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

EDITOR’S NOTE: The earthwise among you know that tomorrow is Earth Day. We are teaming up with Freecycle™ and other popular reuse groups to inspire people to swap stuff they’d normally send to a landfill. In honor of Yahoo!’s “Free is Good” campaign, into which we’ve tucked treasures like a Smart Car, eco-resort vacation, and Sheryl Crow tickets, we’ve asked a Yahoo! user to reflect on what a boon Freecycle has been to her life:

September 19, 2003 should be memorable as my son Davis’ fifth birthday. Instead, we remember it more clearly as the day we started the very long recovery from Hurricane Isabel, which had hit our small Virginia town the day before. We lost just about everything in the bottom three feet of our garage to floodwater.

Several months later, I read about the local Yorktown Freecycle Yahoo! group and quickly joined. I immediately saw how it could help my town in its recovery efforts (which is, I might add, STILL ongoing five years later as friends and neighbors continue to shell out to repair floors and foundations).

The group proved useful just a few days after I joined. I had posted a want for a lawnmower and within 48 hours, I heard from “uubooklady.” When she let me know that her husband had recently bought a new mower to replace their 1985 Toro and that we were welcome to it, I was elated. I’ve always been happy to use hand-me-downs, and Deron Beal’s brilliant idea to use modern technology to share belongings locally via the Freecycle Network was a perfect match for my earth-friendly leanings.

When my husband Jim went to retrieve his “new” mower, lo and behold, his work colleague Ellis came pushing it out of the garage! These men worked mere feet from one another at NASA, yet they would have never made the lawnmower connection if it hadn’t been for Yahoo! Groups and the Freecycle Network.

I started FreecyclePoquoson for my own town that very week and have been happily moderating it ever since. We’ve grown to almost 600 members and we connect neighbors on a daily basis.

I’ve given away furniture, kitchen items, clothing, toys, and office supplies. I’ve received puzzles, games, craft supplies, used egg cartons (we raise hens and reuse cartons), even empty Kool-Aid Jammers (which I sew into very cool purses). I also get nearly-expired bread each week from a guy I met on Freecycle, who rescues it from grocery stores. I’m now known as “the bread lady” because I put a giant stack (we’re talking over 100 loaves) on my porch for neighbors who might be too proud to get food from the food pantry but are happy to keep it from being tossed into the landfill.

There are literally MILLIONS of similar stories about how helpful the Freecycle Network has been in people’s lives. I’ve seen time again how, while Freecycle often begins with an experience of a person receiving, it inevitably turns into discovering the joy of giving.

Freecycle, through Yahoo!, makes every day Earth Day and provides a modern, free, easy to use format to prove true the old adage, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” It sure beats spending hours having a yard sale or trolling sales!

Davis is nine now. He’s never known anything other than listing his old “stuff” on Freecycle. I don’t know when Poquoson will fully recover, but I do know that Freecycle and Yahoo! have and will continue to play an important part in the healing process… both for our community and for Mother Earth.

Traci-Dale
Yahoo! Groups user
Moderator, FreecyclePoquoson

“Using technology to make the world a better place.” That was the theme of remarks I made yesterday at Georgetown University, where I had the chance to honor the research of Irene Wu, the inaugural Yahoo! International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet Fellow. Irene’s work is part of a partnership we created with Georgetown a year ago to study the link between international values and Internet and communications technologies.

Our goal is to inspire scholars to explore new ways to use technology for good, particularly in navigating the complexities that go hand-in-hand with the shrinking globe that the Internet has created. These are complexities we at Yahoo! are well familiar with. While we’ve been at the forefront of opening up new communications and information frontiers for citizens of the world, we’ve also seen the challenges that come when these technologies are used by governments for other purposes – those that run counter to our values.

