On the morning of December 27th, I launched Club Thievey with the crazy idea of the Mac and development communities coming together to transform a little stuffed lemur into an icon for our power to make a difference in this world.
At the end of the day I’d found 4 takers. Exhausted, I talked to Wil about it. I was thrilled I could raise $400 for Madagascar. The situation there is so desperate that even this is a significant amount of money.
Still, I felt disappointed. There are 10,000 subscribers to this RSS feed, and some 300 people who follow me on Twitter. Yeah, $400 is a lot of money, but I just wrote a book; I can afford to give away more lemurs. I went to bed thinking about that.
The next day I woke and said no, you know what? I’m going to go for broke. I set the seemingly impossible goal of giving away 100 lemurs and sent out press releases to all the news sources I trust to keep me in touch with what’s going on in the community. Only one person, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, was paying close enough attention to pick up the story.
We ended that day with 14 lemurs representing $1500 raised. At the company holiday cum going away party, I talked to a lot of people about it and they basically said, hey, 100 lemurs is probably impossible, but think of all the good you’ve done.
There’s just one little problem with that line of thought. You see, while Googling around to see how the fire was spreading, I found an article by Nayuta Yamashita, a USC primatologist recently returned from Madagascar.
Yamashita was studying the Gentle Lemurs. These kitten-sized primates are also known as Bamboo Lemurs, because they live by eating the stalks of Giant Bamboo. Before her study, nobody knew how such a tiny lemur could eat huge, inedible stalks of bamboo.
Oh yeah, did I mention that growing bamboo is loaded with lethal amounts of cynanide? These amazing animals are eating something that is considered nutritionally useless and physically inedible that also happens to be a deadly poison.
This raises several questions. For example, do they simply pass the cyanide through their bodies? Do they filter it out with their liver or kidneys? Do they metabolize it into a non-poisonous form? Scientists literally have no idea. These are the kinds of simple questions that remain unanswered in Madagascar.
The sad fact is, they may never be answered. In her article, Yamashita writes, “These are among the rarest primates on the planet. We want to get as much information as we can while we can.”
I hear that chilling sentiment from lot from primatologists. It’s almost like they’ve given up hope that these species can be saved. They are quite literally scrambling to get all the science they can before there are no lemurs left to study. How can I stop at 4 lemurs, or at 14 lemurs, with something like this echoing in my ears?
I solicited and implemented community suggestions for improving the club and its pitch. I built a dedicated web site and provided links to the Madagascar Fauna Group, as well as a direct link to the donation form. I reconciled my desire to have a big end-of-the-year push with the fact that I’d never turn down the chance to raise more money for Madagascar by adding the Founding Troop cut-off.
I’m happy to say that as the sun rises on the last day of the Founding Troop drive, we’re halfway there. I have given away 50 lemurs, representing $5,680 in cash and $125 a month in recurring payments. To give you an idea of the effect his has had on the world, when I mailed off my first lemur, it was the #220,286 book on Amazon. Last I checked it was at #5,942 and I’ve only ordered about 20 lemurs so far!
To give you another idea, a few days ago Google had no hits for the phrase “Club Thievey.” This morning there are 130. Yes, these are small changes, but they are noticeable changes, and we’re only halfway to the goal. If we manage to actually reach 100 lemurs, which is to say, raise $10,000, we will literally change the course of history.
Yes, it’s just a little nudge, but it’s a very real nudge, and in the right direction. Right now 50 of you are a part of that. Can one insane, sleep-deprived developer and the 50 members of Club Thievey’s Founding Troop double their mass in one short day?
It turns out, the answer is yes
With your hard work, we got on Digg (thanks, Geoff!), TUAW (thanks, Michael!) and Ars Technica (thanks, Jacqui!) but what really indicates that we’ve “made it” it in this town is that we were on Crazy Apple Rumors. Mike, you lying boll weevil, you say. Everyone knows CARS was on vacation until next year.
You are wrong! Also, who calls another person a boll weevil? What the hell? Anyway, the point is Moltz actually came off vacation to cover this. Oh, but that’s not all, and you’re not even going to believe me when I say this so I do so only for posterity: the first comment does not contain the words “first” or “post.”
You see what I’m talking about when I say we’re making the world a better place? And Macworld and MacNN missed out on this? Truly, this was the largest computer-based, lemur-related reverse media blitz in the history of journalism.
When it was all said and done, we gave away over 100 lemurs and raised over $12,000 for the Madagascar Fauna Group. Visit Club Thievey for more details.
Important links:
Club Thievey - http://thievy.org
Madagascar Fauna Group - http://savethelemur.org
Donation Form - https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1507
These amazing animals are eating something that is considered nutritionally useless and physically inedible that also happens to be a deadly poison. Photo from USC.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Founding Troop
