Anyone who knows me knows that I love sneakers. Ok, you might even say I am sneaker obsessed. From the walk-in closet with 160+ pairs of shoes, to my blog SneakerBlogger, to the custom Nike’s in Yahoo! colors I created for CES earlier this year, I try to find any way I can to incorporate them into my personal and professional life. So when I saw that Yahoo! was going to be hosting a Freecycle-inspired “Free is Good Fair” for employees on campus today (a belated Earth Day swap meet) and that one of the items being donated would be Chief Yahoo David Filo’s signature Adidas sneakers, I started cleaning out my closet.

Much to my wife’s delight, among other things I contributed were five pairs of sneakers and athletic shoes and I was able to actually watch people pick them up and give them a new home. (Yes, people WILL wear other people’s shoes…) Hopefully they will get some great use and their new owners will think hard about what THEY could give up to turn their personal trash into someone else’s treasure.

I’m told Yahoos brought in more than 2,000 items from closets and basements throughout the Bay Area that might otherwise have been destined for landfills. The more interesting things I saw included a vintage map of Silicon Valley businesses from 2000, a red lacy bra (which seemed to disappear quickly), last-generation Tivos, Rockem Sockem Robots, vacuum cleaners, a complete set of Star Trek: Next Generation VHS tapes, bunny slippers, fleeces galore, Yahoo! schwag (Yahoo! Chicago stickers, anyone?), and gently used sporting equipment. Items that had not seen the light of day for years were suddenly adopted by new guardians, who promised to put them into immediate use. Although I think the snow skis might have to wait until next season…

We duplicated this fair in six California, New York, and Oregon offices. And whatever wasn’t claimed was carted away by local charities like the Salvation Army.

So if you see me around campus with size 10.5 Adidas shell-toes, know that they will be well cared for and infused with the spirit of giving.

Hmm… I wonder what size Jerry wears?…

Here are some photos and a video recap:

Lucas Mast
Senior PR Manager
Connected Life

I do. And so does everyone else in our Northern California offices. Her name is Danielle Bricker. And she is singularly responsible for getting people out of their gas-guzzling cars and into far-more-pleasurable, alternative modes of transportation (WiFi shuttle buses, commuter trains, light rail, bikes, van pools, carpools, etc.).

With the title of “Commute Coordinator,” Danielle is likely a maverick in Corporate America. She’s not only a cheerleader for a greener way of life (literally walking the walk), she’s there to help every Yahoo figure out the most practical way from Point A to Point B. And she has a good answer for just about every excuse you can come up with: “What if my kid gets sick in the middle of the day and I have no car?” Our guaranteed ride home program won’t cost you a dime. “But I’ll get sweaty on my bike!” We’ve got showers. “No one else works my hours.” Let me check my database of carpoolers.

Here’s a report NBC just ran about Danielle and our commute program, inspired by photos she took on a recent commute from San Francisco.

With fossil fuel flirting with $4 a gallon, you need to get yourself a Danielle.

Props to Paul Stamatiou, former Yodel intern, for his great how-to on embedding Flickr slideshows.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

There’s nothing like a pre-earnings quiet period to keep a corporate blogger on her toes. So I’ve scrounged around for some virtual hold music. And I found it in the form of a brilliant time lapse video that captures a day in the life at our headquarters, our local scenery, and the action around our Times Square billboard in NYC.

It was a little HD experiment created by Brad Williams, the production lead for Yahoo!’s Tech Ticker program. It’s his version of “Koyaanisqatsi” in three minutes.

Beats muzak.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

How do you “spread the yodel” and delight your audience without spending a million bucks? Get creative!

That’s the M.O. behind our Buzz Marketing department, a team of creative types that regularly dream up never-been-done-before gigs to get Yahoo! a bit of attention. Over the years, their more grassroots campaigns have included a Yahoo!-branded Zamboni, the first Internet-connected taxi and Amtrak train, an impromptu Shakira concert in Times Square, a search for the greenest city in America, a bachelorette living on a Los Angeles billboard in search of the perfect man, pedicabs and hot cocoa at the Olympics, and the world’s largest brain, flea market, snow globe, haystack (wherein visitors sought needles), parade of Santas, etc.

