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‘Make it Light’ – Big Thanks to Torbay!
Over the holiday season the town of Torbay (NL) held their annual ‘Winter Lights’ celebration and for the second year in a row they raised money for Young Adult Cancer Canada through their ‘Make it Light’ event. Through donations from local individuals the third party event raised over $1,200! This money will go towards YACC’s support programs for young adults dealing with cancer.
We wanted to send out a big THANK YOU to all involved with the Torbay Town Council and to all who donated! A very special and significant thank you is also owed to Kristina Roche, a wonderful YACC volunteer who helped initiate and organize this event. Thanks so much Kristina, you rock!
Posted on Mar 04, 2010 - 01:19 PM
How long does it take to…41 weeks, really???
Looking back at 2009, I started to wonder how many hours we actually put in to pull off the year we just had. 2009 was the year of 2 Retreats (East and West), our first pilot of our one day workshops for young adults, and the biggest Survivor Conference to date; this had to take a lot of our time! How much is a lot?
Because I love what I do so much, while doing it, I never really took the time to stop and look at the big picture. It is now, while my job load is not crazy (yet 
), that I am realizing what came with this past year…Between myself, Lesley, our Managing Director and my coach throughout the year (an amazing one!) and Geoff our Executive Director, we worked a total of 41 weeks, full time to organize all the events. You are probably thinking: “well that sounds about right, a year, full time to organize all the programs…”, and you would not be wrong. What stunned me was realizing that the majority of these hours were jammed over a 5 month period, not 10 months…It’s kind of like giving birth to 4 babies at 20 weeks instead of 40…surprising and a little exhausting, but bringing so much joy and love that you forget all about the pain and want more (that’s what I am told having babies is like anyway 
. Are they lying to me?).
Passion gets you to accomplish a lot, great teammates also support and help you always do a little more a little better, but what keeps us going is who we are doing this for. The energy, love, strength, inspiration and courage that young adults bring to each of our events is what makes us go. They are the gas to the engine along with all our supporters, donors, professionals helping throughout. It may sound cheesy, but it’s the simple truth.
After taking some time to rest and gear up for 2010, I feel definitely ready to take it by the b*lls and make it even more amazing than last year. The tiredness left my body and I now feel grateful and privileged that I will get to do this all over again this year (with some minor changes…).
First stop, Retreat Yourself May 27-31st, 2010 in Abbotsford, BC. Registrations are now open and we still have few spots left. For more details check our Retreat Home Page
Watch out 2010, here we come!
Posted on Mar 01, 2010 - 04:36 PM
Embracing the medium. Wait… which medium?
I firmly believe in the necessity of fully embracing the medium. So- instead of railing against the shortcomings, incorporate them into the design. Make them part of your strategy, and, as far as I can see, you’ll end up with a much strong end result.
I haven’t consistently done this at Young Adult Cancer Canada- most notably on my todo list is the plan to redesign the newsletter to make it less dependent on the header images, and take advantage of colours & tables, much like Facebook’s new Friend Request email notifications.
But- on the web: what is the medium?
Boston Globe’s Big Picture shows how great photography can be on the web, compared to on newsprint.
Hulu has shown how made for TV video can succeed on the web.
The New York Times has made mixed media reporting shine on the web.
Blogs have become a ubiquitous publishing medium, native to the web.
Twitter has shown how 140 characters make sense on the web.
All of these are the web, and yet, they’re also not. To date, Young Adult Cancer Canada has only really begun to explore the blog format. Shorter form essays with a single thesis. That is, until now.
With the new Shave for the Brave website, we’re experimenting adding a second format to our news feed- what we’ve been calling internally “short form”. We’re publishing the same content to Facebook (max 420 characters), Twitter (max 140 characters), and our own news feed (no such limit).
We’ll be pushing out all sorts of quick updates about the Shave- new locations, milestones, and really, anything that seems to suit the medium.
