January 18, 2007
Mostly because I want an excuse to try embedding a YouTube video in a post, but also because I think this is a great story.
With apologies to anybody who came along to my presentation at TechEd and already heard me talk about this :
This is a great example of the power of word-of-mouth marketing and something that could have only happened online.
The video above is actually the sequel. The first video (Windows, 8MB or Quicktime, 13MB) was cobbled together on a trip he paid for himself and wrote about on a travel blog for family and friends and anybody else who stumbled upon it. It turned out that quite a few people did, and they told their friends. Somebody told the kind people at Stride Gum who asked him if he wanted to do it all again, only better. This time he would go to 39 different countries and in the process visit all 7 continents. That’s not the kind of offer you turn down I suppose!
The full story is on his site, www.wherethehellismatt.com, including the blog he wrote as he travelled to all of those amazing places and danced.
<trivia why=“to scare those of us who are nervous of heights”>
The rock in Kjeragbolten, Norway, that he dances on, albeit a little less enthusiastically than in some other places, is even worse than it looks. It is a straight drop of 1000m with nothing to block your fall. More info from Wikipedia and from Matt’s journal entry.
</trivia>
If you have a big-screen TV hooked up to a computer then download the hi-res version (Windows, 48MB or Quicktime, 48MB) and turn the volume up and try to stop yourself from dancing along with him.
Enjoy!
UPDATE (30-Jun-08): Where the hell is Matt? (2008)