At The Pool Blog

At The Pool is proud to join Reef Check and Lyft in a...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:11:10 -0700

At The Pool is proud to join Reef Check and Lyft in a celebration for World Oceans Day in Santa Monica, CA. For information and to claim your spot, RSVP here.

We agree with Twitter 100%, call your mom on #MothersDay!

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:56:24 -0700

We agree with Twitter 100%, call your mom on #MothersDay!

At The Pool Members Get Offline And Meet For Realsies!

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:15:11 -0700

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.

BREAKING! At The Pool's Designer Needs Attention Today!

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:50:44 -0700

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.

Photo

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:26:14 -0700

At The Pool Trash Talk

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:18:02 -0700

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.

Photo

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 01:28:24 -0700

Featured Member and Blogger Extraordinaire: Adam!

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:14:30 -0700

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?

Oh, there’s going to be a movie? Can we please cryogenically preserve Jeff Bridges until they start shooting? Or maybe by then Disney will have perfected that young Jeff Bridges technology from the newest Tron movie. Either way, Mr. Bridges, if you see this, you’re my hero. Please adopt me.

(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 in Poland!

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:34:07 -0700

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

At The Grove - Los Angeles Event

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:37:53 -0700

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

At The Pool is in Japan! Check it out here.

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:35:18 -0700

At The Pool is in Japan! Check it out here.

New splash page!!! Check it out at http://atthepool.com/splash

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:32:35 -0700

New splash page!!! Check it out at http://atthepool.com/splash

Even Google Translate is having a hard time with this. Very...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:07:26 -0700

Even Google Translate is having a hard time with this. Very cool to see At The Pool covered in China! Check it out here.

Check Out Our Feature in TechCrunch!

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:05:19 -0800

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

Read the whole article here.

Our New "Pool" Features!

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:59:47 -0800

Have you noticed At The Pool’s recent ch-ch-changes?

If you haven’t, well you’re probably a man.

Anyhow, we are so proud of these changes because they will enhance your At The Pool experience and usage! Yay!

One of the most significant we changes we made was with our pools.

The nav underneath your daily match on the Tide Pool page has a “Pools” tab that lets you join and explore all the pools.

We have a lot of new pools as well so we encourage you to explore them.

Within the search nav, you can view all the pools you’ve joined.

You can then view one of the pools you joined by clicking on them.

Once you get into the individual pool page, you can then post an activity (aka, a splash) that everyone in that pool will see. So for example, below I posted that I wanted to meet up with someone to go to Demetri Martin’s stand up show in LA at 9:30pm in the stand-up pool.

Each pool page will also show you all the members within that pool. If you just want to post an activity to specific members in that pool, you can simply click on their profile and send them a splash or a message.

Stay tuned for more posts about our new features!

With a major launch in new product features, check out The Next...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:14:31 -0800

With a major launch in new product features, check out The Next Web’s coverage at http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/03/06/at-the-pool-redesign/.

At The Pool Featured in Daily ISO and Our First Widget

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:53:46 -0800

As if our awesome new updates weren’t enough, we now have our very first official widget up on the popular LA culture and nightlife site Daily ISO. They also featured us in this article.

We hope you all are digging our new updates as much as we are. Don’t forget to share At The Pool with your friends (but only the cool ones, obviously, we have a strict “no un-cool” people policy!).

At The Pool hosted an awesome comedy night on Tuesday produced by our very own Eden. If you are...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:12:00 -0800

At The Pool hosted an awesome comedy night on Tuesday produced by our very own Eden. If you are into standup comedy at all, check out our standup pool and meet like-minded people to see shows with nearby!

Check out all the photos here!

Check out this interview with At The Pool CEO, Alex Capecelatro,...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:46:49 -0800

Check out this interview with At The Pool CEO, Alex Capecelatro, for MeetAdvisors.com.

Our Social Networking Panel and Pitch Featured in LA Weekly!

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:36:58 -0800

Digital LA invited us to their Startup Showcase on meeting people online and for an online etiquette panel afterwards.

Jason Hsin and Eden Dranger represented At The Pool and talked about how At The Pool is such a great resource to discover genuinely awesome people and getting off line in order to meet them.

We were so awesome, that LA Weekly featured us!

Check out the article here.

Here’s some shots from the night:

(Isn’t that girl in the pink and white shirt smelly? She totally looks smelly…she also wrote this post so she can’t go on saying how gorgeous she looks cause that would make her seem cocky)

You can join the Digital LA pool here and meet other awesome Digital LA fans and panelists. And feel free to browse here at the full photo album for the night (ignore the pictures where Eden looks like she’s holding in a fart).

Thanks Digital LA for inviting us and thanks LA Weekly for acknowledging out awesomeness.