Recipe for a headache OR something for everyone

Crazy week!!. I've been trying to squeeze as many networking events into my schedule as possible - before they cease for the summer. So this week I attended 4 very different events for 4 very different reasons - Hydro, Cancer, KickAss and twittering Moms..... Frankly my brain is more than a bit full from the diversity that was my week. Am I really such an interesting person, or do I need to get a little more focus??


Wednesday lunch - Board of Trade, featuring Bob Elton, President of BC Hydro.

BC Hydro is on my top 10 places to work list, so I felt it was important to go and hear what Bob had to say about the vision of Hydro. I learnt a few things and realized some gap areas in my research. I won't give too much away here as I want to save the good stuff for my cover letter. The highlight of the lunch though, was the lady that I sat next to and with which I shared a great conversation over lunch (oh yeah, and I learnt salmon can remember back 80 years from before the hydro dam was built).

Wednesday night - Community Forum held by BC Breast Cancer Foundation.

This was relevant to me as I had my first >40 mammogram that week and it seemed appropriate and timely to go to this information session. BC is unique in that any woman over 40 can get a mammogram free of charge without a Doctor's referral - just call 1-800-663-9203. Early detection is key and a quick 10 minute test seems so easy.

This was the first ever Community Forum to connect CBCF with the community. We got to listen to an interesting expert talk about breast cancer prevention across the lifespan. The usual advise was heard... everything in moderation (especially when it comes to alcohol)... eat healthy to maintain a healthy weight.... be active... get screened. But I noted some interesting info that I hadn't heard before:

• Breastfeeding has shown to lower incidence (in the baby & in the mom)
• Activity at ANY age helps - never too late. But women who are active in their younger years have even lower risk than those who become active older in life.
• Research is showing more and more evidence that 2nd hand smoke is a strong risk factor.
• Some evidence that Vitamin D decreases your risk.
• Hormone replacement therapy should be avoided if possible.

We also heard a very inspirational story from a volunteer. But the laugh out loud (but not really funny) moment came from another survivor in the room, who having lived a healthy, active life realized that perhaps growing up in an airtight winter proofed house in New Brunswick with 2 smoking parents might have contributed to her illness.

Thursday night - League of Kickass Business People.

Yes this group certainly wins the award for the best name. Smaller group event. A lot of marketing, advertising and social media types.

I went to this event with a couple of former colleagues from the Rick Hansen Foundation. We all knew a few folks so it was easy to mingle and chat with people. The topic was the 2010 Olympics and maximizing your opportunities. Frankly it could have been called "Its not too late". A great diverse crowd of presentations. Event was live tweeted by TrevorRoald under #LOK. He captured some good nuggets.

I have to say it is this type of event that is hard on you when you are out of work. You need to attend this type of event to network and find work. Brought me back to my blog about networking and the dentist http://tjrramblings.blogspot.com/2009/03/networking-or-dentist.html. But it really made me realize how much more I know about myself today and the confidence I put forward is about what I know and who I am. NOT who I work for.

Friday morning - MomCafe... Moms are all a Twitter.

Finally I went to my first MomCafe event. I wanted to meet other professionally minded Moms and hear what a couple of great mompreneurs had to say about using twitter (Anne Marie from @yoyomama_van and Sue from @raspberrykids talk). Lovely, casual event, easy to chat with mom's about all sorts of things (including whether we should half the healthy and non-healthy monster sized muffins and then we could have a bit of both... we did BTW). The frustrating part came from my lovely toddler, who just discovered separation anxiety about a week ago. Nannies on call had to find me about 30 minutes into the program. Thankfully he sat nicely with me for a bit, but then I had to walk him around to keep him amused. And yes, for those at the session he was the aspiring Canadian Idol at the back of the room. Event was live tweeted by yoyobelly under #mctweet.

MomCafe started me thinking that maybe I need to take a good look at what I've learnt about my self in the past 10 months. Meaning re-evaluating my thoughts on doing contract work OR just starting my own business. And that REALLY makes my head hurt.

influencing and changing behavior - a case in cloth diapers

A few weeks ago I attended a BCAMA breakfast to hear Jim Nelson, Senior Manager of Marketing from BC Hydro speak. Jim oversees the PowerSmart brand and I found his presentation on changing and influencing behavior through social marketing very interesting. Several weeks later it is still resonating with me, in particular making me think how I came to be a cloth diaper advocate.

