Ya know… The two questions I’ve been asked the most over the last couple of weeks have been 1) Are you doing P4O this year? and 2) Hey, is P4O something that you are doing this year?

Well the answer to both questions is yes (since they are the same question). The only qualifier is that it isn’t just me that’s doing it. It’s me and you. And you, and you, and you.

This year, Pink for October is being run by me, Tammie Lister, and Zach Inglis. I’ll be the loud mouth with the Publish button. Tammie is doing a total redesign to the site (coming very soon) as well as releasing a WordPress theme. Zach coded up an easy way for you to sign up as Going Pink so we don’t have to cap it at 500 like I had to do last year (since I was manually entering each URL and it was all I did for 2 days straight). Others will join us behind the scenes, as it were, as well but you are probably wondering, “What, Matthew, can I do to help out?”

What You Can Do

We will be doing a couple of new things this year so I have a convenient list of things for you to choose from if you’d like to participate. I am trying to make it as easy as possible for people to be involved and part of that is starting now for those who might choose some of the more time-intensive choices.

1) Get the word out. This month, it would be great if you could post on your site announcing the upcoming event. Give a little note and a link and that’s it.

2) Go Pink on your site. This is hopefully in conjunction with #1. However you choose to do it is fine. We’d just like to see a badge/banner + post telling your visitors why you Went Pink with a link to the site. Please. :)

3) Make badges, banners, buttons, chicklets, blahblahs… Digital things that people can put on their site (free for them to use) so they can link to the site and publicize the event. Such as what we have currently available. If you make something, please send it to me and I’ll add it to the Downloads page with a link back to your site.

4) Design blog templates. Yes, getting more involved here. Last year a couple of blog templates were created and were well received. I’d like to be able to put a few on the site for download and give full credit to the person who did the design. Maybe even have a vote aspect so people can rate your work. ;) Seriously though. A big question I got last year was something along the lines of, “I don’t know much about design, do you have a template I could use?”

5) Offer up your services to be auctioned off during the month of October. New this year: we are going to raise some money. But it won’t be on selling pink M&Ms. It will be by offering time and effort of real people who want to be helpful and spread awareness about Breast Cancer. This is something Tammie and I are just beginning to work on, but we think it will go over well. This is also something we could use some help with. If you have any experience with this sort of thing let me know.

6) Get your employer to make their web site pink. I tried this last year and got laughed at. Politely of course. But I am going to ask again this year. There were quite a number of small businesses who joined in last year and thanked me for organizing it. I think if enough people bug their employers about it, it will start to be picked up. Though I don’t expect it to take off like wildfire. Then again, I didn’t expect P4O to get more than 100 sites and we got +1500.

And speaking of +1500… I don’t have a specific goal this year. Of course it would be cool to get 15 times the number we did last year, but to me that isn’t the point. The point is to make an investment on your part to learn about Breast Cancer then turn around and teach someone else about it. With the web of course, one person can teach many and that’s a big part of the reason I chose this method of raising awareness.

I’ll be opening a forum this year as well. Just to see how it goes. Last year we had many touching and thought provoking stories from people and I’d like to continue that as well, but I thought we could give a forum a try too. And that makes me think that I should ask you what we should do this year. Any ideas? Should I start a P4O Twitter stream? :)

In the end…

In the end, the core point for doing this is to raise awareness and learn. The web, and blogs in particular, seem like an easy way to make that happen. I’d like to thank all the people that helped last year and give thanks in advance to those who will help this year. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment!