Archive for May, 2009
Weekly-to-Bi-Weekly Update: Olé! Edition
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
[iVolunteer's project team meets every Tuesday at 6:00 pm at the Van Heyst Group's offices on 719 Walnut Street in Boulder, and they never ask for a plug. Who cares what they want, though? Today's plug: Go right on over to their media page to see videos of super intelligent people like Kofi Annan speak on myriad important world topics at their conferences. Think of it as a much more exclusive TED. Update after the next bracket and a line break.]
Aye carumba!
iVolunteer’s weekly update this week is powered by Casa Noble tequila (seriously), the only tequila your friends can serve you without you knowing it’s tequila until your third full glass when you’re dancing on the bar with your shirt off and a lampshade on your head. Yes, it was an interesting night at iVolunteer to say the least. One more reason that if you want to do something to give back to the world you live, breathe, and waste time watching “The Hills” in, your best option is to join iVolunteer. Click here and become a fan to be notified of all future working sessions. There was also pizza (Abo’s if I’m not mistaken), which was beyond delicious.
Some people just showed up at the right time, like Andrew Steffan (whose card by the way carries the tags “Software, Firmware, Embedded Systems, Mechanical, Process, Manufacturing, R&D, M.E.ECE, B.S.ME, Cert Embedded Sys., Cert Proj. Mgmt., E.I.T. Colorado” – and you thought you were overqualified to help out. HA!); Clint Ashworth, who’s built like an absolute house and will be helping us out with API shenanigans; Anthony Navarre, who works for award-winning Boulder design studio Slice of Lime (kind of a big deal); and Eric Baer, a CU student taking some time out to brush up on work experience spending the summer working for National Instruments and is looking for an internship in the Fall. He’s helping us with Android in his spare time, because he’s just that smart and that great a guy. Lot’s of super-qualified newbies is a great way to start the week.
Other big news is that we’ve got (as of this posting) 24 days left until we’ve gotta have a functioning model of this thing on an iPhone for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service on June 22nd-24th. Definitely crunch time around iVolunteer.
Someone who knows this well is Dave Angulo, co-Founder of iVolunteer, and the 1st-ever recipient of the weekly crown giveaway (picture to come), Fiona’s award (of embarrassment?) to the week’s hardest-working participant in the project. It’s only fitting Dave gets it the first week, but eventually we’ll get bored and give it to somebody else like when NBA voters stopped giving Michael Jordan MVP awards for no apparent reason in the mid-90’s. The crown lasted all of half a second on Dave’s head before he shed the sillyness and put his game face back on. After all — twenty-four days!
More pressing is the unveiling of the very first functioning iVolunteer product, our Wordpress widget, which resident Wordpress wizard Neil Simon will be rolling out to everyone he talks to at WordCamp SanFran this weekend. This should show everyone that we’re not too drunk at working sessions to actually get things accomplished. (Well…some of us.)
Maybe the biggest news of all is that “iVolunteer” will, very soon-like, no longer be known as “iVolunteer.” (GASP!)
iVol...er, I mean, the Project Formerly Known As iVolunteer's "thinking juice."
There’s a number of reasons for this, most involving capitalism and $20,000 domain name conundrums, but it’s for the better and it forces all of the creatives in the group to actually think (fine…if we have to…). This is why the Casa Noble tequila made a guest appearance, although now that we’ve had some, I’d say there’s a good chance it will have a recurring role.
After much deliberation, a board full of potential monikers, and perhaps too much agave-based spirit, the marketing team arrived at 105 possibilities from which 6 were culled as “good.” (Notice I did not say “the best.”) We’re in the process of finding the best way to get the community involved without letting the name fall into the evil hands of a domain poacher, and we’ll have some kind of announcement on that very, very soon, so keep checking here and on iVolunteer’s twitter stream (which is one of the few iVolunteer properties we actually own).
