On Saturday Corey pulled an almost all-nighter (stayed up 'til 5:30 a.m. then slept 'til 10:30) went to the airport at 12:30, layover in Atlanta, arrived in Chile at 9 a.m. Monday and went straight to the university. He's a really hard worker. If millionaires are created by driving yourself into the ground, I think Corey's definitely earned it. (Don't have a heart attack, sweetie) Here's an email he sent me yesterday of the trip update thus far (on Day 2 of 14):
"Thought I’d take a moment to give you and update of happenings here in Santiago. Last week I was busy with some other non-Media Mouth priorities and so have been playing catch-up with work – so if I don’t sound coherent, it’s due to a couple of all-nighters – interrupted only by flight to South America. "When I was here last I had agreed with Cristobal who works for the CNIC (Chilean National Innovation council) that we could do something small with them – and get a chance for them to learn more about M o v i e Mouth. I had worried about doing something big because we had just finished a pilot and we knew of many issues to address before presenting again, and I didn’t want to get distracted, and frankly the software is not ready yet. I also worried about not having enough resources to do it “right”. Cristobal assured me it would just be 8-10 students on summer break at a lab at the Catholic University.
"So far, 50-60 people have used the system under the watchful eye of maybe a dozen or more administrator’s and academics at two Universities, one of which is the most prestigious in the country and sets the trends for the rest of the nation. Unfortunately, Gabriel was unable (despite my strong urgings) to get access to the labs before I came, so we’ve wrestled with various installation/technical issues that temporarily shook the confidence of some of the people working with us, but they appear to be mostly behind us. Many of the computers didn’t even have sound cards to work with, and are super slow. But we have gotten through most of those issues (happy to go into details if you’re interested. We have three separate, unfinished projects surrounding auto-installation and testing – we just haven’t been able to get to them yet but they should help identify/solve problems much sooner.
"There is a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of attention here – my biggest worry is whether we have the resources to execute like we need to – and like everyone is expecting/hoping us to. The entire staff at the CNIC seems involved in the project and anxious for its success – and they even hired an outside firm to monitor/track/study the progress. It was not the low-key pilot I had agreed to by any means, but the enthusiasm seems too great to contain. I know that if we do moderately well with this pilot they will want to talk about expansion. As with the last pilot, the vision/concept transcends the technology issues – but we need to close that gap ASAP."
So with Chile on my mind, I thought I'd share a personal political side note that after watching the State of the Union (as much as I could handle) and after South Carolina, I'm a little worried about the future of America so thought I'd let you all know we're going to self-deport ourselves to Chile if Gingrich gets the nomination. (Come on Romney!!) I'll stick around for Santorum or Paul, but if my choices are between Obama and Gingrich... see ya. Feel free to try and convince me if there are other options, but I'm not alone, I'm going to start recruiting (see 14:12-14:27). Seriously, Herman Cain left the candidate pool because of shadowy accusations, and now we have Newt claiming to be the Republican lifeguard with his substantial record of adultery, divorce and ethics reprimands? Really?? Please, I just hope that we will have someone conservative, decent and honest to vote for. Is that too much to ask?
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