You might have seen some bits and pieces about the Pollis here and there. If you're still not familiar with what it is, click on "The Pollis" tab at the top of this blog and you will get a quick rundown of how the site works.
So who the heck are the guys building this social network? Well, there are two of us right now. Myself, who came up with the idea and is responsible for the long term vision of the site, and Justin, one of my best friends from college who is actually building the site. So let's start with the more impressive story of the two of us: Justin, and how he taught himself to write code and eventually build the Pollis.
Justin (or Fox, as everyone in our group of friends call him, it's honestly a little weird referring to him by his first name), started attending UMass the same year I did in 2005. We met in the first few weeks on campus playing football in the quad. For a couple weeks, Fox was known only as "red shirt guy" because that was the color shirt he wore the first time we played.
Myself, Fox, and several of our friends would play weekly pickup games every Wednesday. These games were so competitive that we wore cleats and played tackle football. We'd then follow it up with a party back at my dorm (which looking back, was pretty stupid. You don't need to be a fitness guru to know that playing football for over an hour then drinking lots of beer is a terrible thing to do to your body). These parties were not completely ridiculous however, because they allowed Fox and I (along with our group of friends) to become much closer.
Fox graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and is currently working as an engineer for a firm that builds nozzles but once I approached him with the idea for the Pollis, he immediately wanted to jump on board. He details his experiences with learning how to code on his blog. He and he alone built the Pollis that you see today. We'd be nowhere without him.
Now, I'm just a guy with an idea. I graduated with a degree in political science and spent the first couple years out of college figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. One day, I asked myself "where do you go to find blogs" and eventually came up with the idea for the Pollis. My first thought was "why hasn't something like this come around sooner?" which was followed quickly by "how the hell would I make something like this?"
I looked into it and realized that I would need to learn how to write code. I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid so any task that includes meticulous details takes me longer to complete. I decided that the best use of my time and skills would be learning how to run a business and develop a product instead of basically pursuing another degree by teaching myself how to code (which is what Fox ended up doing).
After coming up with the idea, I thought to myself "great idea, now how do you factor into this whole thing?" I clearly was not qualified to be the CEO of anything based on my resume and I had no technical skills that could give me a leg up in the absurdly competitive tech industry. I did however, have a lifetime love of writing (because of my mother) and a very opinionated big mouth. I decided that my talents would be best used post-launch when I could begin a dialogue about what the Pollis is and what it can be.
This blog is an outlet for that discussion. You will see musings about what interests me personally on this blog but that is more to show the rest of you that I am not so different from any other blogger. I have my interests just like anyone else. But the primary use of this blog is to connect with other bloggers to help us tailor the Pollis to the needs of the blogosphere. We have a simple mantra, give bloggers the freedom to promote themselves and that will give people a reason to join the site. So bloggers, what do you think of the Pollis and how can we make it better?
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