Twitter seems to be both a dream and a nightmare. A dream in that it allows us to directly connect with the people we care about in a meaningful way. A nightmare in that they seem to be buried in a sea of PR specialists, Viagra salesmen, and snake oil salesmen. But… we’ll stick another toe into the water and see what happens… I know I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Posted on Mar 01, 2010 - 08:13 AM
Congrats to Karalee Grant –Winner of the National Medal of Courage!
Sadly, Karalee passed away on March 8, 2010 after this article was published. Karalee was a great fighter and contributed a lot to the cancer community. For that we will always be grateful to her. On a personal note, I will always hold Karalee with me; she made a huge difference to our survivor community and to me. Please read the following article to see what an amazing person Karalee was. Karalee, with love always… Lesley
—-
We at YACC received some very inspiring news on Monday, one of our awesome survivors Karalee Grant, from Manitoba, was recently named the Canadian Cancer Society’s winner of the 2010 National Medal of Courage!
The Medal of Courage is awarded to an individual who has exhibited outstanding, unusual courage in their own personal battle with cancer, while contributing significantly to help further the mission of the Canadian Cancer Society or cancer control in general.
Karalee has been involved with the cancer community for a long time. She was a speaker for Chasing Rainbows when they visited Winnipeg. Since then, she has worked for CCS, had her photos taken for a cross country show and done several speaking engagements.
Karalee has always made a difference in her community and for that we congratulate her!
Way to go Karalee!
Posted on Feb 25, 2010 - 03:18 PM
Moving type on the web forward
Web design is different from all other mediums in that the end result is largely dependent on what browser & operating system is sitting in front of the person reading it. In print, what you send to the printer largely comes back as you created in InDesign (aside from colour differences: but that process is mostly predictable, with calibration & experience). Television is broadcast, so, what ends up on the beta tape is what shows up on air, and, while televisions differ in terms of colour, they all take the same video in the same way. On the web, things are quite commonly completely different- and, one of the major limitations of the medium is the small set of web-safe fonts. We recently launched a new Shave for the Brave website, and, we’ve tried to apply some new technologies to make it look a bit more compelling. Here’s why we did it, and, some of the challenges we faced.
Things look remarkably different in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Mobile Safari, Opera, Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS, Linux, iPhone. Then, there’s the difference in the colour calibration (and capabilities) of monitors, and you’ve got no reliable way to predict what comes out.
So- to compensate, there are established maxims, that dictate what you can do on the web. There’s the web safe colour palate- 216 colours that look pretty similar on mac & pc.
There’s the image formats you can use- JPG, GIF, PNG (but not alpha transparency- IE6 doesn’t support it without hacks).
There’s the CSS tricks that allow formatting to be fixed in only certain browsers.
And, there’s the web safe fonts. Fonts that are on both Mac’s and PC’s. The kerning’s different here and there, and, the Mac rendering engine is a bit different from that on a PC, but on the whole, they look pretty much the same. Times New Roman. Arial. Trebuchet MS. Georgia. Verdana. And a few others.
Typography is a huge part of design, and, it’s not embedded on the web- like it is in PDFs.
The old solution to this problem was to render headers and the like in images. Use whatever font you like in PhotoShop, save for web, and away you go. That works alright, but, in the age of Google it presents some problems.
Firstly- it loads a bit slower. Secondly- it’s less than searchable by the Google’s of the world.
So- what do you do?
You could take the flash based substituition technique- much like YouTube did by embedding videos in flash, SIFr and Cufon embed fonts in flash. As far as I can tell though, it’s a bit kludgy.
But… there is hope on the horizon. CSS’s @font-face declaration solves at the very least the technical issues of font embedding. It makes it possible. You need 3 or so font files- a special .eot for Internet Explorer, and an .otf, and a .svg, and probably a .woff for good measure, but, it works.
Mostly.
This is the approach we’ve used for the just launched Shave for the Brave website. We found a great, gorgeous, open liscenced font- League Gothic by the League of Movable Type.
And, I discovered that Chrome 3 doesn’t support @font-face. And then I discovered that Firefox before 3.1 doesn’t. And Camino. And Safari on iPhone/iPod.
