PickupPal Blog

Ah the dreaded carpool…leaving your house at 5:20 AM to drive 20 minutes to a parking lot by the local Timmy’s to wait 10 minutes to meet five other people who work in your building downtown. It’s “Bill’s” turn to drive this week so you pile into his car. And you get on the road. 3.2 of you fall asleep and “Bill” plays this week’s audio-book for the other 1.8 who stay awake. There you are “carpooling” five days a week, 50 weeks a year.

Hmm. I can see why all those HOV lanes are practically empty. Yes-this is a bit of a rant, but tell me if this is not how you imagine carpooling.

Look, I love audio-books, I really do, I love people and I love HOV lanes so don’t get me wrong, and i love carpoolers, they are an awesome lot, they are. One thing I don’t love is letting people down, or having to call someone to say I can’t drive every day this week ’cause I want to work from home on Thursday. You know? And I don’t love getting up at 5:00 AM, I don’t love cleaning the snow off my car and warming it up only to leave it outside in a parking lot all day, four weeks out of five. Truth be told, I don’t love “Bill”…OK, I know, I know… I am getting to my point…

PickupPal is not 1990’s carpooling, it’s 2008 casual ridesharing, it is car-ocean-ing (if you will). It is saying hey, I love people, I love this planet, I love sleep. I will share my drive to work today, not tomorrow, but the next day for sure. I will take one person today and maybe two the next day. On Friday, I am hoping to catch a ride after work to the amphitheatre, I have tickets to see the Dave Matthews Band. I am going there but I am not coming back, well not today anyway. Tomorrow, when I return, I will hop in with someone going my way. I really do want to double up to cut down, but I need my “pool” to be an “ocean”. That is who I am, and PickupPal works for me.

- Suesan

O.K. so now we have some serious perks about being with PickupPal and teaming up with awesome festivals like the Virgin Festivals - Virgin Mobile Canada.

Since we are providing Ridesharing to all of their festivals across Canada, we just had to have a booth at the eco-village at the festival. I was chosen to go beause I was the first and the loudest to yell “I’M IN!!!” looks like I am going see the Tragically Hip, Stone Temple Pilots, John Mayer, Three Days Grace and a whole host of other bands! The details need to get worked out - but suffice to say we are hitting the road!

NOTE: Little known fact is that I am PickupPal’s defacto mucho supremo concert lover! So here is the deal - we are going to have a booth - if you are in Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto come by and see us - we want to give away stuff at the booth - and there just might be more surprises in Calgary if I can convince Scott Weiland to swing by and sign some stuff - perhaps scrawl “Interstate Love Song” across a PickupPal T-Shirt!

I gotta add this - I have not seen STP since they opened for the Stones in 08-19-94 on the Vodoo Lounge tour - I can’t believe they are back together again - check this out STP Live.

Cheers - Eric

Well we are 102 days since the launch of PickupPal and we are so thankful for the warm response we have received from all of you out there and our strategic partners. PickupPal has been working on organizing with a whole host of like minded organizations to provide Ridesharing options.

A month ago we launched the ERP program - the Eco-Rideshare Program (erp.pickuppal.com). An innovative and FREE way for organizations to provide all the power of PickupPal to their community with a customized branded interface. So here is the deal - you say you want one and send us your logo - we provide the platform, do up the graphics work, provide support for your community and host a solution - it is just that easy. No tricks and no gimmicks - you want Rideshare - we give you Rideshare! If you would like one for your organization click Here and fill in the short request form and you are good to go! It does not matter if you are hosting a house party in Hoboken or a five day massive festival in Melbourne - we will hook you up for Free!

Here are some of the organizations we are currently working with:

• Subaru Triathlon Series
• Subaru Marathon Series
• 5 Peaks Trail Running Series
• Edge to Edge Marathon
• Coachella
• Virgin Festival Canada 2008 by Virgin Mobile
• Mow Down Pollution (Clean Air Foundation and The Home Depot)
• Old Pecan Street Festival - Austin Texas

I am really excited about this program and I will be announcing more partners on this blog as they come on board!

