If you are in one of these cities, we encourage you to join the hackathon. There are great discussions about hosting and how to collaborate on a global scale. The sign up for each city is on the RHoK website. The global event will also be streamed live–watch the official RHOK twitter account for these details.

Software developers, usability experts, emergency planners, technologists, social media knowledge workers, project managers, NGOs and university professors will meet in each of the cities to crowdsource open source solutions to very real humanitarian problems. There are seven main projects ranging building SMS applications to report amputee needs, near real-time UAV imagery processing to creating a people finder application. We also expect some awesome incubator discussions. When you get such diverse, innovative minds in a room, great things are bound to happen.

RHOK invited Crisis Commons to provide problem definitions for the global hackathon. I’ve blogged about CrisisCommons in the past–they are a global network of volunteers who use creative problem solving and open technologies to help people and communities in times and places of crisis.

I’m on my way to Sydney as we speak to participate as a core Crisis Commons volunteer and project liaison.

Each member of the Tucows’ team were given one of these celebratory sugar cookies and they were an immediate hit. Many staff (even the hungry ones), preferred to display their trophy on their desks, despite tauntings from their fellow colleagues about the deliciousness of the pastry.

We learned shortly after distributing the cookies that one of the staff had put his cookie up for auction on eBay, offering to match the winning bid with the proceeds going to the Coast to Coast Against Cancer children’s charity.

We had a fun time posting eBay questions about the cookie and having our colleague answer them, but I don’t think any of us here at OpenSRS would have guessed the final selling price for one sugar cookie would have reached $127.50!

After the auction was over, the losing bidder offered to purchase HALF the cookie for the auction price, bringing the total amount to $510 (after matching). We just couldn’t bear to have the cookie split in two, so another staff member has agreed to donate their cookie to the cause.

The winner of this limited edition trophy, was Andrew Allemann from domainnamewire.com who has a thorough recap, along with the humorous questions (and answers) asked during the auction.

Special thanks to Andrew, and the rest of the auction bidders for surprising us with your generosity!

—

OpenSRS Bakes Cookies Into Its Product Lineup
First Transaction Benefits Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation

Toronto – April 16 – Tucows Inc. today announced that it has embarked on an expansion of its OpenSRS service offering to include cookies. The company’s first such cookie transaction was completed on April 15th, 2010, with the successful sale of an OpenSRS cookie by eBay auction. The final selling price of the limited edition, commemorative cookie was $127.50. Prior to the closing of that transaction, a second buyer came forward and thanks to some fast work in the Tucows kitchen, a second cookie sale was brokered. A matching fund pushed the total money raised to over $500.

Net proceeds from the sale of the cookies will be donated to The Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation, a Canadian charitable organization which Tucows has been a supporter of for many years.

Coast to Coast is Canada’s only national charity devoted to fighting childhood cancer. Coast To Coast Against Cancer ensures 100% of receiptable funds raised go toward improving the survival rate and quality of life of children (and their families) impacted by cancer. Learn more at http://www.coasttocoastagainstcancer.org.

Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows Inc, noted that the company is always looking to tap into new growth areas that take advantage of the depth and breadth of talents within the company.

“It’s so important for a company to understand and revisit its core competencies,” said Noss. “What do we do well? What are our assets? We have 10 million domain names under management. We have 10,000 resellers. Fine. Good. But we also have a kitchen full of mixing bowls and spoons. We have a 24-hour convenience store a half a block away that sells flour and eggs. Cookies were a natural product extension for us.”

Ross Rader, General Manager at Hover, Tucows’ retail division, spearheaded the cookie sale initiative within Tucows.

“We’re thrilled to have our first cookie sale completed,” said Rader. “And we’re especially pleased that Coast to Coast, and the kids they help, will be the real benefactor of this new auction expansion.”

The charity auction continues a tradition at Tucows to give back to the community. “It’s really a win-win-win setup for everyone involved. Coast to Coast gets the cash, we get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, and the buyer can enjoy a yummy cookie knowing they’ve helped some special kids who are battling cancer,” said Rader.

The winning bidder was identified as Andrew Allemann, who runs DomainNameWire.com, the leading blog for the domain name industry. “I had to win this auction. This isn’t some reg fee name. This is a premium, category-killer for sure,” Allemann said in a blog posting revealing himself as the auction winner.

The cookie sale is just one of a number of fundraising inititives planned for 2010. Along with the Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation, Tucows supports other worthy causes including Creative Commons, Little Geeks Foundation, One Web Day, Parkdale Community Health Centre and others.

About Tucows

Tucows is a global Internet services company. OpenSRS manages over ten million domain names and millions of email boxes through a reseller network of over 10,000 web hosts and ISPs. Hover is the easiest way for individuals and small businesses to manage their domain names and email addresses. YummyNames owns premium domain names that generate revenue through advertising or resale. Butterscotch.com is an online video network building on the foundation of Tucows.com. More information can be found at http://tucowsinc.com.

