Canary Derby - Gastown September 21st, 2008
This is an exciting event that Webnames is both participating in, and sponsoring. It is being run by the Canary Foundation of Canada, who are working towards creating an early warning system for cancer.
The derby will be held in Gastown on September 21st 2008, racing down Water Street from the corner of Cordova to the historic Steam Clock. This even first started in Victoria, and has been run for the past two years raising over $140 000 for cancer research.
We will be building our own soap box racer, and aiming for a first place race finish, as well as taking the grand prize for most spirit and best dressed team. We're working on a theme and expect it to be pretty amazing, so we're not going to give away any secrets just yet. If you're interested in putting either your face or corporate logo on our speed machine, that can be arranged… for a donation!
We are actively fundraising, and have set a modest company wide goal of $14,000 raised.
Keep checking back, we're going to be posting team pictures soon, and updating fundraising milestones.
We are proud to be participating in the 2008 Canary Derby to help raise funds to support early cancer detection and research at the BC Cancer Agency.
Please support our team or click on one of the names below to support one of our team members with a 100% tax deductible donation.
Team Members
Cybele Negris
Stephen Smith
John Demco
David Miller
Michael Maan
Emilia Panakova
Hiroko Hasegawa
Shawn Yakobina
Maxime Morin
Nick Caristinos
Victor Jang
David Hall
Jordan Rieger
Recent News
1st Vancouver Canary Derby a Success!
by Kathrn Hullin - Posted September 22, 2008
The 2008 Canary Derby ended on a high note, with the participating teams raising about $60,000 with $14,055 coming from Webnames itself, which is pretty amazing considering the fact that our original goal was a modest $5 000.
Webnames walked away with the award for the most money raised, but unfortunately we didn't win either the overall race or the decoration award, and honestly, how could our little red car compare with the chicken mobile? There was also a toaster on wheels that threw toast to the crowd, a green dragon driven by some very brave souls in bright green underpants and even a car made out of tin foil with a working flux capacitor in the back, thankfully they never managed to get going to 88MPH.
Out of 20 entries, we placed 7th overall in the race, which wasn't too bad considering that none of us had ever built a soap box racer, and until two days before the race, it was still in several pieces sitting neglected in the corner of the room. It finally got painted and decorated and bolted together with a few days to spare.
The weather co-operated with us after threatening to rain all week. The sun finally broke through mid morning, just in time for the qualifying runs. Our little car breezed through them, making us glad we went with the wheels that we did. The tiny wheels didn't seem to do well on the rough cobblestone streets. Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be that much speed difference between the soap box wheels and the larger bicycle tires. The ballast is what we had the hardest time with, we couldn't figure out the magic number to make our car go faster and not slow it down. With a little tinker time and some research though, we'll be back and faster than ever for next year's event.
The event itself was an amazing success, with plans to hold an even bigger and better one next year and with more lead time, we are hoping that the Vancouver corporate community will come together to raise more money than the Victoria Derby! Who says a little friendly competition isn't a good thing?
Get behind your favorite Tech Soapbox
by Tech Vibes - Posted September 15, 2008
Vancouver's Canary Derby in Gastown is 10 days away and they need our support to raise funds in support of early cancer detection. The "Race to the Steamclock" takes place on Sunday September 21st and promises to a great family event for an important cause.
Read More
Canary Derby Update
by Kathryn Hullin - Posted September 3, 2008
We got the car built this weekend, it seemed to be a bit more difficult than the instructions said it would be. The makers of the kit have to be a little crazy to advertise it as an 8 hour weekend project that can be completed in less than a day with two people. There were times that we didn't think we had enough hands to hold the parts steady and attach them to the frame at the same time, but we eventually got it all put together. At this point, we're just waiting for the wheels and a fancy new paint job for everything to be completed.
Esplanade Collision Ltd from North Vancouver has donated a paint job to us, many thanks for that, I was sort of worried what it was going to look like with 12 different people helping out. Our other major sponsors are Ripe, McNeill Nakamoto, the .asia registry and Miles, please take the time to check out their websites from our main Canary Derby page. With such support from great partners like them, we have decided to raise our donation goal to $10 000! That's an amazing amount of fundraising in such a short time. We would also like to thank the many people who have donated already.
If you can't donate, but have Sunday, September 21st free, please come down to Gastown to cheer us on, we get team points for spirit and crowd interaction, so if we can't be the fastest that day, we'll surely settle for loudest!
The Race is on
by Michael Maan - Posted August 13, 2008
So with the September 21st race date fast approaching, the Webnames.ca derby race team is getting revved up to start building our Soap Box Race Car. The kit for our car finally arrived about a week ago, we have reviewed the building plans, made our list of tools and parts and now we are ready to start building. The car build is sure to be a fun team building exercise and will no doubt raise the excitement level once we can see the finished car. We are hoping our sleek car will be contender for the title.
This Thursday August the 14th we will be attending the team captains meeting at the Labatt Beer Institute, we are looking forward to meeting some of the other team leaders and scoping out the competition. It will also be a great opportunity to meet with the race directors and get some insider tips on car building and the races.
Thanks to many generous donations we are getting closer to our goal of raising $14,000 with your help we can not only reach our goals but hopefully surpass them. We hope to see you all out supporting the BC Cancer Foundation and cheering on the Webnames.ca Team to the win. See you all at the finish line.
Vancouver Canary Derby Reception
by Cybele Negris - Posted June 13, 2008
Dave Miller our Fundraising Team Lead and I attended the the Vancouver Canary Derby Reception on June 12th which marked the official launch of the event in Vancouver. The reception was held at the Hyatt Hotel just prior to the BCTIA Awards. The BCTIA did their part to support the cause by displaying a soapbox car from the Victoria Canary Derby event which has been running with great success for the past 3 years.
Don Listwin, Founder of the Canary Foundation hosted the reception (and paid for it through his own Family Foundation). The group is extremely good about making sure all the money raised during all the fundraising efforts go to the science and not to administration.
Dave and I both learned a lot at the event. We heard that for every $100 spent on research for the treatment of late stage cancers, only $1 is spent on early cancer detection. I'm thankful for all the research for late stage cancers which has helped my dad survive 3 times for stage 4 colon cancer metastasized to the brain, lung, lymphnodes and liver. But had better early detection methods been available, he would never have had to suffer like he has.
The very aggressive goal by the Canary Foundation and BC Cancer Foundation is to have early detection tests for 6 major types of cancers by 2015. The BC Cancer Agency has already made some significant headway in early detection tests for ovarian cancer, the type of cancer that Don Listwin's mother passed away from.
I'm so proud of the Webnames.ca team for getting involved in such a worthy cause. Check out Dave photographed here with Canary Foundation's Don Listwin at the BCTIA event.