We recently empowered Yahoos to come up with Buzz campaign ideas of their own (on a shoestring, of course) to share some purple love. And two guys from our headquarters and Portland, Oregon, offices had a mind meld: surprise rainy-day train commuters with 150 Yahoo!-branded umbrellas. (What’s effective marketing without a little useful schwag?)

Alex Huang and some colleagues set up camp at dawn at a Starbucks near a Portland MAX train (the local commuter rail). Portlanders accepted their purple and white umbrellas with glee — including a transit cop, who rolled up on his Segway, not to cite them but to snag one for himself. The bumbershoots were gone within 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, down in San Francisco, Sreevatsan Rama assembled a street team outside the Caltrain station. In spite of inaccurate shower predictions by our perennially weather-befuddled meteorologists, the umbrellas went like hotcakes. When asked “Do you Yahoo?,” recipients responded with “Of course, it’s my homepage!” and oft-used product names like Mail, Maps, Search, Autos, Finance, etc. were called out into the air.

Except, of course, the guy who just smiled and pointed to the Google logo on his backpack. Oddly, he didn’t accept an umbrella.

There are plenty more ideas in the hopper. So don’t be surprised to see eager, tchotchke-laden Yahoos in a city near you. They might even make you yodel.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

What does nine years in Yahoo! Surfing/Search Editorial prepare you for? A chance to stand across the stage from Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!.

Those who can remember back to the days of portal wars, high-flying IPOs, and sock puppets probably recall when the lifeblood of Yahoo! was its hierarchical directory — a time when “browsing” was more prevalent than “searching.” That directory was assembled by a team of “surfers,” a group of intellectually curious and idiosyncratically diverse individuals whose job was to build and expand the equivalent of the Internet phone book for cool sites and useful links. They literally got paid to surf the Web. And they got damn good at trivia.

So good that our very own Dave Sikula has earned a slot as a contestant on Jeopardy! tonight, representing his hometown of Pacifica, California. Dave joined Yahoo! as a surfer in 1999. Although he came to us as an information junkie, having spent several years as the periodicals expert at the fabled Kepler’s Books, his job helped him amass vast knowledge on a wide range of subjects — everything from sports and business to arts and politics.

In short, we’ve created a know-it-all. Tune in tonight to see if Dave can nail those Daily Doubles. Go, Dave!

UPDATE 3/27/08: HE DID IT! He won! And left with $15,000 in his pocket. Tune in tonight so see if he can do it again.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

The last time we heard from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), they were letting us know what they thought about our use of a primate in our Yahoo! Tech launch event (we apologized). This time, they’ve crowned us with a 2008 Proggy Award for having the most vegetarian- and earth-friendly corporate cafeteria. We feel proudly redeemed.

A Proggy recognizes “animal-friendly achievement in 21st century culture and commerce…contributing to a more humane life for our entire society.” Whether they realize it or not, the thousands of Yahoos fed by Bon Appetit Management Company in our headquarters cafeteria (known as “URLs”) and beyond are provided with made-from-scratch food choices that minimize our impact on the environment. We are availed with dozens of vegetarian and vegan options, organics galore, ingredients from local farms, antibiotic-free meats, sustainable seafood, and biodegradable to-go containers. The kitchen staff even saves the vegetable oil from our fryers to create biodiesel fuel.

While an award for a corporate cafeteria might not seem worthy of great fanfare, it illustrates a big theme we Yahoos care about — finding innovative ways to help the planet. Many of the earth-friendly details are a result of input from Yahoo!’s Green Team, a volunteer army of employees who keep their eyes open for small changes that can make a big difference.

Here’s a quick video tour of URLs with Chef Bob Hart. He didn’t cook for the Grateful Dead, but he serves a mean gardein.

Kate Gerwe
Yahoo! Green Team
Senior Director, Marketing, Corporate Partnerships