This news release may contain forward looking statements. The cookies may contain nuts, or other allergens.

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At OpenSRS, we have a talented array of women who are developers, programmers, implementation specialists, professional service experts, technical support, reporting specialists, account managers, customer service, sales representatives, video technology consultants, accounting, NOC analysts, technical writers, managers, directors, quality assurance specialists, marketers, communicators, ITIL-certified technologists, web designers, compliance officers, usability experts, human resources, internet savvy and more. Each of these talented folks makes our corner of the Internet run smoothly. We are in awe of their sheer force of knowledge. Here’s a picture of some of our talented folks:

We hope to inspire you to talk about the great work women contribute in your workplaces. And, we hope we can inspire young women to join our profession.

By the way, OpenSRS is looking for Application Developers, NOC Analysts, and QA/Developers . We welcome all skilled talent. And, men too!

Marco’s love of Rugby serves a dual purpose: the games and practices are a great way to deal with the pressure of managing our OpenSRS EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region while simultaneously supporting the local sporting community.

The connection between Rugby and OpenSRS

Another interesting link between Rugby and OpenSRS is the term “Scrum”. As you may have seen us mention a few times on the blog and in the forums, OpenSRS uses a variant of Agile development called “Scrum” as our software development process.

How are they doing?

As of last week, Gateshead RFC had just won a game (28-7), and last weekend there was a semi final cup game for the North-East National Title. That sounds pretty good to us!

We’ll be following up with Marco upon his return from WebhostingDay in Germany to get an update on the standings.

Can you spot Marco?

Some of you are well acquainted with our EMEA team and know Marco well. Just for fun: If you’re the first person to spot Marco in the team photo, we’ll send you one of our spiffy new OpenSRS sports tees. Just leave a comment below with Marco’s position in the team photo.

Please join us in wishing Marco and his team the best of luck this season!

Thanks to Gateshead RFC for the pictures.

The WHD 2009 event had more than 2,000 visitors in attendance from 63 countries and we understand from the event organizers that WHD 2010 will break the ‘09 attendance records. As a result, we’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure everything goes smoothly and we put one of our best people on the job to help us pack: Taylor Biggin.

Word has it that before joining OpenSRS, Taylor was considering starting his own box company called Biggin’s Boxes. He had a catchy slogan “You bring it, I’ll box it!” and a nifty jingle with music he composed on an xylophone his parents gave him on his 4th birthday.

Everything in that last paragraph was a total fib. I’m sorry. But after watching my colleague so artistically box our precious cargo, I can only imagine this gentleman has missed his calling as a professional boxer.

Shortly after he was given this important task, Taylor realized the odd shape of the components would make it difficult to properly pack. No matter… Taylor had a box problem and he didn’t just think outside the box: he BUILT the box!

A couple of the finished boxes are pictured right, with the artist Mr. Biggin. I can’t be sure, but when the courier arrived to take his creatively packed shipment away, I think I watched Taylor shed a tear.

Hello,

With great pride I note that January marks the 10th anniversary of the first domain name registered through OpenSRS.

Back in the spring and summer of 1999, we started planning for a different way to sell domain names. We had two businesses at the time, the Tucows.com software libraries and a large Toronto ISP, Internet Direct.

We knew that domain names should be simple and inexpensive to sell, and were made much too difficult and expensive by the monopoly provider. We were confident that we could fix that.

We also knew something more important. With competition coming, the companies planning to launch were simply copying the monopoly and maybe dropping the price a little. Domain names would likely be offered from $35/year!

And we recognized that registrars didn’t sell domain names, service providers did.

We took those beliefs and poured them into a service offering that launched in January of 2000. It was an immediate success.

Now ten years later, and we still have our very first customer still happily and actively selling domains through OpenSRS. The first domain we sold is still managed by OpenSRS. And we’ve grown every single year.

So much is different now than it was then. The meaning of “service provider” has changed. In 2000, what we today know as web hosts were really just evolving out of the loam, forced into existence by telcos and cablecos killing dialup ISPs through regulation. Now the whole concept of the web host is morphing into something different, and, in many ways there may be a re-integration of “ISPs” and “web hosts”.

So much is the same as it was then. People still need a personal relationship to help them get the most out of the Internet. Too many people still don’t have one. There is still a huge gap between what people CAN do on the Internet and what they are ABLE to do.

Most importantly, we still view service providers as the greatest distribution channel in the Internet economy. We care deeply about our relationships with them and embrace the ones that care deeply about their relationships with their customers. So many of you are still around TEN YEARS LATER! You should be proud. I know I am.

