My ooVoo Birth Day: From Pea Fun to Pea Fund

On Sunday February 10 I had the best birthday ever, using a cool new internet technology and talking face to face in groups of six with people I'd not ever imagined I'd meet in person. And the way ooVoo is set up I really did feel as if I was meeting them.

The MyOoVooDay events in which I tool part just happened to coincide with my birthday. What timing, I thought when Scott Monty, a contact from my twitter list, approached about hosting a couple of hours of interactive chat with members of my community - meaning people online who follow what I wrote about or are interested in my work or cancer struggle or whatever.

I 'd never heard of the event sponsor, Oovoo, but one of the first events I got involved in when I was learning about the interactive world Second Life was the Coke Virtual Thirst campaign and it too was arranged by Crayon, a new media marketing company. Oh and Scott works for Crayon.

The more I learned about the community centric focus of the Crayon ooVoo concept the more impressed I became with their approach to introducing this product/service. But I hadn't heard anything yet.

They had also decided to kick off this new technology by donating to charity in the name of the host who would interact and essentially try out the beta service with five other people at a time over the course of an afternoon.

That was way cool already. But on top of that - because of the community-based grassroots nature of the the Frozen Pea Fund and that our focus has from day one on stressing personal connections, OoVoo chose us to be the preferred recipient of their generosity.

This was right up my alley. Webcams I didn't know - people I did. And I knew that they would want to interact face to face if given an opportunity to chat in more than the 140 characters they normally get in twitter. It surpassed my wildest dreams as far as fun and learning the system with some very very nice people.

Testing a first day beta service with groups of 6 people who had never used the system before was gutsy - or insane - but side from a few glitches - especially for macs it was a fun experience, got people using the service, got us familiar with it to the point that we even used it for a family chat that night, during which they sang happy birthday to me.

So though there are a few glitches oovoo has to iron out, the concept of their service isn't one of them. I had an oovoolicious birthday and their donation to the frozen pea fund on the part of their hosts is our first corporate donation. They put their money where their mouth is and in this case they have very good taste, believing in Peas.

And to think that the pea fun started when I put a little baggie of peas in my camisole to soothe after multiple biopsies. In less than two months look how many conversations it's started. What a nice thing to be reminded of on my birthday.
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Comments

[BarbaraKB]

Great online connections for all, I'm sure. Thanx for this post. Has Crayon posted how *much* money ooVoo donated to PeaFund? Happy to tell how much I donated to be fair... 8-)

[Susan Reynolds]

Hi Barbara, Thanks so much for stopping by. Your support has really meant so much to me - and continues to.

The ooVoo contribution to the Frozen Pea Fund will be made in the form of a check and will represent the donations made in the names of the hosts who participated. Some hosts who were already connected with different charities opted to direct their donations in whole or in part to them.

Although I don't have numbers on this and am not directly connected with the administration of the Pea Fund, I would expect that Crayon, or perhaps someone from ooVoo will make an announcement at the end of the week or shortly thereafter.

Let's say I think it will be very exciting news and benefit the cancer-fighting community greatly.

[Connie Reece]

Hey, Barb. *waves* I'll echo what Susan said - we don't know the amount of the contribution yet, but it will be made public.