Someone wise once told me not to mix business and pleasure. After ten years of screw-ups, I’m about ready to stop taking this advise. My worst business venture, my worst book, and indeed my worst relationships came from pursuing this idiotic mantra. Today, I live by a different rule: if you want to do anything in this life, do it with passion and joy. If you can’t muster the passion, run away. When you don’t mix business and pleasure, you will choke your personal passion until it dies.
In fact, I’m actually seeking ways to mix my personal and business lives. Three passions have consumed much of my time and energy over the past year: running a marathon (now gearing up for the second), giving with leverage, and making a start up based on Ruby on Rails go. Running my first marathon, even my first race, taught me what the human body could do with a strong will behind it. Running let me think about the things that were most interesting to me, and to plan many of the features that are in [Changing The Present](http://changingthepresent.org) today. Running gave me the motivation and story to blog. The metaphors were endless. This year, I will use a new feature on [Changing The Present](http://changingthepresent.org), the drive, to raise money for charity. I haven’t decided which one yet.
It’s been an active year on the charity front too. My wife and I helped to lead the most successful fund raiser in the history of Rawson-Saunders. (Both of my kids and I are dyslexic.) It was a grueling and often thankless process but we were gratified with the generosity of the community around us and the results. I was able to go to Mexico with a few kids to build a house too. We didn’t make much of a dent in the poverty of the place, but we left five houses where there were none. I realize that talking about such events makes some uncomfortable, because to them, charity should be a private matter. I write about these events not to promote myself but to raise awareness of the causes.
And my business fits right in. For the past year, I’ve worked at WellGood, LLC on a project called ChangingThePresent. I am helping to build a platform that will hopefully change the way we think about giving. It’s a great thing to wake up in the morning and work on something that has the potential to change the world in a small way.
I’m excited to see more people willing to mix business and pleasure. Mike Clark, a business owner who I respect tremendously, has used his name and the Ruby community to raise 12,000 before RailsConf with a charity workshop. Joe O’Brien at EdgeCase, LLC will do a workshop before his [erubycon](http://erubycon.com) conference in about a week. I’ll be speaking at that conference in Columbus. They are using ChagingThePresent to form a drive for Action Against Hunger, a fantastic cause. Chad Fowler, instrumental in laying down the gauntlet at RailsConf which led to another 19,000 in donations, is at it again, raising money for the Raleigh area food bank with a workshop in advance of the [Ruby Hoedown](http://rubyhoedown.com). I’ll be speaking at that charity workshop in Raleigh, and later at that conference that runs August 10-11. The charity workshop, on testing, runs on the 9th.
Here’s the thing. When you mix business and passion in this way, bad things can happen. You may not raise what you want to. You may turn some people off that believe charity should be a personal thing. Other people may accuse you of grand standing. But the alternative is doing nothing. Sooner or later, if you don’t feed your passion, it will die.
Here’s my pledge. At ChangingThePresent, we will do everything that we can to support conferences who want to do the right thing, and feed passion into their business. Do you want to give away charity certificates instead of backpacks or yet another glowing pen at your conference? (Your attendees can use the certificates to give to their own charities). Find a sponsor. We’ll build the infrastructure, from the printing of the cards to the checkout system with certificates. Do you want to do a workshop at the front of a registry? Let me know. I’ll make sure you have the tools you need. Do you need to know how to organize one of these workshops? I will help you find the answers you need to do the job well.
And here’s my challenge. If you’re a programmer, get involved. Attend a charity workshop. Buy from people who aren’t afraid to make a difference. You know who they are: Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt, Chad Fowler, Mike Clark, Jim Weirich, DHH… they are many of the same people who gave countless hours to build the Ruby community, and now are giving their time and resources to leverage their names for the greater good.
Update: The first conference to take me up on this offer will be a [charity workshop for the Lone Star Ruby Conference](http://damonclinkscales.com/past/calling-all-rails-jetsetters-this-fall/)
Damon Clinkscales and I spent about an hour on the phone Friday, and I’m pleased to say he’ll be tentatively using our workshop feature to manage donations and attendee list. Way to go, Damon.