Last Saturday, June 2, SoftLayer participated in the Pink Soles in Motion BBQ Cook-Off. The infamous 3Bars BBQ crew loaded up the grills and set out for Harley Davison of North Texas in Carrollton to raise money and support for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Because SoftLayer was the BBQ cook-off’s presenting sponsor, the pressure was on for our BBQ team to have a great showing, and their brisket didn’t let us down:
If you didn’t catch my last blog post about the event, Pink Soles in Motion is a Dallas-based team that has set out to raise $200,000 this year for the Susan G. Komen foundation. For the past two years, they’ve been the top fundraising team in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and we want to help them make get a threepeat. In addition to participating in the BBQ cook-off, we set an internal goal to raise $5,000 to fund breast cancer education, research, treatment and awareness.
Because we only had two weeks to raise the money, we thought we’d have to throw in an extra incentive to help inspire donations to meet our goal: If we raised $5,000, the 3Bars BBQ team would have to professionally dye their hair pink.
When the dust settled and all the numbers were counted … We had to make a trip to the salon:
We reached our goal of $5,000, and Technology Support matched our contributions. To sweeten the pot even further, SoftLayer donated an additional $4,000, amounting to $14,000 in donations to the Susan G. Komen foundation via the Pink Soles in Motion team! I should send a shout out to ‘Sparky,’ ‘Skinman,’ John, Don and Raleigh for following through with their end of the bargain … And I should probably apologize in advance for giving that picture a permanent residence on the SoftLayer Blog.\
If you live in Texas, you’re probably familiar with the saying, “Go big or go home.” Our SLayers went big. Given the fact that the SoftLayer community came through with so much support, an avant-garde 3Bars logo even made it into one of the hairstyles:
The SoftLayer 3Bars BBQ flag was displayed proudly (with a little bit of its own pink flair), and we couldn’t have been happier with how well the event turned out … And it should certainly put a dent in Pink Soles in Motion‘s $200K fundraising goal this year.
Thank you to everyone who donated to help us reach our goal, and Technology Support, you guys rock for matching our contributions! We hope you keep some of the pink-hair pictures close at hand for the next time you see any of these SLayers. I’m sure they’d love to autograph a copy just for you. 
-Natalie