So it's Movember time. You'll see from various posts a year ago that I did the Movember mustache growing & fundraising.

This year I'm not. Since lots of people around me are, they might be wondering why I'm not - after all, it's fun and a good cause.

Here's the thing. Like you (I'm sure), we get asked a lot over the course of a year to contribute to charitable causes. Judy (my wife) and I might get asked more than typical for you; we do lots of outdoor sporting events like cycling and running; many of the organized events we do are charity fundraisers.

As a result, we're constantly having to judge which ones are "worthy" or not. And we ended up feeling very reactive about it - and we're planners, and don't like reactive things (all that much).

So Judy & I switched around, and created a proactive plan for how much we're going to give in a year, which causes we want to give to (based on which causes and friends we want to support), and we give to those.

A Movember mustache got cut. :-)

Just so you know.

As I blogged and tweeted this month, I've been throwing my hat in with the Movember movement this month, and grown a mustache to "change the face" of Men's cancer.

First, I want to take a minute to thank all the contributors who contributed, and sponsored my 'stache-growing effort. (I'm sorry to say that I was SO anxious to get rid of it this morning that I forgot to take a picture before I shaved it. Sorry...)

Everyone gave proportional to their means, and I'm happy to have been the recipient of their charitable gift. I'm also pleased that the Movember organization is doing this. I've been happy to be part of this because I've often thought women have been better organized when it comes to breast cancer, etc., and I thought "Ok, here's the guys getting their act together. Kudos to the organizers."

I'm also proud to be part of the Fu Man Drupal Movember team. Once checks snail-mailed-in are credited (including a $1k check I forwarded Wednesday), we'll have raised right around $25,000 for men's cancer causes - Livestrong and the Prostate Cancer Fund. As I write this, our team is sitting at rank #16 across all US teams of 11 people or more. Once the checks and a couple of straggler contributions are credited, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up at #15. A pretty amazing accomplishment for a team of 27 guys from a 75-person startup. We even raised more than Google's team did.

Last night, the Movember organization threw a "Gala Party" in many cities around the world. I went to the Boston party.

And, while I don't want to be a party pooper and write a downer blog post, last night's Party is an area I think the organizers haven't got it quite right yet, and somebody somewhere should say something. So I'll nominate myself.