I discovered The Mary-Margaret Network and their game recruiting company via a linkedin group related to women in the gaming industry and an interview that they conducted with Ellen Beeman titled “Calling all Superheros” It’s an inspiring read and leaves readers with the call to action to “ Tell us how you have learned to be excellent every day or tell us about a life changing opportunity that came to you through creating a strong network.  Share your stories so we can all learn how to be excellent!” Love it!

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Here’s a trailer of a film coming out in the summer called ‘Pugged’ and most of it was shot at the Montreal Pug meetups. As a pug mum, you bet I’m excited about his!

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Monkey picked tea. Yes. Monkey picked tea. I hope they have to wash their little monkey paws before handling. Not down with the idea of eating an oven roasted tarantula, which is also available via this store.

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“In the cherry blossom’s shade, there’s no such thing as a stranger.” – Japanese poet Issa [1763–1828]

I was so pleased to hear that Montreal tech reporter (and all-around great guy) Roberto Rocha is embarking on a new adventure and taking to the road. He and his fiancee Bianca are taking a year to travel around the globe, reporting on whatever comes their way. They’ve created a site called Mojotrotters (mo=mobile / jo= journalist) in which they explain :

Our goal, as trained journalists, is to bring places to life through the lens of our experience, using words, videos, sounds, and photos.

Sounds like a dream huh? Roberto announced this new adventure today and was met with a flurry of tweets telling him how lucky he was to have this opportunity. It’s interesting to read his philosophy on how anyone can do this if they just make the necessary sacrifices. It really is that simple. By assigning priority to the goal, you can make it happen. All of that self-doubt that creeps in can really be eliminated just by planning and setting your eye on the prize.

Look at travelhacker Chris Guillebeau and his quest to visit every country in the world by April 7, 2013. As of this date he’s at 122 of 192 countries and is offering up details via his blog as a way for readers to learn tips and techniques for becoming travelhackers themselves.

You up for jumping in feet-first and making travel your #1 priority? I’d love to hear your stories. I’m charged by these empowering tales as I embark on my armchair adventure of goal-setting and life mapping here in freezing cold Montreal.

Quebec web personalities unite to provide help to those in need.

Now in its second year, La Guignolée des médias numériques et médias sociaux is ramping up to collect funds for numerous local charities. A group of local social media personalities have collaborated to develop a website where people could easily donate money to help others during this time of need.

The following charities will benefit from the money raised from this holiday campaign:

Please help to promote the Guignolée des médias numériques et médias sociaux by publishing their banner on your blog(s) and online profiles. Encourage your friends to do the same! Display a banner on your blog

Great job goes out to the organizers! Thanks for this initiative

You can re-live the event by checking out this presentation by Sébastien Paquet that speaks to identity, weirdness and transparancy of that weirdness. As someone who considers themself kind of weird, I appreciate his take on how to find others that share your interests to help to build a community.

Celebrant Lea Meneghel from My Dream Wedding made the planning of our ceremony easy and could very well have written the book “Wedding Ceremonies for Dummies”. We had read a feature about this Montreal-based business and noted their focus on inclusiveness as well was their flexibility and openness.

Rachel at Brazen Design is a mistress of bling and put her blood, sweat and tears into our custom designed rings. They really weren’t the easiest of designs to complete so we value and appreciate all of her hard work at creating rings that are so very special to us. Beyond the rings, her attention to keeping us posted on our fitting times and adjustments shows how customer-centric Rachel is and that this girl truly knows how to satisfy her customers. These rings warrant fist bumps…

The team at Terrafolia Flowers were able to create arrangements that not only matched our “purple, goth-punk, they’re finally getting married, we’re not the traditional type” attitude but that caused much conversation with our guests.

Black calla lillies are my new favourite flower thanks to Terrafolia Flowers- it’s a flower that is beautiful, mysterious and moody and looks like it should be wearing a long gown and smoking a cigarette from a long glam cigarette holder. Their service was supreme and the fact that they are truly floral artisans really did show through.