Although our challenges have been widely reported, the full scope of efforts we’ve been making to address freedom of expression and other human rights issues may not be as well known. So I thought I’d take an opportunity to set out some examples:

• Industry Code of Conduct: We’ve been working with industry counterparts, academics, human rights organizations, and socially responsible investors to develop a code of conduct that would guide leading global technology and communications companies operating in challenging markets. We hope to announce the results of our collective efforts in the near future.
• Academic Fellowships: In addition to the Georgetown Fellowship program, we also initiated the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship at Stanford in conjunction with the John S. Knight Fellowships program. It focuses on journalists from press-restrictive countries, allowing them to withdraw from their environments for a year of study. The first fellow came from Pakistan and this year’s fellow is from Zimbabwe.
• Human Rights Fund: Recognizing the plight of unfairly imprisoned political dissidents, we established a Human Rights Fund last month to provide humanitarian and legal support for these individuals and their families. We’ve partnered with noted human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp, to administer the fund. It will also support educational efforts on human rights. We’re so grateful to have Harry’s partnership in this.
• Policy Dialogue: While we’re committed to advancing human rights globally, there are practical limits to corporate diplomacy. That’s why we’ve been urging government officials in the United States and abroad to advocate for policy change. We believe governments have the most leverage to influence the decision-making of other governments.
• Advocating for Freedom: Having followed these issues intently and having now met personally with the families of dissidents, I understand our responsibility in advocating for their release. In fact, just yesterday, I went to Capitol Hill with Harry Wu to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein to discuss these issues. And I recently sent a letter to Condoleezza Rice before her visit to Beijing, urging support in seeking freedom for Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. With the Summer Games approaching, there seems to be a perfect window of opportunity for exerting diplomatic leverage. Senior Yahoo! leaders have also met with high-level Chinese and U.S. officials to directly appeal for release. We’ll continue to pursue this doggedly.

We’ve learned important lessons from our experience in China. We hope our experiences and plans can help guide other companies and ultimately influence the emergence of more open societies around the globe — when technology can truly be used to make the world a better place.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

Hi, my name is Carol and I’m a Flickr addict.

I’ve been hooked on Flickr since 2005, so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard I might be able to share my Flickr fever as part of my job! I work for TechSoup, a nonprofit that other nonprofits go to for technology help and resources. Typical nonprofits we work with are very small organizations working with the poor or youth activities.

Here at TechSoup we’ve been using Flickr’s photo service for years in a variety of ways. NetSquared, a TechSoup program, set up the “I Want Change!” and “NetSquared” Flickr Groups to help people share ideas about how nonprofits use Web 2.0 and social networking tools like Flickr to tell their stories and spark change. We encouraged NetSquared participants from all over the world to use event-specific tags to make it easy to share their pictures of group meetings and events on Flickr. So it seemed a perfect pairing when Flickr started talking with us about offering nonprofits a donation program of free Flickr Pro accounts.

When nonprofits turn to TechSoup for technology help and resources, they’re often looking for donations of software and hardware. Their technology is sometimes so out of date that they can hardly imagine something beyond the basics of word processing, fundraising, and virus protection. Donating Flickr Pro accounts will let nonprofits effortlessly use social networking both for fun and to help better fulfill their mission for social benefit.

I am a firm believer that photos have the power to amplify storytelling and provide a glimpse into the reality of a situation to move people to take action around causes. Such a believer that we think it’s important to reach out to the 90,000 nonprofits that are registered with TechSoup to help them find like-minded people by introducing them to the world that is available to them through Flickr and cool tools like tagging and creating groups. For example, Interplast has used Flickr to demonstrate the results of free reconstructive surgery for poor children in developing countries.

I have met so many amazing people through Flickr. I have chatted with people from countries I will never visit — people in war-torn areas who amaze me in their openness, people with shared interests and visions that can mobilize quickly to effect change. And I’ve even met some Flickr people face-to-face who have become good friends. I can’t imagine a world without Flickr. I am so glad to have a professional mission that now allows me to show nonprofits how Flickr can open so many possibilities for them, their staff, their volunteers, their clients, customers, and friends.

If you work as nonprofit volunteer or staff member, please check out the Flickr donation program on TechSoup. So, get on with it, go forth and load up your photos!

Carol Rudisill
Director, TechSoup Stock
TechSoup