{"id":1179,"date":"2007-06-27T12:05:37","date_gmt":"2007-06-27T12:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/2007\/06\/27\/a-better-approach-to-corporate-gifts-real-social-responsibility\/"},"modified":"2007-06-27T12:05:37","modified_gmt":"2007-06-27T12:05:37","slug":"a-better-approach-to-corporate-gifts-real-social-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/a-better-approach-to-corporate-gifts-real-social-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"A Better Approach To Corporate Gifts: Real Social Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something I have been thinking about for a while just got crystallized by PragDave<\/a>, via Nigel James<\/a>, via Dennis Howlett<\/a><\/p>\n

Nigel says: <\/p>\n

\n

“I don’t need to tell you there are people starving every day. I don’t need to tell you there are child soldiers fighting wars. I don’t need to tell you that just a little contribution could make a massive difference. <\/p>\n

I don’t need to tell you this.<\/p>\n

We are about to go to a conference and spend a small fortune on fees, food, hotels and travel. What if you took a small portion of what you are going to spend on TechEd and made some contribution to help someone break out of poverty?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I can’t speak for SAP, and its expenses, and I must admit I am a fan of the company’s T&E for bloggers program, so I am a bit conflicted here, but Nigel and Dennis make great points.<\/p>\n

So what about small things: anything we can do?<\/p>\n

I moderated a track at a great architecture and software development conference earlier in the year called QCon<\/a>. Thoughtworks<\/a>, which is popping up everywhere at the moment… was the main sponsor. I was particularly taken with its approach: instead of giving presenters a crappy bag full of corporate schwag nobody actually wants, they offered to make a contribution to one of five charities chosen by the presenter themselves. The approach made a real impression on me.<\/p>\n

So can more vendors running events please do something similar? Just a few dollars, pounds or euros can make a big difference to people’s lives. Please not another bag or set of binoculars or ethernet cable or mouse.<\/p>\n

I can’t guarantee that we won’t have some schwag at SAP TechEd<\/a> RedMonk track at the community day, but I will make this undertaking – for every delegate that attends we’ll donate $2 to charity. If only a few people show up we’ll bump that that up to $5. A small thing perhaps, but hopefully we can make a difference. I am pretty sure Cote and Stephen will have some good ideas for charities we might support.<\/p>\n

One thing i really don’t need- another big vendor advertisement on a backpack. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something I have been thinking about for a while just got crystallized by PragDave, via Nigel James, via Dennis Howlett Nigel says: “I don’t need to tell you there are people starving every day. I don’t need to tell you there are child soldiers fighting wars. I don’t need to tell you that just a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wfjh-j1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}