Preparations for a new experience
It's started!
Sunday, January 14th
JFK airport, N.Y.
In the confusion that is JFK, I was looking for a cab to take me to Penn Station....
The adventure was beginning. A few months of initial excitement was waning, there was no turning back.
It all started some time in late May 2000.
My brother knew of my interest in development work, my long-time desire to do something useful with what I know, the nagging thought at the back of my mind about my seemingly endless contribution to the concentration of wealth in the pockets of a small number of vc's.
He must have read the May 27th slashdot feature, because he sent me an e-mail with a link to the geekcorps site.
I visited, wowed, wrote an application and submitted it, all in the space of a few hours. Nothing.....
All summer, Nothing. I went to Mexico for a month with my girlfriend in August, when I got back, nothing....
I think I'd more or less forgotten about it. Archived it somewhere along with a long history of other ideas, concepts, dot-org dreams and various miscellany.
In short I was taken by surprise when an e-mail from geekcorps awoke me from my working slumber, some time in late September or early October 2000.
Was I still interested? Was I?
I assume I was, or I wouldn't be here, but at the same time it wasn't going to be an easy decision. At that time I was in the business plan stages of starting a company with a "few good men". A tech company to experiment in eXtreme Programming, have fun and get rich quick :-)
That really took some guts, to throw that away to pursue a long-time dream with a company, which until that point had been nothing but a web-site, a slashdot and an on-line application form to me.
But I was seriously afraid I'd regret if I didn't do it, now that opportunity was knocking on my door.
A few e-mails, a month of linear time, and a phone call with Ana Maria Harkins, and I had quit my job, was off getting immunizations, researching malaria prophylaxis, and trying to get rid of my apartment in one fell swoop.... The rest as they say is history, or a the very least uninteresting trivia.
But the excitement had been there, through all the pulling up of roots, reorganizing and handing over old projects at work. The closer I got to January 14th, all through the holiday season, the excitement rose.
By the time I landed at JFK, it was quite a relief to be on the way. That there was in essence no turning back, that I had made a commitment, and braved the first sted, seemed like a big thing.
Well I took the ubiqutous yellow-cab to Penn Station, got my ticket and waited. Within about 20 minutes, there were 4 of us.
Train to Albany. Picked up by Stephanie, Car to North Adams. Dropped of at our current home, just around the corner from MassMoCA.
Meeting new people. Bed-time. jet-lag, rise-and-shine.
So I was there, as I am now, expectations practically non-existant. I only knew I was in for about 10 days of training along with the other volunteers.
And here I am, a week into boot-camp, were all here at the office trying to redesign the geekhalla.org site, add a primitive publishing system, and our own personal touch. Everyone seems genuinely entusiastic about the prospect of 3 months in Accra, and the past week of training has opened our eyes to what we will be experiencing in the next 3 months.
Just spending 6 days with a handful of people who are also in the tech industry, and equally into doing something worthwhile has been worth it all. And the training we have gotten from the people at geekcorps. The Ghanaian dinner at Ethan's house, the lunches, the beers, and not to be forgotten, the fascinating discussions with each other, the geekcorps crew and Geoffrey and Colin from Harvard University's Center of International Development (Information Technologies Group ). I have to say, I haven't been this inspired to go out and DO something since I got back from Sout America 3 years ago, and I'm not even in Accra yet.....