My non-traditional, non-white wedding dress was from a shop based out of Ontario by the name of Gloomth.

To fit my frame, there were some adjustments that needed to be made and Taeden was a pro at seeing this through. Her clothing is so well made and her designs are creative, innovative and have a gothic fairytale feel to them. It was the perfect outfit and each time I wear this dress in the future, I’ll think of this magical day spent with friends and family.

We ordered our invites from Botanical Paperworks who make well-designed eco-friendly paper products containing seeds allowing them to be planted after the event.

It’s interesting that the design we chose bears a resemblance to a special social bird but we didn’t stick to 140 characters for our invite copy!

So back to the inital post that kicked off this flurry of writing on a topic that I thought I’d never be writing  in such detail. Weddings truly are a grand expression of community. It’s easy to lose sight of this when you’re neck deep in the planning, but when you look back on the results, it’s well worth it. I’ve made some lifelong business contacts who I will now shop from for life and will recommend to others wholeheartedly, without hesitation.

Sheesh. I make weddings sound so romantic huh!

Zero 8 was the scene of the crime where the deed was done. It’s a Montreal-based allergy-friendly restaurant that delivered on taste and service. Everyone was so impressed with their dishes and some were struck by the magnitude of the cote de bouef which was compared to that as seen in The Flintstones.

The meatness

It’s no easy feat to feed a crowd of folks well, provide exceptional service and allow the bride and groom to play some pretty loud punk rock towards the end of the evening. The team at Zero 8 went above and beyond in providing us with a memorable occasion and left our guests convinced that this restaurant is well worth returning to again in the future.

The drinkness

The decor of the restaurant is very zen (a complement I don’t give out that often and reserve mainly for zen centres!) and features a bar area that is a giant ‘Z’ which could have been made by a woodsmith version of Zorro.

The Z-ness

The kitchen overlooks the space, but didn’t interfere with the activites in the main dining room, but allowed us to peek in just enough to see what the cooking team were up to.

Menu-wise, we chose to have a mix of dishes to ensure that there was something for everyone. Starters consisted of an endive salad that introduced a new love affair for endives for many of our guests, a warm mushroom and artichoke cassolet and a carrot ginger soup.

Mains were the aforementioned monsterbeef, duck confit and a veggie pesto corn pasta dish which alarmed those who had it without being privvy to it being known that it was corn and not wheat pasta.

Dessert was an orange rice pudding. Now don’t turn up your nose. My description isn’t doing it justice as it was far more complex that I’m making it out to be. I’ll let this photo do the talking.

The team at Zero 8 were fabulous and truly understand that customer service and exceptional food are essential to a restaurant. We noticed that they tucked away a card for us signed on behalf of their staffers congratulating us on our marriage and served us up some champagne on the house as thanks for booking with them.

To close out this rather long post, please drop by Zero 8 if you are in the St. Denis zone and try them out, or be sure to recommend them to any of your allergic friends or those with kidlets with food allergies. It’s important to support local businesses and especially those that are doing such good in the allergy friendly community. I recently watched a news report where a woman was there having a birthday meal with friends and she raised her glass in toast to all of the other folks in the room who also had allergies. Now talk about inclusion.

*****All photos by Taran Matharu

I just recently got hitched a few weeks ago and I’m still getting used to checking off ‘married’ in any forms that I fill out. It just feels so foreign but not in a wrong way. Just in that kind of way when you take on a new role and you set up your sig file.

How romantic.

Speaking to the romantic in me, I had made a vow to myself to keep my grubby hands from posting Tweets about my wedding every 5 minutes. As tempting as it was to share every single heart-bursting, teary-vowed moment, being in the moment with friends and loved ones (as well as the new mister) was more important to me than I could sum up in any 140 character blurb.