So- what to do? For now, we’re serving an alternate stylesheet to FireFox, Camino, and Safari. Hopefully in the next week or so we’ll serve it to only the affected versions, and not all of them.
So, not quite there yet. But- I take hope in the fact that typography on the web might (finally) be taking a step forward. And that’s good news.
Posted on Feb 19, 2010 - 11:42 PM
‘Face the Sun’: Cool New Film
Last week I posted a news post about a cool new film-in-the-works titled ‘Face the Sun’. I have since chatted with the film’s writer/producer Mike Moroz, of Sunflower Pictures.
Mike is an independent film maker who is in the process of producing a feature film called, “Face the Sun”, which follows a young family confronting a diagnosis of breast cancer (to read the news post from last week please click here).
The reason I am posting this blog now is that after talking with Mike, I felt it was worth mentioning this project one more time. Mike started this project after losing a friend to breast cancer. She was misdiagnosed at 29… we all know that these next infamous words are spoken all too often; “you’re much too young for breast cancer, it’s nothing.” Diane, Mike’s friend, lost her battle at the age of 34.
Mike took on this project to create awareness of cancer in young adults and to honour his friend. I believe that with enough awareness and knowledge created informing people that cancer CAN happen to young adults the less we will hear those infamous words… I hope that more young adults will have their voices heard, diagnosis will happen earlier and quicker, and less of our friends will die from this disease. That is why I wanted to bring attention to this project. The awareness that it can create will help young adults across the country.
To hear more about why Mike is doing this project, watch his YouTube video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERzuj84E7Mw. For more information on the film visit: http://www.facethesunmovie.com. Mike has also started a Facebook page; search ‘Facing the Sun, the Movie’.
Good luck Mike. I am sure your project will honour Diane and will help to create the awareness that is desperately needed.
Posted on Feb 18, 2010 - 08:43 PM
How the Holiday Appeal could have gone better
We had what we thought was a rather compelling video: a compilation of photos of survivors from our recent conference holding up the year of their first holidays with cancer. It made me sad when I watched it (my girlfriend and sister too).
At Young Adult Cancer Canada, we’ve a tendency to leap before we look. The advantage being we tend to learn pretty quickly, and, we will hopefully end up with some significant experience and an unstoppable team. And that’s true of the recent Holiday Appeal, so, here’s the missteps that may have contributed to it not reaching its full potential, from where I sit.
1) Wrong message, wrong timing.
We had planned to send out two messages about the appeal with our handy email software, Mailchimp. One to the full list with the goal of getting their eyeballs behind the video, and one to our Survivors in Action (SIA) group to get them to pass the word on to their networks. They’d go out one after the other the morning of the 24th, just before people woke up and checked their inbox for one last time before the holidays.
In what I’ll attribute to a sleep deprived state, I managed to royally mix it up: I sent the SIA message to the full list at 8.30pm on the 23rd. Then, hesitated on sending the full message until noon on the 24th, after most people had headed home from their offices to their families.
Ooops.
2) Unable to donate.
Our online donation software is a bit… interesting… to design for. And, in copying the HTML to make it look great over, I managed to hide the ‘confirm’ button on the second donation page.
So, if you donated right after the first message, it, well, didn’t actually get through. The confirmation button was not visible on the page, so, it couldn’t be clicked on.
Ooops.
3) Unable to see the video.
I didn’t do the due diligence in testing the page to death in every browser combination. It looked great in Chrome 4 on my Mac. But… less so on the many versions of Internet Explorer. In fact, for a significant portion of the audience you couldn’t even watch the video. The super emotional one.
Ooops.
4) Not using our brand equity.
In order to take full advantage of the limitations of our fundraising software, I recommended that we put together a unique design for the Holiday appeal. And, while it looked ok, it looked nothing like Young Adult Cancer Canada, and didn’t connect fully with the emotional video.
Ooops.
The Holiday Appeal could have decidedly gone better. But, there’s more than a few lessons I picked up along the way. That’s something that we’ve truly taken to heart- particularly with the recently launched Shave for the Brave website. (Yeah, I know it looks different than the YACC site, but, it’s for good reason this time: I promise).
