At BloggerSocial08 Scott Monty had the idea of auctioning off the absent Joe Jaffe’s name tag to benefit the Frozen Pea Fund. After a spirited bidding war, Geoff Livingston (The Buzz Bin) wound up with the coveted badge, and we received a very generous contribution of $500.

To keep the fun — and the good work — going, Geoff decided to pass the distinct honor of being Joe Jaffe for a day to anyone willing to contribute $25 to FPF. The effort has gone international, with its own Flickr group: I am Joseph Jaffe.

Recent Jaffe poseurs (and fund contributors — thank you!) include Sean Howard (who kept his clothes on for a change), Cam Beck, Paul McEnany, and Katie Chatfield.

Joe has been a great sport and joined in the traveling joke about his name badge (see photo above with instigator Geoff). Thank you all for your kindness and your spirit of keeping the fun in fundraising.

One day you’re talking with your daughter about what colleges she’d like to attend and the next day you’re praying you’ll be alive to see her graduate, go off to college, get married and have babies. … This wasn’t part of the plan. – Tricia

Cancer is never part of the plan. It strikes unexpectedly, and it does not just strike an individual. Cancer affects an entire family — even an entire community, to varying degrees.

This past week many in our online community were saddened to hear that Tricia, the sister of Todd Andrlik (@ToddAnd on Twitter), was scheduled for a bilateral mastectomy on Saturday. Her story bears a striking resemblance to Susan Reynolds’s case: discovery of a suspected cyst, immediate diagnosis of invasive lobular carcinoma, and surgery just nine days later.

Tricia’s surgery went well, and the news is hopeful. Pathology reports will give clearer answers, but the surgeon appeared confident that the cancer had not spread to other parts of her body. However, she faces months of treatment — months when she will be unable to go back to work and her family will be faced with some staggering expenses. Even with insurance, out-of-pocket expenses for a cancer patient can be quite high.

To help his sister, Todd created a beautiful website — and he created a way for you to help Tricia and the Frozen Pea Fund at the same time. It’s also a way to promote your business or to pay tribute to a friend or loved one who has fought cancer.

Go to the Pixel Page on the 4tricia.com blog. Buy a block of pixels and upload your image or logo. You can even add a tagline and a link to your website. A 10 x 10 pixel square is $1. The most common selection is a 50 x 50 pixel square, about the size of an online avatar, and it’s yours for $25.

Tricia and her family have graciously offered to donate 25 percent of the proceeds to the Frozen Pea Fund. In fact, we have already received our first donation from them!

We want to thank Tricia and her family, and especially Todd, for including the Frozen Pea Fund. And we extend our thoughts and prayers for a quick recovery for Tricia.

How about you? Would you please support Tricia by leaving a comment for her on 4tricia.com and by purchasing a pixel? It’s a great cause, and an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of a family in our extended community.

Please spread the word about the pixel project on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. And feel free to blog about the effort on behalf of Tricia, or email the link to a friend. Thanks in advance for your help.

– Connie

Just a note to let you know that our Donation Widget is temporarily disabled. We are making some web site changes as we transition into being an independent nonprofit organization. Exciting things are happening but they’re not quite ready to announce yet — we’ll be updating you soon.

In the meantime, here are some suggestions for ways to commemorate Frozen Pea Friday besides monetary contributions:

1. Mike Gunderloy (@MikeG1) is donating platelets to his local Red Cross today. This is an excellent suggestion for any day of the week, but it’s especially meaningful to those of us at Frozen Pea Fund because chemo patients often need blood or platelets. Check out this post by Kate, who is battling pancreatic cancer and just received two units of blood and additional platelets.

2. Blog about the Frozen Pea Fund or tell your friends about it. Our donation widget is down temporarily, but we’re not going anywhere.

3. Change your avatar on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking site to a peavatar. Don’t know what that is? Check out the Frozen Pea Friday group on Flickr. And if you haven’t uploaded your peavatar to Flickr, please do so.

4. Add your name to the Frappr map for the Frozen Pea Fund.

5. Check out SharingHope.tv, a new video project by the American Cancer Society that allows people to share their cancer stories in their own way. Here’s what Susan Reynolds had to say about SharingHope.

– Connie Reece

While Susan Reynolds was in Austin, a bunch of Twitter folks got together at Waterloo Ice House on Saturday night for dinner. Bryan Person and family were also visiting from the Boston area. It was a lovely evening, and the group — 16 adults and 4 kids — enjoyed eating outdoors by the playground.

Attending were @susanreynolds; @condopro (Susan’s husband, Bill); @BryanPerson and his wife, Stella, and their children; @conniereece; @khaynes (who volunteered to coordinate the event); @RichardatDell; @karasoluri; @taxtweet; @mikeneumann; @LaniAR and husband @agentgenius; @daveiam (David Neff of the American Cancer Society); @aruni and family; and @thomsinger dropped by on his way to a family gathering.

