Chance

The lat­est reports are say­ing the earth­quake in Japan on March 11^th, could become the most expen­sive earth­quake in his­tory. I was at South by South­west Inter­ac­tive (SXSWi) sur­rounded by the best and bright­est in the techie and social media space when I heard about the tsunami. For the fol­low­ing days I saw tweets, insta­gram pho­tos, Face­book updates, and blog posts of peo­ple ral­ly­ing the sup­port of their friends and net­work to donate a few dol­lars or post a dona­tion link on their blog. Mashable’s
Japan Earth­quake & Tsunami: 7 Sim­ple Ways to Help post has over 15,000 Face­book shares and 6,000 tweets.

The 7 ways include:

1. Text to Donate
2. Donate via Facebook
3. Buy Vir­tual Goods (games and apps are donat­ing money)
4. Embed a Dona­tion Bar on your Blog/Website
5. “Like” a Cause page on Face­book that is donat­ing per num­ber of new fans
6. Tweet (spe­cific hashtags)
7. Donate via iTunes

The Social Media Club of Dal­las has an 8^th option — attend an event! SMC­Dal­las along with (in no par­tic­u­lar order) AAJA, AIGA, AAF Dal­las, DFW AMA, DFW SEM, IABC Dal­las, PRSA Dal­las, Texas Young Pro­fes­sion­als (whew that’s a lot of acronyms) and grow­ing num­ber of indi­vid­u­als are join­ing together with a goal of rais­ing at least $3,000 for the Amer­i­can Red Cross.

The event is Thurs­day, March 24^th from 7-9pm at Aloft Dal­las Down­town. All pro­ceeds from ticket sales ($10) will ben­e­fit the Amer­i­can Red Cross to sup­port the Japan Earth­quake and Pacific Tsunami Fund. Buy your ticket and add any addi­tional dona­tion you’d like at http://dallas4japan.eventbrite.com/.

As an indi­vid­ual, you can:

• Reg­is­ter and attend the event on Thursday
• Share this post on Face­book and Twitter
• Tweet: Join #Dallas4Japan on 3/24 http://bit.ly/dal4jap
• Invite your friends on Face­book

We are also look­ing for cor­po­rate support:

• Cor­po­rate spon­sors to off­set costs of venue and food and drinks for each attendee
• Cor­po­rate match­ing spon­sors to match 1 for 1 or near there for the money we raise as a result of the event.