Welcome to the first blog post for Amatourist!

On a day like today, it’s good to be thankful for our armed forces and security services that protect us from more tragedies like the one we suffered on 9/11/2001.  However, as we remember the victims and enjoy the relief of justice served, we should also be conscious that many of the 9/11 terrorists, and many more that were not involved, were able to be recruited because of their exposure to powerful role models that manipulated them into evil acts.  

But now consider that the same mechanism can also work in reverse… Every time we do and share an act of good, we can move the needle back a little bit more towards the positive.  And by making our role models more powerful than theirs, maybe we can inspire some that would otherwise seek to hurt us to join us instead.  Just a thought…

On Friday, I attended TEDxTampaBay, a locally organized TED event.  If you’ve never been to a TED event or seen the videos, it is basically a day of amazing and inspirational speakers being watched by similarly amazing and inspirational people…

I was lucky enough to be able to meet a few of the speakers, as well as a number of the attendees, and even scored an invitation to do a Heroing Challenge for the TEDxTampaBay Youth organization and give a talk on their conference day in November!  Thank you Terri!

One amazing coincidence was after I met Vineet Singal, an amazing Stanford student leading a number of great social initiatives, I noticed that one of our most recent Missions posted by new Hero Nicole Heinl actually FEATURES Vineet in the video… AND the Mission was posted just 2 days before I met Vineet at TEDx… Spooky.

Nicole did some great work on her campus promoting Vineet’s 100,000 Cheeks initiative to register 100,000 people to the National Bone Marrow Registry.  Why not go like her Mission and check out the initiative too!

http://www.joehero.com/missions/bone-marrow

Well, it’s been three months of developing and testing JoeHero and we’ve made a lot of progress.  Thanks to those who participated in some Heroing and won our cool JoeHero t-shirts!

In honor of our 3 month anniversary, today we are launching our 15 Minute Do Good Challenge!  The first 15 Heroes that post a Mission with a story and photo (or video) about an act of kindness, appreciation or goodness they performed in less than 15 minutes get a $15 PayPal award.  Plus the most inspiring Mission completed before April 30, 2011 wins $150!

I’ll bet you know someone who could use $15 just for inspiring others to do good!  So, pass it on…

The 15 Minute Do-Good Challenge

Thanks again for all your support and Go Heroing!

—Scott

You’ve spoken and I’ve done my best to listen.  Today is the one month anniversary of JoeHero’s January 11 launch and there’s a whole new JoeHero to experience.

I’ve made the site cleaner, softer and hopefully more inspirational.  I’m sure there’s a good number of bugs, so please let me know if you encounter one.

If you’ve done a Mission and gotten one Follow, you’re owed a T-Shirt.  Please be patient… I’ll be getting to you as soon as I can to get your shipping address and mail it out to you.

As always, thanks so much for your help in moving JoeHero forward!

All I have to say is thank goodness for UserTesting.com.  As an ex-usability professional, I know how tough it is to mount a good user test and the site is a great shortcut.  Over the last week, I was able to test 7 participants and got some great feedback.  Here’s what I learned:

1. People want to feel that what they are doing is important, and not just for prizes.  Maybe I haven’t connected with that message as well as I could have.
2. People want to help.  When faced with a mission page, people wanted to help but didn’t know what to do.  The “Follow” button was a little too ambiguous.
3. People need to see visible progress.  I found that the the “create your mission” functionality is a little too open and the prizes are a little too abstract and far away.
4. People need to know how it works.  Some people got it right away, some not until they got to the FAQ page.  I need to do a better job of making it apparent what the purpose of the site is.

So, I’m working on some feature changes to support these findings.  Got any great ideas?

Thanks for making Week 2 great!  This week, I added Achievement Awards to JoeHero.  Now, when you start a Mission and get just 1 person to Follow you, you get an amazing JoeHero T-Shirt!

Then, work your way up to Hats, Sweatshirts, Camcorders and iPods.  They’re all shameless bribes to get you to be a do-gooder…  And compete for our $10,000 prize!

So this weekend, do something good, make someone smile and take a photo.  Then, tell us what happened in your Mission and get a FREE T-Shirt!

Thanks again for your great support!  Check out Dave Sabot’s new update to Take Care of A Pregnant Stray Cat… It’s got a twist ending!  And thanks to our new members and Facebook “likers” too!

Good news!  It was a great week!  

I’m really pleased with how warmly all of my family, friends and extended friends greeted JoeHero and helped me get it off to a good start.  I’m especially thankful to my sister Rachel and to her friend Abby, who started a mission this week, as well as to Dave who started one too…

Thanks to all of you who helped “Like” JoeHero enough to get our vanity URL, Dave, Norm, Chris, Gina, Tara, Tam, Robin, Chris C, Thom, Ed, Jen, Kelly, Herb, Utch, Kersten, Eric, Grant, Abby, Shawn, Christine, Rach, Chris, Dan, Dave S, Ellen, my cousin Ashley and my wife Beth.

And to those who had the guts to actually sign-up at JoeHero, Dave, Abby, Chris A, Chris T, Tam, Herb, Jerry, Laura, Rach, Christine, Dan and Beth.  Anyone else want to join this list?

Next week is going to be all about continuing to spread the word and prove the concept, so any help anyone can give on getting more Missions going or getting more Heroes would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks just one more time for a great week!  You’re all Heroes!