarios began to form.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a work colleague pulls over to ask if I'm ok... and we end up changing the flat together.

Saved!

Litquake's Fabulous Femmes of Fiction

  Litquake's now-annual “women’s night,” a classy Friday happy hour at North Beach's Bubble Lounge, is my favorite event of the festival.

Ladies dressed in cotton skirts, silk blouses, beads and tattoos, sipping from champagne flutes, perch on fuchsia, overstuffed chairs, between panels of setting sun and the sound of popping corks and excited chatter.

Litquake co-founder Jane Ganahl emceedthe lively "Elizabeth Bennet Lives: Fabulous Femmes of Fiction," featuring the strong, nimble-minded, fearless Austen-inspired female characters: the Daisy Buchanan-costumed wife acting out to infidelity, the adolescent Paisley Hanover desperate to fit in, the vacant slave girl seduced by her master, the egg-roll girl flirting with her first time, the bitch posse leader felled by a preemie child and alcoholisim.

Kathi Kamen Goldmark, founder of the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, was well at ease at the mike, and we spoke about the local lit scene.

Kim Wong Keltner, a long-time San Franciscan, made small talk while she signed books and met fans.

Cameron Tuttle, marketing queen of the Dirty Girl book series, expertly worked the room.

And, a girl named Samantha who recently moved to the City from Chicago, said she'd be reading a personal essay about her San Francsico impressions and experiences on the Litcrawl tomorrow, and I discovered she works for the PR firm that represents Six Apart.