Cheers - Eric
P.S. I can’t wait until next weeks post! It’s going to blow your socks off!

Try this one on:

Halloween + Candy Apples = Ruining it for everyone

O.K. so I will admit that is a really weird thing to talk about in the Spring and just an odd statement in general - however hear me out. If you grew up in North America as a kid any time after 1967 you know that taking homemade candy from strangers at Halloween was enough to make your parents Freak OUT! The needle in the candy apple syndrome - all those kids harmed because of crazy loaner neighbours and compounded by parental negligence. However you have to have a little context here -we are talking some 20 million kids at Halloween with many years of not a single incident of this occurring - some of the highly publicized cases turned out that it was either a parent or an uncle that was the culprit by either intentionally tampering or a child coming across his uncles heroin stash and mistaking it for candy and overdosing. Now I am not saying that this is trivial - any harm to a anyone is a horrible thing - however my argument is this - what was the end result of this fear? Our perception of our neighbours changed from one of trust to one of suspicion. Ohh the Milford’s down the road they have those crazy teenagers - you can’t trust them - throw out the homemade cookies. This then leads to what we have now - you really can only give candy made by a known manufacturer and is sealed in a wrapper - if you don’t well it will be thrown out - even if you put your name/number/and credit card number on your homemade packaging. This is great business for candy companies - this fear is awesome - one that needs to be kept up because it is great for the bottom line. However I feel it has been a big contributing factor in the deterioration of our communities and our sense of safety amongst our neighbours. When you start to fear your neighbour your community no longer feels safe and safety is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Still not convinced then let me if you will spin this around and take a look at Swimming pools:

• A swimming pool is 14 times more likely than a motor vehicle to be involved in the death of a child age 4 and under.
• Each year, approximately 1,150 children ages 14 and under drown; more than half are preschoolers (ages 0-4).
• Each year, an estimated 5,000 children ages 14 and under are hospitalized due to near-drownings.
• Of children surviving near-drownings, 5-20 percent suffer severe and permanent disability.

(Source - Swimming Pool Safety)

O.K. I have nothing against swimming pools - really I don’t - however when a child goes over to a pool party do Parents Freak OUT!? As if they are playing Russian Roulette with a Gatling gun? Nope. But why not? Because it is swimming pool - fun and sun and all that - sure there are risks but hey man life is filled with risks. Who gains by people fearing swimming pools? Now I don’t have a tinfoil hat on my head and I don’t think that the candy manufacturers are perpetuating the fear of Halloween - however I do think that there has to be a balance here. Halloween is still one of my favourite times of year and it has this cloud over it of worrying about what my kids are eating and if it is safe and if I can trust my neighbours and that quite frankly is just not a good thing.

So this is my dilemma - why is it so easy to fear our neighbours and believe the worst in people and conveniently do it in the name of safety even if the numbers don’t add up. Clearly based on the statistics you really should just fill in those killing machines we call swimming pools for the sake of the children. I am fascinated by how we learn to trust others and why we have found ourselves in a society of fearing our neighbours and what is the root cause - I am going to keep digging here so expect more on this topic.

Cheers - Eric
P.S. I know - what does this have to do with PickupPal? It has everything to do with PickupPal - Fear and Safety are huge issues and I want to figure out how we begin to trust one another.

When I was a younger man I studied Urban Planning and during the four years studying all aspects of Urban Design, Transportation Planning, Participatory Planning, Environmental law - all that there was one thing we never talked about - what effect will an increase in the cost of energy have on the viability of suburban development? What happens when the cost of personal transportation becomes a deciding factor in the decision as to whether one can afford to live on the outskirts of town? I know you might be thinking - bahh that is not a big part of the decision making process. Well now that I think about this stuff all the time - I care to put this out there. If the price of fuel doubles in three years - so the cost commuting gets into the ballpark of 6K per year for fuel alone - (with a guaranteed increase in cost year over year as we run out of oil) - what kind of math does one do when calculating the savings of buying on the outskirts of town compared to the urban core. Then take into consideration that the trend is not to build small homes in the country - but rather large energy hungry homes within subdivisions. Well add all that up and then energy becomes a big deal - perhaps even a deal breaker.

