Finally, A Revolution with its own Wristband – Skip the Shake’s Backstory!
It’s not every day you get to be part of two revolutions; one, a startup aimed at cleaning up the business of software distribution and monetization, and another one aimed at slowing the spread of communicable diseases – but that’s exactly where I find myself today.
My father always told me you do two things when you meet someone; look them in the eye and shake their hand. It’s what I’ve done my entire life without a second thought – until we decided at OpenCandy to switch to “fist bumping” to keep our startup healthy. Being the father of an (almost) 11 month old daughter also helped persuade me to embrace skipping the shake, especially now that I’m a frequent-flyer and tech conference attendee.
A couple of weeks ago we received an email through our contact form from someone named John Foster offering us a “gift of health in these troubled times.” He cited a TechCrunch article about how we eliminated handshakes from our board meetings, so that gave some context around the type of “gift” he was offering. Since John left his phone number, I figured what the heck, I’ll give this guy a call and find out what this is about (and whether I was dealing with a nutcase or not).
It turns out that John is not only sane; he’s a really nice guy who wants to do his part to help stem the flow of communicable diseases. John, who’s a software developer (ironically), came up with the idea for a “LiveStrong-like” wristband with the goal of communicating, in a socially acceptable way to others (read: not jerking your hand away), that you’d prefer to “skip the shake”. He spoke of how the idea came to him after his nephew, a healthy 18 year old, struggled to fight off the swine flu (he’s back to health now). He also talked about a TED presentation from 2003 by Marvin Minsky on “health and the human mind” which begins with Marvin stating how handshaking is the largest cause of disease in the West and how NOT handshaking can drastically reduce transmission rates.
John said he’d send the whole OpenCandy team wristbands as long as we were willing to provide feedback (easy enough) and lo and behold a couple of days later my team in San Diego received a package of 20 individually wrapped Skip the Shake, Fight the Flu wristbands (mine came the next day). Not only was the team’s reaction positive, but so far everyone I’ve discussed it with has had the same reaction. I’ll admit that at first I wasn’t sure what people outside of the techosphere/blogosphere would think, but I’m pleasantly surprised that every person I’ve skipped the shake with and shown/explained the wristband to, has said something along the lines of “What a fantastic idea!” followed by “I’m surprised no one thought of doing that before.”
Today, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, the man who got the ball rolling on the anti-handshaking movement, posted about the Skip the Shake wristband. Also, oddly enough, today’s Dilbert cartoon is in on the trend and states “Don’t you follow the news? Shaking hands is so 2008.” Heck even the New Yorker posted a fist bump cartoon today! Right now John is working on getting retail packaging for the Skip the Shake wristbands finalized and is busy evaluating the right charity (or charities) to align with, but you can be part of the revolution today by visiting Skip the Shake and purchasing some for yourself and your loved ones, friends and co-workers. (No, we don’t get a cut.)
Coincidentally, the day we received that email from John, I was one week into a nasty non-swine flu infection, so I’m more than happy to do my part and rock the cool blue wristband. How about you?
Be well everyone!
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Rubber bracelets