Posted on Feb 17, 2010 - 08:14 PM
Holiday Appeal – Thank you Survivors!
All of Young Adult Cancer Canada’s programs are free for young adult survivors and supporters. To be able to offer these programs for free YACC has a diversified menu of events; appeals; personal and corporate donors, etc. to raise the funding required.
One of these activities is our Holiday Appeal that we launched over the 2009 holiday season. The purpose of this blog is to thank the wonderful survivors and supporters who contributed to this project by allowing us to photograph them and include them in this appeal.
While we have already sent personal thank you’s to each participant, I felt it was necessary to put our ‘Thank You’ to them out to the rest of the community.
One participant at the 2009 Survivor Conference had this to say after the event:
“Thanks for giving young adults living with cancer a place to feel normal.”
As a participant of our events these individuals know the importance of feeling connected to a community of other young adults who understand the cancer experience as they do.
By giving Young Adult Cancer Canada the gift of their time (and their beautiful faces) these survivors made our 2009 Holiday Appeal: ‘Here for the Holidays’ a reality; with their help we raised more than $500 in a week! This was the first of its kind for YACC and we were very proud of the final production.
The involvement and support of these survivors allowed us to develop a unique and effective fundraising campaign, that not only raised money for our support programs, but which also raised awareness among the Canadian public to the challenges young adults with cancer face.
For this, and so much more we thank our survivor community as well as those who donated to this year’s appeal. Your support and commitment is such a wonderful gift.
Posted on Feb 15, 2010 - 04:46 PM
Welcome to Renée!
Renée Bennett is one of our best buds here at Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC). She is also a young adult cancer survivor, totally devoted to our cause. So devoted, that she recently decided she wanted to ramp up her support of YACC in a big way… by working here!
We want to give a huge shout-out to Renée for volunteering her mornings, three days a week, to help us out with Shave for the Brave 2010. The 5th Annual Shave is gearing up to be the biggest and baldest yet, so we couldn’t be more pleased about her involvement. (Not to mention, we just happen to like her a whole lot!)
This isn’t the first time Renée has offered her skills and experience to the benefit of YACC and the young adults we serve. Her first connection was as a participant of Retreat Yourself 2007. Often she speaks about how the first day of this weekend overwhelmed her and she wanted to go home. But she didn’t. And will tell you herself that she’s SO glad she didn’t as it simply changed her life.
Since this event, Renée has attended both Retreat Yourself and Survivor Conference events as both a participant and a peer supporter. She became a member of YACC’s Young Adult Advisory Board and currently serves on the Board of Directors.
Renée, I hope you prepared yourself for working with a bunch of crazies like us… but I know we’ll be a super team. And a bonus since you’re volunteering – you can’t really be fired! :p
So join me in welcoming Renée into the YACC fold! In the words of Renée herself, can I get a Hey, Hey? HEY, HEY, HEY!
Posted on Feb 10, 2010 - 05:27 PM
Retreat Mode
Last December, I wrote a little something about our upcoming Retreat Yourself weekend…The dates were locked, May 27-31st 2010; the location as well, Edenvale Retreat Centre in Abbotsford just outside Vancouver, but we were going to officially open registrations in January. Well it’s January!!!
Since my last post on Retreat Yourself, I had many questions about the retreat that we usually hold in the summer east of Canada. Just know that we are not forgetting about a retreat east, we are exploring other options and possibilities and will let everyone know where and when this event will take place.
In the mean time, we are really excited about the Retreat in Vancouver. We are opening the registrations to any young adults in Canada who have never been to one of our Retreat Yourself weekends (so yes, this means people on the east coast, as well as the west!). The weekend is free (accommodations and meals) and we have travel assistance to help people who are struggling financially get to Vancouver. It is an unforgettable weekend and we can’t wait to experience it with our amazing facilitators and retreaters!
The spaces are limited, so people should connect with us now!
For more details, you can connect with (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Posted on Jan 25, 2010 - 02:33 PM