At The Pool Blog

Happy Father’s Day.

Or as some people call it, happy “broken-condom-awareness-day!”.

Those of us lucky to have had awesome dads know what an impact our fathers have had in our lives. 

But the truth is, some people don’t grow up with dads. Some people, like myself (aka, At The Pool’s director of awesomeness), lost their dad. Not all of us have fathers that we need to remember to call or buy a gift for on Father’s Day.

So I thought I’d make a guide about how to spend Father’s Day when you in fact have no dad. For all those stripped of that “father” in their lives, this guide is for you.

1. Make YOURSELF brunch

It’s commonly done on Mother’s day too. Take yourself out to brunch, sip mimosas, and celebrate the fact that you turned out pretty ok without having a dad this year.

2. Highjack a Dad

I do this on Mother’s day too (since I also lost my mother).

Find someone that you respect and praise them for the day. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a “father figure”. I mooch off some of my friends’ dads cause they’re cool and they’ve helped me cope with my absent father. Not only will you feel less lonely and depressed, you’ll make some other father really, really happy.

3. Sleep

Father’s Day is always on a Sunday. Hopefully you don’t have work and this means you have the day off to do my favorite hobby.

4. Get Offline

Please, please, please do this!

Father’s Day feels like a normal Sunday if it weren’t for the bombardment of Facebook posts and Tweets gushing about how your friend has “The best Papa in the world! XOXOXO”. Go do something in the real world (remember that?).

Grab one of you friends or reach out to an At The Pool member in your area and go for a hike, watch a movie, grab dinner, play basketball, play footsie, whatever! Just don’t let the social media of the internet depress you. 

We hope those of you with and without fathers have a great fathers day, no matter how you spend it.

Hey guys,

We are launching a series of religious pools today.

Don’t worry, this isn’t Big Brother laying down the iron fist, forcing you join a religion and abide by it.  We just want to make it easier for you to find similar people nearby.

By doing so, you will be able to find churches, synagogues, events, temples, mosques, and/or spaceships nearby if you are into that sort of thing.

                                             Who do you choose…
                       Or is it, who chooses you? dun dun dunnnn
 

                                                               Baha’i

Help grow your pool!

Will the battle for top spot be between Catholicism and Judaism, or will Hinduism reign supreme?  Maybe the Atheists will sneak up on the Flying Spaghetti Monsters to prove dominant?  We won’t know until you join!  Invite your friends and choose wisely:

Cheers,

At The Pool Team

Don’t click here.

At The Pool boasts some pretty impressive members.

And today we’re happy to introduce you to a special one in particular.

Meet Martynas.

Martynas is a young entrepreneur and founder of a start-up we think you’d like to know about. He was kind enough to answer some questions to prove to you how awesome he really is: 

1) How did you find out about At The Pool?

We were at launch48 event with our startup idea unface.it (at that moment we called it “unhook facebook”) and we started doing some market research, “What solutions are out there for people who want real life experiences?” (real people meeting real people) and we found you! We thought it was a great idea and we should do something a bit different  than from what you do.

2) Tell us a little bit about unface.it

Unface.it helps people fight addiction to facebook or other social network website where people spend too much of their precious life time. We believe that real world is much more rewarding than virtual one. As of now unface app is really simple with just a few features. Later we want to add one more feature which is going help keep track of your best friends - when was the last time you had dinner together? when was the last time you traveled somewhere? when was the last time you went to a sport game together. Basically it will help you make your relationship better and … find out if you have any real friends at all.

We want you to start experience your real life with your real friends. This is why we made the world’s first offline social network. Our app will let you discover new events in your area, encourage you to maintain healthy relationships with your best friends, and most importantly, you life will become more productive. 

3) Why did you decide to start unface.it?

Our startup is called Whemsy.com (it helps people develop good habits and reach all kind of goals in your life). So, many people started asking if Whemsy app helps fight addictions, helps with bad habits. Our answer was and still is no. We believe you can not mix 2 systems in 1. So we decided to leave Whemsy for developing good habits and… unface.it for fighting one of the biggest addiction in our days - Facebook. In longer perspective we want to build different solutions for different addictions: unhook TV, unhook junk food, unhook smoking etc. So in short: Whemsy is for good habits, and Unhook is for bad habits (and one of the latest projects is unface.it)

4) What didn’t you like about Facebook?

Before I say what I do not like about facebook I have to admit that I use it myself. But I do it in a very specific way. It does not steal my time as before.

