It’s been a pretty busy few weeks for the Mudbug Media team.  We’ve painted faces, peeled crawfish and walked for Cystic Fibrosis.  While the crawfish were pretty much for our own enjoyment, the other two events were definitely designed to give back to the community.

Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

On Friday, April 30th, a group of Mudbug Media graphic designers, marketers and programmers went on down to the Audubon Zoo to put our painting skills to the test at the kids section of this year’s Zoo-To-Do.

Zoo-To-Do for Kids is a spectacular event, and I would recommend it to anyone with children. There’s so much for the kids to see and do, and there’s a lot for the parents as well. The Audubon Zoo sure knows how to throw a party. It was so much fun our SEO and analytics specialist Antonio got in on the action as a tiger…with a mustache.

When I contacted Anne Heslin, Coordinator of Zoo-to-Do Events, to see about volunteering, she suggested that we take the face-painting booth, seeing as we were a bunch of designers and creative people. We gathered pictures of children with their faces painted like animals, and made a board of choices for the kids to see a “menu” of options.

Everything worked out great. We had children gathered around our table almost all night long, and while it was hard work, it was so much fun. I even got to paint Ron Forman’s face. He’s a good sport!  The only random request we got was Spiderman, which we delivered!

Walking for a Cure

Members of our marketing team made it out to Audubon Park on May 15^th to take part in the 2010 Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Great Strides fundraising walk.  While the weather didn’t exactly cooperate, we still made it around the track twice, and the event raised over $80,000 to help find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis.

The best part about the whole event was the number of survivors participating in the three-mile walk.  According to signs posted along the track, a Cystic Fibrosis patient in the 1950s wasn’t expected to live past kindergarten, but dozens of adult survivors were out at Audubon Park dodging thunderstorms with the other supporters.

It’s amazing to think how much progress has been made so far with this devastating disease, and how much more good can come from helping support research through events like this.

Mudbugs eating Mudbugs

After all that hard work on Saturday morning, the Mudbug Media team gathered at managing director Rachel Haffner’s house for our annual crawfish boil. It rained pretty much all day, almost washing us all away, but we all hung in and had a blast.

Our resident beer experts Vasu and Brad were in charge of the beer, and they did an absolutely magnificent job. We had three beers on tap, each of which was chosen to compliment the taste of spicy crawfish, potatoes and corn.

This year was really fun because some of the new employees are also new to Louisiana, so it was really a treat watching them figure out how to peel and eat crawfish, especially since the whole process was a lot messier than they expected.

Click here to check out more pictures from the crawfish boil.

The summer has only just begun and we’ve already painted, walked and peeled.  This weekend we will be participating in the JCC New Orleans Kicking for Kids kickball tournament to raise money for children’s programs at the JCC, so things aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.

Keep an eye out for more Tweets, pictures and Facebook posts about our adventures in the community this summer.  We’re going to be busy!

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