The Danger Pages

The Birth of a Dream

It was June of 1985 when my mom took us kids to go see "The Goonies" in the theater.  Sure, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was my favorite movie, but "The Goonies" planted a seed in my head that would continue to grow for the rest of my life.  What was the seed?  It was a simple question.  "What if it could be real?"

At that point, I had no idea that I would be spending the ongoing decades of my life planning and designing ways to make adventures happen in real life.  I made a couple attempts at starting a business creating story-driven scavenger hunts for people, but not only was I not ready to start a successful business at the time, but the way I was doing it really wasn't scratching the itch, if you'll pardon the phrase.  My brother and I had come up with many ways to create experiences for people, but so much blood, sweat and tears went in to each one that it begged a certain question.  "How can I give this to the world if I'm spending all of my time giving it to a handful of people?"

Another problem I was having was that I wanted people to be able to have an experience on their own, without my intervention.  Granted, there are some huge benefits to having full control over "the show", but it never really felt like it was really happening due to the fact that there was occassionally someone dressed in black working behind the scenes on things.  I didn't want to create shows.  I wanted to create experiences.

So, how can you create a scavenger for everyone in the world at the same time?  Well, you couldn't very easily before smart phones.  As soon as it became apparent that everyone on Earth would own 2.5 phones, on average, I knew it was time to stop planning and start building.

The Waypointer is a cutting edge software system that, once built, will enable a person to build location-based, story-driven experiences from anywhere in the world and run thousands of them simultaneously.  These adventures can take place in one's own backyard, in a public arena like major Theme Parks, or in private locations for private groups.  The goal here, is to bring in a control center for bringing adventure into the world that wouldn't exist otherwise.

I've got stacks of notes.  I've built two prototypes in the past.  I've been a software engineer since the late 90's with experience in web servers and mobile technologies.  It's now time to build this thing once and for all and realize, what I believe to be, one of my greatest purposes on this crazy and beautiful planet.  There is so much work to do, but I will be documenting my journey here for anyone interested.

When all is said and done, and if I succeed, we'll have a tool augment any entertainment-related business by bringing true interactivity to them.  Movies, theme parks, Halloween haunts, escape rooms and just about any other form of entertainment will be able to benefit from having custom adventures created on the fly.  And away we go...