Why They THink They Can Succeed

I'm in Washington, DC this week for NECC, and already the trip has been extraordinary. I want to share one story with you.

After the edubloggercon gathering on Saturday, the great folks from Wikispaces held a reception. While mingling with the guests we met a young man, Evan Morikawa, who seemed to be soacking this all in with special interest. He appeared to be about 19 (younder, actually) so we were curious of his connection. It turns out that he is one of the co-founders of Alightlearning.com. That, in istself was pretty cool, but his story is even better.

He was happily attending college in Massachusets, somewhere (Sorry, I forget where) when his friend received an invitation to the premier showing of the Google Wave. Everyone who was lucky enough to be there received an API code so that they could begin to develop apps for this amazing product. That changed their lives. They were so blown away by the possibilities of that app that they then began to view college as just being in their way. They dropped out of college to begin work on their app idea.

That alone is pretty amazing and gutsy isn't it? But, we loved his response when asked why he thought they could make it in this economy when other web services have failed. Evan replied, "Because Blackboard sucks and they charge $100,000 per school." :-)

I love their idea for their app, and I love their attitude. Can't wait to see their Google Wave app when it's released later this year. Good luck, guys.