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!
How a Great App Recommendation “Engaged Me”, Thanks to TechCrunch & Animoto
Those of you who know me know that I’m engulfed by two passions: great app recommendations (at OpenCandy) by day and my incredible girlfriend Gracie the rest of the time. A combination of the two serendipitously led to my engagement (to my aforementioned girlfriend-turned-fiancé) last night. And I owe it all (well the successful proposal part) to a great web app: Animoto.
Almost one year ago to the day, I was reading a post entitled “Happy Birthday Animoto. You Guys Make Me Happy” by an unusually upbeat Mike Arrington which was as strong a recommendation as I’ve ever read on TechCrunch. Fast-forward a year of serious app-crushes/gushes on Animoto by not only Mike, but a few of the other TechCrunch guys (Erick Schonfield, Jason Kincaid and MG Siegler) as well as some non-blogger, real-life friends of mine; and I was convinced this was “the one” (the app that was going to help me create this special moment).
So, when I started planning the perfect way to propose, I decided to accept the recommendation, fire up Animoto, and created a montage from 133 photos and 2 songs that epitomized the seven years that I’ve known Gracie. I then loaded the “beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video piece from my media” (as Animoto describes so humbly) onto my iPhone. Gracie and I took an afternoon trip to Sea World yesterday and I proceeded to rely on technology to help me close the most important deal of my life… and it worked!
The moral of the story? Apps don’t only solve problems; great apps can change lives. So don’t stop recommending the great ones to one another!
Dr. Apps is Headed to the Libre Graphics Meeting
Hot on the heels of my first (and second) plane trip in 15 years, I’m headed to Montreal for the Libre Graphics Meeting (aka LGM). This time though, I’m traveling via car. LGM 2009 (May 6-9) is the fourth annual worldwide meeting of teams developing open source graphics applications. The developers of extremely popular applications like Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Hugin, Scribus and many more will be in attendance.
I guess it’ll be like going to your favorite band’s concert, except the rock stars are the developers of the applications you love and recommend. Educators, designers and graphic artists involved in print production and/or web development will also be attending. This is a great opportunity for people to share ideas, success stories and even figure out solutions to problems they may be having.
According to Louis Desjardins, lead organizer of the meeting, for many of the developers attending, this is the one time a year they get to see each other face to face. So, as excited I am to be going for the first (of many) times, I’m sure everyone else is just as excited.
I’m proud to say that OpenCandy is a sponsor of the event and I will be conducting a session entitled “Open Source & Money: Not Mutually Exclusive.” Sponsorships and community donations (through Pledgie) help pay for travel and lodging costs for the developers attending. The Pledgie campaign for LGM 2009 has ended, but when it starts for LGM 2010, I’ll be sure to tweet and blog about it. It’s a nice way to give something back to the people who work hard making awesome software we get to enjoy for free.
This also gives me the opportunity to find out what people outside of OpenCandy think about how well my avatar matches my physical appearance (I think it’s pretty darn close).
Follow LGM on Twitter for updates during the meeting. You can find me here.
Be well! Catch you on the app side. :)
How Twitter Found Me My Dream Job At OpenCandy!
In the Beginning
I must admit, I wasn’t looking for a job. In fact, I’ve got a small, successful technology consultancy of my own helping small businesses and home users plan, implement and maintain their computer systems and network infrastructure to keep them running smooth and malware free.
In my spare time, though, my passion was finding the best software to accomplish the tasks I needed to do. In late 2007, I began satisfying my desire to reach out to more people about great software by starting a podcast (The Appsolute Tech Show) and in February of 2008, I started using Twitter. On the podcast and Twitter, I chose the nom de plume “Dr. Apps” because many of my clients call me “The Doctor” and because I love applications. Since then, I’ve built up a nice “following” on Twitter by helping people solve computer problems and recommending software I love.
“Tasting the Candy”
I found out about OpenCandy in November, 2008 when I was updating one of my favorite apps, MediaCoder. I twittered about it and said that I thought OpenCandy was a “cool idea.” Someone named “chest” twittered back “thx for tasting the candy.” At first, I assumed “chest” was Twitter spam or a “Twitterperv” but “chest ” turned out to be Chester Ng, a co-founder of OpenCandy.
Fast forward to February 10th, 2009, I saw a tweet from Chester that said that OpenCandy was hiring and one of the positions was for a “Software Community Guru.” I couldn’t believe what I saw; the job looked like it was tailor-made for me! Without thinking twice, I direct messaged Chester.
Chester and I spoke the next day and I learned that OpenCandy was about much more than cool recommendations in some of my favorite apps’ installers. I learned that OpenCandy was conceived with the thought of helping developers of great applications reach a broader audience. The following day I spoke again with Chester and this time, Darrius Thompson, CEO of OpenCandy joined in on the call. It was as if they were reading a page from the Dr. Apps manual when they stated their belief that there was “a Firefox in every category of apps”, meaning that there is a superstar application in every software category just waiting to break out.
“Um, I Haven’t Flown in 15 Years”
On Valentine’s Day, Chester called and asked me to fly out to sunny San Diego (I’m a New Englander, sun and 60 degree temps in February sounded really nice). I hadn’t flown in 15 years, so the fact that I was willing to speaks volumes about how I felt about OpenCandy’s mission and how excited I was to meet the team behind it. It also gave me the opportunity to explain to the TSA that I was interviewing to be a Software Community Guru, so that they would actually let me board my flight. No joke.
Happy Birthday!
Since I’d be in San Diego for less than 24 hours, Chester lined up a marathon of one-on-one meetings with as many team members as possible. Each meeting confirmed the best case scenario to me, that OpenCandy really was passionate about empowering developers while providing the best user experience possible. I took the red-eye back to Boston and later that day, my birthday, I got the call that I was OpenCandy’s Software Community Guru! I was elated! Darrius remarked that he thought the OpenCandy and Dr. Apps story was way better than one of those match.com success stories. In this case, Twitter was “our match.com.”
My Dream Job
At OpenCandy, I’m tasked with spreading the word about what we’re doing and inviting developers of software I love to participate. Through my years of being a user advocate and educating people on safe online practices and trusted software, I’m living proof of OpenCandy’s commitment to providing a great experience for users. We have a long way to go before OpenCandy is a household name, but I believe that with a team of passionate, dedicated and talented individuals as we have, we’ve got a really good chance.