So, what I didn’t like about facebook:

- it has all kind of gamification/psychological models to keep most of us coming back and waste most of our productive time. it is well constructed and most of us can not quit facebook easily

- advertising! too much of it and I have to say - not the products or services I usually buy

- some of my friends post a lot of things which are irrelevant to me. I can choose not show their feed in my home page but it takes effort to do that

- facebook makes you believe you have a lot of friends while in reality you do not. many people do not even have 3 friends they can call 2 am and ask for their help in a real life. although they have around 500 friends on facebook. that is so fake. We even wrote on our website “unhook fakebook”

5) What’s your idea of a perfect social media site?

Combination of “At The Pool” with “LinkedIn” and “unface.it” or “whemsy.com”, where like minded people can inspire each other do some extraordinary things based on their strengths and meet for celebrations of their biggest achievements. I think a perfect social media site should connect people and empower them take some actions (either together or separately) to help communities succeed in all areas of life.

6) What’s your favorite drink?

Almond juice with strawberies

7) If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you?

Ewan McGregor as in the movie Big Fish (most colorful I’ve seen so far. Well my life is like that) or Russell Crowe as in the movie Gladiator (one of the most inspiring movies).

8) What’s the most annoying thing to you?

When people talk too much and do too little. 

9) If you only had six months left to live, what would you do with that time?

I would travel around the world for 5 month + 3 weeks and inspire young people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs - do something they truly believe in but have not found courage yet to take the first step. And the last week of my life I would do some scary and crazy stuff like: skydiving, volcano boarding, air kicking, windsurfing, riding a motorcycle 200 mph :). And well, the last day - drinking almond juice with strawberries together with my best friends in a real life :)

We’d like to thank Martynas for his time and telling us a little more about his start-up.

You can check out Martynas’ At The Pool profile here.

Are you extraordinary and think you’ve got what it takes to be a featured member? Send us an email at blogfeature@atthepool.com . Tell us what makes you stand out and you might see your feature on this very blog! 

We thought we’d feature today two At The Pool members that recently got offline and get up in person (which is one of At The Pool’s missions). 

Meet Neal and Laila.

Laila founded FastFirstDates which is a singles events company for professionals who want to date offline. They often host mixers with different themes and her aim is to also hold charity focused events with proceeds going towards a given cause. Their next party is called “Bring Your Ex or Wingman of the Opposite Sex” on April 17th and she’s also working on an event that will donate to Much Love Animal Rescue. For more information about her upcoming party, go here.

Neal co-founded thePortfolium.com with his team in late 2012 as an online portfolio platform. They were inspired by being involved in so many projects and extracurricular activities that didn’t find their way to their resumes or LinkedIn. They felt that they shouldn’t be limited by a sheet of paper or bullet points to show off their skills and experiences. With thePortfolium you can content you’ve created and link to your portfolio on your resume thus making you stand out among other applicants. 

They were both kind enough to answer a few questions for us:

1) why you guys decided to join At The Pool 

Laila: I joined after reading a post on TechCrunch and thought it was an awesome concept which I wanted to get a jump on it right away. 

Neal: I joined AtThePool when I got an email invitation and saw the point was to meet in person. The in person networking was really appealing to me. 

2) why you decided to meet offline

Laila: We’re both working on startups and after chatting over ATP for a bit, we decided to meet in person and discuss business over drinks.  We got along great and are becoming good friends. We continue to discuss our businesses while encouraging each other.

Neal: We pretty quickly were talking about founding our own businesses and it felt very collaborative. We decided to get together and when we did it was non stop ideas about each others work. We’ve since gone to some networking events together. 

3) What activities you’d like to do in the future

Laila: In general on ATP, I suppose hiking or meeting fellow vegans! ha! With Neal, well I suppose I’m looking forward to beating him at a game of pogs. 

Neal: In the future I’d like to go to more networking events for start ups. There’s a fun level of ambition with others who are interested in starting businesses that I really am in tune with. 

4) How you use At The Pool (to find friends? Business? networking etc)

Laila: So far it’s been all of the above! People who message me tend to be working on startups too so that’s a common point of conversation.  

Neal: So far, I’ve used AtThePool for finding new friends with similar interests as mine. I have even found old friends from when I lived in San Diego and now we’re going to meet up since we love nearby in LA. 

It’s so great seeing real life At The Pool members actually meet offline! Don’t forget to check out  Neal and Laila’s start-ups.

Cause it’s his Birthday….

At The Pool’s designer, Jason, is one year older.

