I love you.

It’s true.

I may not even know you, but I love you. Oh not all of you. Especially those I don’t know.

And not in a physical or otherwise unallowable manner. But certainly in a passionate manner, I do love you, I truly do. Because you read my blog. It’s the highest honour that you can bestow upon me. You take the time to share in what’s on my mind or happening in my life.

I’m pretty passionate about writing. I’m in a constant struggle with myself to move beyond these weekly unedited, unrehearsed, unscripted, underground submissions. Okay not so underground, but it did sound pretty romantic. Underground blogs. The struggle is to get my act together and write something longer, meatier, more worthy of your attention and effort.
Passion is a powerful tool. I don’t know if Maslow has passion on his hierarchy or pyramid or whatever he created. I guess with a few fingers I could check. Instead, I am just having my studio post a graphic of his discovery next to my laziness here and you can confirm for yourself. But I do know on my hierarchy I have seen the power of passion do some amazing things. Win city football championships against stronger teams. Win new business pitches when the golden idea felt so elusive. Win the loyalty of participants, donors and supporters of a charity. Win the engagement of a busy staff member who may legitimately have no time for one more task, yet still solve the most recent of urgent issues.

You know the theme of Forum this year is the Passion Paradigm. A bit of me wonders if we should have named it the Power of Passion. Maybe because I think of paradigm as a change and passion as constant, but it’s my theme so I guess I shouldn’t publicly critique it.

Power. Paradigm. Perpetual. Proverbial. Permanent. Penetrating. Plenty of P’s to accompany that word passion. They all work.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I love you. Hmmm.

Okay blog readers lets try again. I passion you. I have passion for you. Thank you for sharing my passion. Me passion, Su passion. Feeling passionate? Like a drink of passion tea. Is your passion being fulfilled? Can you feel the passion?

Okay so why the messed up passion paragraph? Proof positive that when I use that word passion, your mind gets revving, your heart pounding and your fingers drumming.

That is why I love this business we call home. It’s has plenty of outlets for passion. Our creative passion. The strategic passion of our clients. The engaging passion of our partners. The blind faith passion of our participants. The unrelenting passion of our volunteers. The sought after passion of our media. The elusive passion of our customers.

You won’t see these words in our guidebook at the 2012 Canadian Sponsorship Forum. You won’t see them on a screen. There is no way they will appear in a brochure or a print ad or a web banner, let alone a media release. But they are the best, although somewhat convoluted, words I can share with you about Forum this year.

For those of you attending…I love you too!