HoHOTO: A Great Party and $62K for the Daily Bread Food Bank

Amber Mac and me. Photo by Rannie Turingan.

Last night’s HoHoTO was both a great party and a successful fundraiser, netting just shy of CDN$62,000 for Accordion City’s Daily Bread Food Bank. Held at the Mod Club and attended largely by this city’s tech, social media and Twitter addict scene, it was part charitable event, part holiday party, part night club evening and part industry schmoozefest.

Pre-Event Dinner

Lee Dale of Say Yeah! invited me to a pre-HoHoTO dinner at Bar Italia, where I got to share a table with some friends and high-tech colleagues I haven’t seen in a while, including:

• Michele Perras
• Tom Purves
• Sunir Shah
• Jay Goldman
• Connie Crosby
• Mark Kuznicki
• Gabe Mansour
• Ryan McKegney

Mmm…the fourth night of dessert in a row (three at TechDays-related dinners in Calgary, plus this one). Good thing Michele helped me put away some of this stuff!

I will be atoning at the gym this weekend.

The Party

After dinner, we made the short walk from Bar Italia to the Mod Club, where the party was in full swing. The DJs were cranking out some great tunes, and as I always say, it’s never a Duarte da Silva set until he spins Kids by MGMT.

It was great catching up with the folks from the scene, including Andrew and Melina who were running the photo booth in the bar upstairs:

The End Result

The writing on the giant cheque in the photo above is washed out by the lights, but the end result of the evening was that we raised just shy of CDN$62,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank. My congratulations to the organizers on a job well done, and my thanks to everyone who attended for supporting a great cause.