Last Saturday I announced that as part of my Boston Marathon cancer research fundraiser, my friend Keith Burtis is designing and creating a beautiful piece of woodwork that we are auctioning off to the highest bidder.

At the same time, Keith posted pictures from the first stage of creating the piece.

I mentioned that I’d post regular updates as Keith creates the ornament – well, Keith has now posted more pictures of his work.

This will form part of an intricate ornament at the centre of this wonderful piece. For more details, keep checking in!

Tommy Vallier is also working away, creating the site to enable us to hold this auction from March 25-27.

Spread the word

Please help to spread the word about this however you can. Keith and Tommy are doing a wonderful job and it’s for a very worthy cause.

If you’d like to support my cancer fundraising efforts directly, you can donate to the Princess Margaret Hospital here:

(All donations go directly to the charity, not through me. Please choose “Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research,” when prompted for who to donate to)

One of my highlights of PodCamp Toronto 2008 was meeting Keith Burtis and his lovely fiancee Michelle Miszewski. I was fortunate to play a tiny part in Keith’s social media miracle, I had the pleasure of introducing them during the opening remarks at PodCamp and I’ve stayed in regular contact with Keith since then.

It says a lot about Keith that when he heard about my Boston Marathon cancer research fundraiser, he leapt to help.

Keith is designing and creating a beautiful piece of woodwork that we are auctioning off to the highest bidder.

All of the proceeds from the auction will go to the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, a world-class cancer research facility in Toronto.

(Please choose “Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research,” when prompted for who to donate to)

The Piece

The piece Keith is creating will be a significant ornamental piece with four major components.

In keeping with the social media-nature of my fundraising effort, Keith will be blogging with photos of the piece as he creates it. His first post is up now; I’ll post regular updates too.

The Auction

The auction will be held online (friend and fellow PodCamp Toronto organizer Tommy Vallier is creating the auction site for us)

The auction will begin Tuesday, March 25 at 9am.

The auction will end Thursday, March 27 at 9pm.

We’ll notify the winner shortly after 9pm on the 27th.

Tommy and Keith, I can’t thank you enough for this. You guys are amazing!

Fundraising To-Date

As of this Thursday March 13, people have donated over $1,000 to support cancer research through my run. My target is $3,000, so we’re a third of the way there. Hopefully this auction will drive it forward even further.

For now, stay tuned and get ready to bid on March 25th!