OK. So I did check my Twitter feed during supper. And I did tweet once…Proof to the social web that the deed was done.

And it was a pretty good sign that the next day, I had the following tweet..

Beyond all of this lack of tweeting, webstreaming, powerpoint presenting or flickrering up the whole event, getting married really illustrates the power of community. Bringing people together to meet, reconnect and get to know new faces really does illustrate how community is at the center of getting married. I could really have titled the ceremony WedCamp!

Working with some great folks in putting together the wedding ceremony was another area where I got to see some big-heartedness in action. It’s been amazing to work with exceptional folks who provided top notch service, products and helped me to pull off the biggest of any event that I’ve ever put together.

It’s important for me to give thanks to these folks and to also help others discover some great people who have gone above and beyond in helping me out. I can’t thank them enough.

Taran Matharu was our photographer and he was a true professional. He knew how to work our room and brought out the best in everyone. He definately wasn’t one of those annoying wedding photographers that would constantly stick their camera in the faces of the guests. He was a chameloen and fit in perfectly with our family and guests. Taran is highly recommended. I’ll be sure to post some photos soon enough… but here’s one for now.

Part 2 of this post will follow shortly. I started writing it and realized it’s turning into a monster post!

I blog in 3 differnt locations plus I added a guest gig with Frames per Second magazine to do a bit of Fantasia Film Festival coverage. Considering I let my Twitter fixation get in the way of my true love of blogging, I have a lot of apologizing to do to you, dear reader. Oh. And a lot to catch you up on.

I started a new job a few months back which gives me a good taste of community, and in particular a women’s-oriented community. I’m learning so much about the ‘average Canadian gal’ as opposed to the ‘not-so average Canadian tech gals’ which I am used to socializing with. I’m gaining some great insights on how moms-who-aren’t-mommybloggers use social networks and online websites and it’s helping me to open my eyes to how much outreach needs to be done in speaking with this audience. Most of my social media ‘mavens/ divas/goddesses’ or whatever they are calling themselves, already get it.

Stay tuned to see what this all goes. I’m still working to figure it out myself but I’m happy to watch how the community I’m now a part of is using the internet to connect and share with one another.

I’m getting married. Most of my career has been spent in the project management space. So you’d think I’d have a handle on planning, timelines and generally having my shit together. No.

Eloping is a word that I don’t say as a threat.. but as a soothing mantra.

I bought a kick @$$ ring from a talented local designer – Rachel from Brazen Design.

Isn’t it lovely?

Yet again, my love for Etsy artisans has been realized so pop on over there and pick yourself up a little treat from a local seller.

Truth be told, Etsy is also another site that keeps me from blogging so please don’t blame me if you forsake your blog for nonstop digital window shopping.

Girl Geek Dinners stuff has gone on hiatus for the summer. I need a well-deserved break while I ramp up in my relatively new job and get hitched, so our little group with a big soul will need to put on it’s lovely one-piece swimsuit and sit in a chaise lounge while momma balances life, love, career and chunky rings.

Thanks to the talented and giggily Anile Prakash for her non-BabaWawa interview style and her skills with the beautiful and omni-directional Snowball microphone.

I have to give serious credit to the organizers of this event as the evening consisted of a panel comprised of several influential and inspirational women who shared their stories and provided tips on how to balance a career with family, network and be seen and heard in the boardroom, conference room and lunch room.

The panel featured the following successful women from Montreal’s business community:

President and Vice-Chancellor of Concordia University, Judith Woodsworth

VP Strategy and Business Development, Bombardier, Maidread Lavery

Senior Vice President National Accounts; Laurentian Bank of Canada, Dana Ades-Landy

Principal; Mercer, Kathy Stanczyk Thibault, MBA

Partner; McCarthy Tétrault, Lorna J. Telfer

I wish John Molson’s WIBC much success and believe that they are doing vital work in helping to bring together established female business leaders with young women who are looking to begin their careers in this field.