We here at At The Pool appreciate his parents getting busy that one night twenty something years ago so we could use his talents and enjoy the presence of his company. He deserves all the attention in the world today.

Keep diddly doodling.

Check out At The Pool’s designer, Jason Hsin, who was just featured in an LA start-up tech blog and filmed on the roof of At The Pool’s HQ.

Just watch, he’s awesome.

Because we have such awesome people on At The Pool, we like to brag about them every so often and share their awesomeness with the whole At The Pool community. 

Today, we’re gonna brag about Adam who’s got a pretty amazing blog and of course, a proud At The Pool member.

Adam provided us with a little auto-biography about himself and was kind enough to answer some of our wacky questions. So without further ado, I give you Adam!

“Right, hello! I’m Adam Emerson, and I’m addicted to adventure; it’s been that way ever since I was a kid climbing trees in the Tennessee countryside. Having just conquered 4 years of Psychology and International Relations classes at Middle Tennessee State University (with brief breaks in Prague and Moscow wedged in there), I was itching to get out into the world and do something new. That’s when I found the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program, and the rest is recent history. The Fulbright folks sent me out here to Izhevsk, Russia, where I basically am paid to have fun conversations in English with university students. 

Of course, this wasn’t quite enough adventure for me, which is why I started the Izhmash-Mish-Mash blog.

Each picture you see was taken personally by me and depicts some aspect of graffiti and street art culture here in Russia. At times, I’ll muse on what the pieces mean; other times, I’ll riff on various aspects of life. In the future, I may even have some guest entries written by friends here in Russia, including other Fulbright fellows. Regardless of the text content, the pictures are a good opportunity to see a unique form of artistic and political expression in a country that often restricts such displays.

Check out the blog, and let me know what you think!

What is your favorite drink?

Hot chocolate with a layer of marshmallow so thick at the top that it’s impossible to come back up without foam on my nose. That or a tumbler full of scotch.

What would I find in your refrigerator right now?

Unspeakable horrors of Russian cuisine, like kefir. Also some tasty pelmeni, perepechi, and a few local cheeses recommended to me by a homeless guy outside the grocery store (thanks Артём!).

What is the last book you read?

After spending some time in the cold Russian winter, I started pining for some warm American literature, so I’m currently reading Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” for the first time. Reading it in Russia led me to the realization that it’s basically an American reimagining of a classic piece of Soviet literature, Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” Both are well worth a look, if you need something new to read!

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be?

Neil deGrasse Tyson would be a good choice right now. He’s well-respected, has science practically flowing through his veins, and I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have just an epic mustache, rather than an epic full beard.

If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you?

(que awesome bridge photo)

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

All I want is the power to instantly transform Russia’s bland food into something with a modicum of taste. Call me… Tobasco Man!

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

Barbed Wire: The Story of a Guy Who Probably Shouldn’t be Alive (Long story short, barbed wire has attempted to kill me numerous times, and I have the scars to prove it.)

If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?

Grab the person that means the most to me at that point in life and spend the rest of our time, money, and health seeing the places in the world that they don’t put on TV.

What’s the most annoying thing to you?

The idea of ignorance as a choice, rather than a condition produced by a person’s environment. Nobody chooses to be ignorant, so stop blaming people for things they don’t know.

What’s the most important part of the sandwich?

The toothpick is the mark of an expertly crafted culinary masterpiece (or at least a sandwich with a whole lotta meat on it). It’s not a proper sandwich unless it needs a toothpick to keep it all together. 

And lastly…..

Why did you join At The Pool? 

My Russian adventure is limited by the terms of my visa and my career goals, so, unfortunately, I have to return to the States in June. When I get back, I’ll be packing my stuff up in Tennessee and driving out to Pullman, WA to start my PhD. Moving cross-country is easy enough, but the thought of knowing nobody in the Evergreen State was a little bit intimidating. Luckily, I found At The Pool, which has allowed me to make quite a few contacts in the area! Thanks to the site, I’m even doing a pen-pal kind of thing with a few folks from Wazzu. Of course, I’m always interested in making more friends out there, so if you see me on the site, send a hello!

(The views expressed here do not represent the views of the US Department of State or the Fulbright program.)

See?!

Isn’t he awesome!? Be sure to check out his blog for more awesomeness and you can check out his At The Pool profile here and connect with him.

At The Pool was written up in Poland!  Check it out here.

Sign here here: http://grovecrawl.eventbrite.com/

We’re so awesome, that TechCrunch found us worthy of a feature yesterday. 

Read the whole article here.