The video is Susan and Mike posing with the infamous Lady Thunder, who just had her 9,000-mile mani-pedi and looked absolutely stunning that evening.

Check these Flickr photo sets for more tweet-up fun:

Kim Haynes

Mike Neumann

Lani Anglin-Rosales

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/4iO9reWKLuI[/youtube]

Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece (or Laverne and Shirley as they referred to themselves after viewing this video) finally got to meet in person this week when Susan and her husband, Bill, flew to Austin for meetings. Frozen Pea Friday #10 marked a milestone: incorporation and trademark papers have been filed. When completed, the Frozen Pea Fund will be a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation.

There will be a lot more to report in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. For now, Susan and Connie want to thank you for supporting those who, like Susan, are battling breast cancer, and for your support of cancer research and awareness through the Frozen Pea Fund.

I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their program, For Immediate Release. As a fan of this popular podcast, I was happy to have the opportunity to talk to them in person, especially when the topic was one of my favorite projects, the Frozen Pea Fund.

The interview is about 30 minutes. Click to listen: FIR interview: Connie Reece, Frozen Pea Fund

It’s been 9 weeks since Frozen Pea Fund began and we’re still going strong with over $8,000 raised so far. The response from the community and *beyond* our social media community has been amazing. Susan is an inspiring woman and by sharing her story has shown not only the power of social media but shown the power of giving and make an effort at change. Donating the cost of a couple of bags of frozen peas to the fund is EASY! Donating helps people like Susan and my grandmother and millions of other people in the world that are suffering every day and fighting hard for their lives.

The American Cancer Society is an organization that is dedicated to eliminating cancer and minimizing suffering from cancer. They are the people that are working hard to fund research that is searching for a cure.

To those who have donated time and again, we thank you so much for supporting cancer research by donating to ACS and the Frozen Pea Fund. It’s YOU who have made a difference.

Please join Jonny’s Par-tay on Wednesday night, when Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece will join host Jonny Goldstein for a video conversation. They will be talking about the Frozen Pea Fund and how online connections can become a vibrant community.

Check out the show info and find out how you can be part of the conversation.

Mark your calendar: Wednesday, February 13, 9:00 pm EST

Goldie Katsu (@goldiekatsu) recorded this awesome video letting us know what’s so great about Frozen Peas! Please take a moment after viewing this video to keep the momentum going and donate the equivalent of two bags of frozen peas to the fund. Just click the Donate Now button in the sidebar!

We are grateful to the folks at crayon and their client, ooVoo, for choosing the Frozen Pea Fund as the beneficiary of their generosity. To demonstrate the new service, which allows up to six people to video chat, ooVoo recruited about 20 bloggers/authors/speakers to host informal chat sessions on a topic of their (choosing.

The campaign, which actually lasts five days, is called My ooVoo Day. In lieu of compensating each of the participating hosts, ooVoo will make a contribution of $1,500; most have chosen to donate their fee to the Frozen Pea Fund.

This is a win-win-win-win situation. ooVoo will have several hundred people test-driving their service, readers get to connect with some of their favorite bloggers, who get increased exposure in the marketplace, and a worthy cause gets its first corporate donation.

In addition, Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece will be hosting their own video chat sessions on Sunday, February 10, on the topic From Connections to Community: How Online Relationships Enrich Our Lives.

Founder of Every Dot Connects, Connie is a communications specialist with three decades of experience as a writer, speaker and consultant. She is Executive Director of Social Media Club and helped establish the Frozen Pea Fund. Both Connie and Susan were networking online in the pre-Internet days and have honed their relationship-building skills through a variety of social media. In Boobs on Ice Susan shares openly about her cancer diagnosis and the role online community has come to play in her journey.

Each chat session can accommodate four people, and 18 slots were filled the first day. To register, go to My ooVoo Day, download the software (available for Mac users too–only at this link), and then sign up for an open seat.

Here’s a rundown of the times and topics Connie and Susan will be available to talk about:

Session 1 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST — Building Connections and Networking Online
(four 15-minute time slots available)
Topics: Finding and Friending; Your Profile Is Your Personal Brand; Cultivating Relationships

Session 2 4:00 to 4:30 p.m. EST — Taking it Face to Face: stories of meetups and tweetups (three 10-minute time slots)

Session 3 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. EST — When Connections Become a Community
(four 15-minute time slots)
Topics: How Online Communities Celebrate, Grieve; How to Talk to Someone About Cancer or Crisis; Give the Present of Your Presence

Immediately following this session, it’s strictly birthday chat with Susan — sign up for the party at the separate My ooVoo Day listing:

Update: The Birthday Party time slots are already filled! Check back later to see if we are able to add any additional times to wish Susan the happiest of birthdays.