My First Message to the White House

I just sent my first message to the White House. This is a part of my effort to connect with various government officials as we reach out to schools, after school programs and home schoolers. Here is the message I sent.

Dear President Obama,

At the recommendation of Barbara Boxer's staff, I am contacting you about the work that we are doing at FreshBrain.

FreshBrain provides an innovative approach to exciting teens about technology. We provide activities, projects and learning paths that help them to do the kinds of things that they are interested in - like mixing music, creating video games, making videos and learning robotics. We do this on a safe social networking based website where they can interact with others who have similar interests. With the tools and support that they need to be successful.

As a non-profit, we make all of this available for FREE. Supported by our partners and sponsors.

Last year we reached over 270k teens on the open internet. This year we are going after 2M primarily through schools, after school programs and homeschooling.

We would love to help with the "Educate to Innovate" Initiative. Please let me know the best way to do this.

Thanks,
Dale Ferrario
President, FreshBrain
freshbrain.org

Here is the canned response I got back. Pretty cool!

Thank You!

Thank you for contacting the White House.

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. That begins with taking comments and questions from you, the public, through our website.

Our office receives tens of thousands of messages from Americans each day. We do our best to reply to as many as we can, but please be aware that you may find more information and answers to your questions online.

We encourage you to visit WhiteHouse.gov regularly to follow news and updates, and to learn more about President Obama's agenda for change.

For an easy-to-navigate source of information on Federal government services, please visit: www.USA.gov

Thank you again for your message.

The Office of Presidential Correspondence

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger - You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

I have been down on Tiger Woods for a while now. I think he has lost whatever innocence he had in the past and has become aloof. He doesn't smile. Even when he plays well - he talks about not having his "A" game.

But clearly I am in the minority. He has made somewhere around $90M playing golf and another roughly $900M in endorsements. Nike loves him. Gatorade lives him. Golf tournaments love him. In November, they paid him $3.3 just to show up at a golf tournament in Australia. They say his coming generated around $20M for the local economy.

Why has he made all of this money - because he is one of the most recognizable public figures. His fans love him. He is a great player who is on track to break all of the records.

But now he has a problem. He crashes his car. He ends up in the hospital and is released. He will not talk to the police. He complains that the stories about what happened are wrong, but he will not talk about what did happen. Oh, and he drops out of his own tournament. And he wants it to be a private matter.

Well Tiger - you don't get to have a private life. You have made nearly a BILLION DOLLARS being a public figure. You don't get to just turn it off. Sorry.