Contributing to a national debate about work-life balance? Here is a great opportunity!

Aug. 23, 2010

Dear BK Community:

Interested in fostering organizational systems that actually support work-life balance matters? From the Co-founder of MoveOn.Org (Joan Blades), here
is a book that dives feet first into the topic AND is accompanied by a
concrete way we can all participate in an open dialogue about the
matter. Be sure to do so before Aug. 31st.

Contribute your thoughts and, especially, examples of how workplaces are taking leadership on this matter!

In solidarity,

Gabriela Melano, Ed.D. http://www.melanoandassociates.com

We are excited to announce the publication of The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where and How to Work and Boost the Bottom Line. As well as the soft launch of http://customfitworkplace.org/ .(Good to kick the tires before our blog carnival on the 31st.) This is all part of the MomsRising Custom-fit
Work initiative - inspired by the
Open Flexible Work segment of the MomRising work. Nanette and I learned over the last five years that all the
new ways to make work fit for mothers are in fact good for everybody. We all need work that fits our lives.

We are thrilled to kick off a national conversation on work-life fit with a major social media action on August 31 at 12:00 PM EST. The social media action will
include the launch of the website CustomFitWorkplace.org, a blog carnival on
open flexible work, and a Twitter party with hashtag #worklife.

What's a blog carnival? MomsRising will be hosting a national social media conversation (via a blog carnival and Twitter party) focusing on a critical issue for American employers, employees
and families alike: work-life fit. The blog carnival is an online
action that aims to utilize the growing power of our combined reach on social
media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) to jumpstart a national dialogue about the
urgent need to update the way we work in America-- and to build a major
groundswell of support for workplace practices that honor workers'
responsibilities both on and off the job, creating a win for both employees and
employers.

Here's how to get your blog post published in the carnival: Submit your short or long original blog post--or a previously
published text--relating to work-life fit by August 30th to: Anita@MomsRising.org

With Labor Day quickly following this blog carnival and Twitter party, we hope to start a conversation that extends over the long weekend-- and continues until we see cultural and corporate change that
embraces the ways we fit work and life together.

DETAILS ON THE BLOG CARNIVAL: For the social media part of this action, MomsRising is soliciting blog posts from numerous bloggers and work-life advocates, and we will publish these as well as put the links to
these posts together in one post to host a blog carnival. For this effort, in addition to
individual blogs getting attention on the highly trafficked MomsRising website
and new CustomFitWorkplace website, we anticipate solid coverage from other
bloggers, Tweeters, Facebook, and other media. In addition, we'll amplify all
postings with tweets from the MomsRising Twitter account using the hashtag
#worklife.

Links to individual blog posts themselves, as well as to the blog carnival post compiling those posts, will be distributed via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, other blogs, and more. We
estimate that MomsRising’s reach via these combined social media
outlets is in the millions.

Want to participate? Say you will! It's easy! Blog posts can be anywhere in length from 3 paragraphs to 3 pages. MomsRising appreciates original
content and is also happy to re-post previously written content. So if you have
a blog post that’s already
been published someplace else, it’s fine to submit that too. While
your blog post needs to be about
work-life fit, you can write from any angle you choose including sharing your
personal story, policy analysis, updates, humor, facts, and more.

How to submit your blog post: Please email all work-life fit blog posts to Anita@MomsRising.org along with a thumbnail picture of the author up to August 30th.

The more blogs, the merrier (and the bigger
the impact we’ll have overall together). So in addition to submitting
your own blog, if you know
anyone with a personal story who may like to participate, feel free
to share this blog invitation with them. Please
encourage folks to send us blog posts,
or let them know that we’d be willing to talk with them and write up their
perspectives and experiences into a blog post,
and we can do that anonymously should they choose.

TIMELINE: The blog carnival will run from noon on Tuesday, August 31st, through Tuesday, September 7th. We are accepting blog posts
starting now - the earlier the better. (Blogs submitted after the 6^th won’t be in the carnival but
don’t let that stop you. We are
looking to grow a deep repository of great blogs about work-life fit at
CustomFitWorkplace.org. In fact we
hope your blog for the carnival will be the first of many blogs you share with
us.)

If you tweet and blog anytime during the blog carnival, please send us those links and we can incorporate them into the blog carnival to amplify your messages.

DETAILS ON THE TWITTER PARTY: When the blog carnival is published at noon on August 31st, each post will be tweeted and retweeted with the hashtag #worklife. We encourage you to
search for these tweets marked #worklife, to retweet them from your own
account, and to comment using the hashtag #worklife. We also encourage
you to send these tweets to those in the business community and to other
bloggers. Feel free to ask your followers to do the same!

Please let me know if you have any questions and if will be able to participate -- you would be a valuable addition to this social media action. And definitely feel free to share this invitation with blogging colleagues far and
wide.

Looking forward to hearing from you!