Thanks to all our customers, employees and partners. We hope and expect that the next ten years will be even better!

Sincerely,

Elliot Noss
CEO Tucows Inc.

It’s been a great ten years for OpenSRS, and a great ten years for the Internet as a whole. We’d love to hear from you as well! What’s your memories of the early days? How did you come to be an OpenSRS partner, and how did you come to realize success in your business? Comments are open; share your memories.

People watched the news, donated money and then asked: can I help?

As a Crisis/Technical Incident communicator for Tucows/OpenSRS, I write all the incident reports, maintenance windows and system status updates for Resellers. Using the Internet tools to quickly get messages to customers is important for our business. Every day I work with some of the best techs in the world to make that happen. Tucows is very passionate using the Internet as an agent for positive change. I joined the CrisisCommons movement because this is a chance to use “agile actions” to help others. The CrisisCommons mission is to use this groundwork to help now and for all future emergencies. This is the power of the Internet flexing its community spirit and heart.

CrisisCamp – Haiti

CrisisCommons was started in 2009. It is a grassroots organization that facilitates partnerships and maintains a network of technology volunteers to respond to specific needs in times of crisis. From this, associated CrisisCamps are created to organize people who want to volunteer their skills to help NGOs, Emergency teams and Non-profit Aid organizations. When there’s a crisis or a need for CrisisCommons to respond, they come together for action.

It has been a heady week since our first CrisisCamp Haiti conference call last week. CrisisCamps sprung up in 6 major US cities last Saturday. Since then the momentum has grown and this weekend 12 camps are planned: from Boston to London, the UK to Bogota, Columbia to Washington DC to Seattle. There are three basic types of CrisisCamp activities: development help, social media (wiki, blog, cataloging, mapping) and general helpers. People are donating their time and helping to tackle projects ranging from OpenStreetMap to Mobile Development to a Haiti Hospital Capacity Finder.

I’m organizing Toronto’s CrisisCamp Haiti. Our first kick-off meeting is Sunday, January 24th, 2010. If you live in Toronto and want to help, please join us. Over at Butterscotch, our sister company, Michael E. Callaghan is contributing screencasts for CrisisCamp.

Our friends and hosting company partners joined together to create Hosting For Haiti. They are working with the American Red Cross to provide support, which may include mobilizing relief workers, sending relief supplies, and providing financial resources for recovery. You guys rock!

Do you want to get involved?

If you want to help, you can sign up for your local CrisisCamp (eventbrite sign-up). You can also follow Crisiscamp on Twitter to hear about all the global action happening.

• Crisis Commons site
• There’s a daily CrisisCommons conference call.
• IRC channel (Random Hacks of Kindness)
• Simple things that anyone can do. All you need is a computer, Internet access and some passion.

If there is no CrisisCamp event planned in your city or country but you want to get involved, you can contact CrisisCommons. I am also available to get you get rolling: Heather AT opensrs.com. If you know someone who would like to lend a hand, please spread the word.

Other news on CrisisCamp – Haiti:

Noel Dickover’s interview with the BBC (co-founder of CrisisCamp) [audio file]
Radar O’Reilly
IT World Canada
Article about Techs in the Toronto community

In part one of the series, A.J. Mirani, Manager, Technical Operations, talked about how we analyze changes and manage risk. Creating categories for changes and risk is only part of a solid change management process. In part two, A.J. provides more context to the life-cycle of a change request:

You might also be interested in A.J’s introduction to the Technical Operations team that we posted a few months back.

Stay tuned for more videos about the Technical teams at OpenSRS. Also, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to hear more about, let us know.

In our last video, A.J. Mirani, Manager of Technical Operations, provided us with a brief overview of the Technical Operations team. He joins again with two videos explaining the OpenSRS/Tucows Change Management processes.

In this first part, A.J. talks about how we analyze changes and manage risk using our version of ITIL/ITSM: (5 minute video)

Next week, we’ll post part 2 of our conversation on Change Management.

“Best Decorated Service Guy” Competition

This year we’re holding a “Best Decorated Service Guy” competition as part of the fun. We’d love for you to take part–if you have one of our Service Guy action figures, you too can join in the scary fun! This Friday, October 30th, 2009, dress him up, and then take a picture and send it to halloween@opensrs.com or post it on Twitter or Flickr. Be sure to tag it #serviceguy so we can find it. We’ll post all entries right here on our blog!

Fear not if you don’t have a Service Guy. We would still love to see what you are doing at your company to celebrate Halloween–send those pictures our way too!

There’s prizes!

A special prize will go to the person or company with “Best Decorated Service Guy” as well as the company or group with the most spirited photo.

In the meantime, I’m off to track down some eye of newt and toe of frog for my witches brew.