So, that’s it. We’re coming along quite nicely, thanks to the generosity of our wonderful project directors and and co-Founders (also all volunteers, mind you), Dave Angulo, Rich Grote, and Fiona Schlachter, along with the busy bees that make up the team. However, we’ve yet to find too many willing to do just a small sponsorship to cover our food for meetings. It can be done for less than $100 each time, and you can do it all by going to this page and entering iVolunteer in the “Designation” field for whatever amount you can give. Colorado’s got one of the best-performing economies in the country right now, so I know there’s a little scratch floating around out there that can be put to good use by fueling the rise of volunteerism around the world from a little office in Boulder. Think about it.
Lots of exciting things this week. If you have any suggestions for iVolunteer’s new label, please feel free to drop them in the comments section below or on our Facebook fan page. Most brilliant idea wins a hug and the ability to say “I thought of that” every time our name comes up in coversation.
Until next time,
-Josh
Weekly Update: Ambithasiant Lunar Waneshaft Edition
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
[iVolunteer's project team meets every Tuesday at 6:00 pm at the Van Heyst Group's offices on 719 Walnut Street in Boulder, and they never ask for a plug, Godbless'em. We like to do it anyway, even if you'll never use them. Today's fact: They put on conferences. Not the Trekkies kind or the Furries kind, but more "innovative forums for global thought leaders and senior executives." So, in other words, not me. On to the update.]
First, we’ll take a brief moment so you can stand and applaud our three newest iVolunteerers – Dan Hellman, Rick Saltzman, and Brett Greene!
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…
Okay, okay, that’s plenty. They’re still noobs, after all. And they will be hazed this time! I will not be the only one!
A lot of news coming fast and furious out of the development (a.k.a. Nerd) team:
- We have a scriplet version of Interest Areas for Facebook.
- We are completing iPhone filter page development this week.
- Dave will complete ipconversion by Thu for Neil to continue WordPress plugin development.
- Dave fixed data feed and is optimizing to load quicker and will push to server this week.
- We have successfully figured out how to encabulate retroactively as this video explains. I think that means we can now travel through time, but I’ll double-check that with the techies, just to be sure.
If you understood what any of that meant, then faaaaantastic. In fact, if you’re in the Denver/Boulder area join our Facebook group, and come to our next working sesh. Especially if you like being more employable, because you’ll be able to learn all kinds of stuff about iPhoneDev, Facebook App Dev, and other things that now are closing $3 million funding rounds. Learn how to make three million dollars from geniuses. That’s what we’re offering, here.
On the BizDev side, I guess we don’t have that much to report, you know, except for, oh yeah, this little thing about us getting the call to be the featured iPhone partner for HandsOn Network, more or less the biggest volunteer-opportunity-finder in the country, and also for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service on June 22nd-24th. Which is totally splendiforous on the surface, yet means we have to do all this in the next 37 days.
Here’s a few ways you can help:
One (Less than a minute): Go vote for HandsOn Network, our new partner, to receive more money from Target. The more votes they get, the more resources they have to accomplish the dream of creating a global, mobile, and instant volunteering force to give aid in the largest and smallest of crises.
Two (a few minutes): Go to this page and enter iVolunteer in the “Designation” field for whatever amount you can give. Our meetings run on pizza and beer, which doesn’t cost more than $60 or so every meeting. Even a few bucks would totally go a long way.
Three (a couple hours): Join our Facebook group, and stay abreast (yes, I wrote that) of all upcoming meetings. Drop in sometime. Considering the fact that we’re now launching different parts of the service over the next month, culminating in a huge coming-out party. If you’ve ever wanted to learn Product Launching, PR, or Strategic Fundraising (or if you just want to pad your resume in those areas), we always need more big brains attached to little beer-and-pizza-holes to sit in. To repeat: We are launching a technology product nationally and need help from anyone who’s got a couple hours to spare! Be a part of something cool.
Plus, we’ll let you in on our time-traveling device. As soon as we get more prefamulated amulite and a flux capacitor.
We’ll be revealing another big surprise soon, so be sure to follow us on Twitter. In the meantime, stay classy, Colorado!
-Josh
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