I can easily be described as a city girl. I started in advertising in Toronto in the early 90s when Melrose Place was the 'best' example of my profession. No my skirts were never that short, no I didn't switch from an account person to a writer to an art director in a single episode and no I never tried to drown anyone in the pool in the center of my apartment complex. But I did live a hard working, fun living, disposable lifestyle. That changed somewhat after I moved to Vancouver. But I was still very focused on my work and my social life. When I met my husband I was travelling a lot for work, dropped my laundry off at the laundromat to be cleaned, dried and folded for me and I had a cleaning lady twice a month. Not the type of person you'd expect to get excited about her diapers drying on the clothes line in the backyard.

So what happened? How was I influenced to change? Certainly mainstream media had an effect on my thinking about my disposable lifestyle. It always really bugged me that diapers live pretty much forever in our land fills. And while the cloth diaper movement is growing is it certainly not mainstream and there are no large marketers pushing their virtues. This is a case of social change through word of mouth.

At the breakfast session Jim gave us a little exercise to discuss amongst your table a behaviour you'd like to change - discuss the excuses you'd give not to change, actual reasons not the change and the reasons to change. (and he reminded us that real and perceived issues were equally valid)

Well the excuses not to try is pretty obvious - the fear of poo and the need to stay as far away from it as possible. Some valid reasons for not trying them is the upfront cost of buying them, the extra steps required when your baby is wiggling away on the diaper table and the extra laundry (and the additional hydro cost that goes with that). The reasons to try are primarily environmental, but also cost.

So I was commited to the idea that I would try cloth diapering part time. Use them at home and then switch to disposable when out and about. It seemed like a nice little step to try and reduce the amount of diapers I would send to the landfill.

I was one of the last of my friends to have kids, so I asked my friends. The reactions were

• "hahahahahahaha I give it a week"
• "you are a better woman than me"
• "I tried it but my husband wasn't on board so I gave it up"
• "there were too many extra steps - diapers, snaps, liners, covers - so we gave it up".

So word of mouth was certainly NOT influencing me to change my behavior. But I had one good friend who was cloth diapering - she had three kids so I figured if she could do it the least I could do it give it a try. So we took the advice of a colleague and started with a diaper service.

Then it was like we fell into a rabbit hole - of the marketing kind. Cloth diapering itself was easy. Figuring out the shopping process was NOT. My friend with the 3 kids (who lives in Toronto by the way) was my life line to all things cloth diapering. Cloth diapering seem to be a great business opportunity for Work at Home Moms (WAHM). And the internet is just stuffed FULL of diaper options. But I spends hours and hours and hours reviewing websites and scouring diaperpin.com to read reviews. No wonder people don't want to change and try something different... it is overwhelming. More overwhelming than buying a stroller!

The diaper service was great advice as it gave me a few months to get used to my little man and his diapering needs and then buy a couple of samples to see what worked for him and us. I then bought the diapers we liked on craigslist (the good diapers like mother-ease really hold their value and I expect I'll be able to resell them when we are finished with them OR give them to a friend).

In the end, we found the times when we used disposable diapers we had more messes and that resulted in more laundry than washing diapers. So we became full time cloth diaper parents. And somewhere along the line I've become pretty passionate about it. I've posted reviews on diaperpin.com, I've passionately advocated to poor pregnant women wondering what it is all about, I've purchased wet bags (btw the best are from http://www.thegoodmama.com/ - expensive but worth it) so I can travel with cloth diapers and I obsess about those 6 disposable diapers a week that get used on my son while he is in daycare.

So how did I get here from those Melrose Place days????? Word of mouth worked against me, there were no negative consequences or social pressure, I knew no advocates..... I guess it just came down to my belief that the social norm was NOT acceptable to me and the help of ONE good friend.

So what no... well I'm trying to do my darnest to influence other people's behaviour by advocating my experience. It only took one friend to help me change. And it really it isn't that hard - once you get over the intial shopping experience. Now if we could just convince a large marketer that money could be made here then we'd have a lot more power behind our cloth diaper revolution.