The industry is uniting for a football tournament on June 10 in order to help well-known programmatic consultant and industry recruiter, Dan Sheppard, beat cancer, following his recent diagnosis.
Nearly 20 teams, largely made up of media agencies, ad tech vendors and publishers will take to Sydney's Wentworth Park next Friday at 12noon pm for a football tournament. There will be a bar and barbecue and industry folk are invited to head down and support.
Brit-born Sheppard, who is 32, arrived in Sydney in 2011 and joined Xpand Group in 2013. He was this month diagnosed with bowel cancer and given six months to live, but his friends have set up a crowdfunding page to help him “kick cancer in the nuts and get a very important message to go viral”. Nearly $15,000 has been raised.
In April 2015 after going to his GP he was advised to see a nutritionist, but fast-forward a year and after attending his local hospital A&E just weeks ago, with severe pain in his right shoulder, it turned out that was caused by three secondary tumours on his liver, pushing against his diaphragm.
So far three of Sheppard's clients have offered to help sponsor the event and those keen to take part, or be a sponsor, please email brenton.phillips@xpand.com.au
People are also being encouraged to visit the crowdfunding page “Dan’s not done yet” which aims to help Sheppard explore his new passion of “staying alive, investigating how the hell this happened and doing everything he can to make sure he’s one of the last people to miss such an aggressive cancer.”
“Please share the this link, to everyone across all your personal and professional networks… this happened to my mate, and it could happen to yours, so let’s get the message out there to as many people as we possibly can,” the page reads.
While many charities or cancer support services suggest people aged over 50 need to get checked for bowel cancer, Dan's page aims to spread awareness that this can happen to people far younger.
UPDATE: Game on – Google, Gumtree and more support The Dan Sheppard Cup - RSVP here
As an avid programmatic educator, Sheppard has also written for AdNews. Check out It’s been a good year in programmatic, but disparity still dominates. He's also contributed to stories such as:
Agency vs client-side is the grass greener?
Programmatic predictions - the industry's blue sky thinking
Programmatic trading: The rise of the brand side platform
Also, for more information on bowel cancer visit Cancer Council.
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