I can tell you 20 years ago, back when I had hair, this was not what we talked about, planned for, or even considered. I would have to reach out to my old profs today and ask if it is part of the curriculum and I really hope that it is.

On a side note - if you are interested in this kind of thing - take a look at this awesome presentation by James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia.

Again not trying to be preachy - trying to find the right tone - and hoping others want to join in on the conversation.

Cheers - Eric
PS - This post was inspired by this post - Suburbs Are Hurting From Birth Rates and Gas Prices

I just love reading Seth Godin’s blog because there are times that he can really put things in a very succinct way. His latest post - You’re Right! is a great example of taking the time to think through the feedback that you get.

A big part of my job is to review the issues that come up and think of ways in which things can be improved and one of the hardest things to do is to set your foolish pride aside and listen to what others say. There are a lot of passionate PickupPal members that take the time to write to me with suggestions on how we can do better and I would say it is very rare that I do not agree with them. Initially my knee-jerk reaction was to be defensive - make excuses - tell myself that they just don’t understand. However I learned very quickly that the one not understanding was me. I live, breath, eat, sleep PickupPal - every detail is floating around in my head nobody should think about PickupPal as much as I do. When new members come to the site and cannot figure things out - it is not their fault it is ours for not making it easier to use.

My advice to any CTO’s out there - listen, listen, listen - and say thank you. Whatever the system you are building - you are not building it for yourself - you are building it for your client and if they don’t get it then you have failed no matter how elegant you may think it is.

Cheers - Eric

The shear craziness of that statement makes me wonder how anyone can believe anything analysts and experts say - IEF 2008: OIL AND GAS WILL LAST DECADES. When we started PickupPal in the fall of 2007, (some 8 months ago), Oil was creeping up to the $80 a barrel and at that time the news reports were all saying this was an anomaly - would not last - back to $60 a barrel in no time. Well today we are a handful of loose change away from $120 a barrel and again the rhetoric comes out - the claims that this is a blip and that we will always find ways to get more oil. Now as anyone who knows me can attest - I am not a rocket scientist but I am pretty sure that there are few smart engineers working on the riddle - how do we find more cheap oil? My guess is they have been working on this one since the 70’s and still no answer. When I talk with friends and say I think by 2010 oil will be $200 a barrel and that gas will be $7.00 a gallon they all think I have lost my mind - have I? When we were researching the RCOD we studied traditional calculations on the cost of ownership of a vehicle and the AAA (American Automobile Association) - came up with this statement - “AAA estimates that new-car driver will have $8,121 in ownership costs for a car driven 15,000 miles per year, up from $7,823 a year ago.” One of the biggest points where increases in costs will occur will be the price of fuel - what do we do when fuel is twice what is is now? right now 15,000 miles costs approximately 3K and when gas is $7 a gallon it will be 7K - where does one find the extra 4K per year - perhaps the analyst’s will stroke everyone a cheque?

Bad news is never a welcomed thing - however ignoring where we are heading is a dangerous game to play and just because someone with a tie on tells you that there is nothing to worry about does not mean a lot to me.

Cheers - Eric
P.S. Not sure about this rant but I just wanted to get it out there.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is telling commuters in the Toronto area to brace themselves for a general strike at 4 a.m. on Monday Morning (April 21 2008) if they cannot reach an agreement by Sunday. On our end we have seen a massive spike in new members in Toronto – each with a common refrain – they are desperate for desperate for help and feel stranded.

This brings up a huge issue – what is ones transportation Plan B? This has rolled around in my head for a while since the inception of PickupPal . What would happen if the price of Gas spiked and commuters really could not afford to drive any longer? Most cities public transportation systems operate at maximum capacity right now and if demand increased by 10% over a few months they simply could not handle the increase in load. So the question is what do people then do in this situation? Employers generally are sympathetic to a day or so of having staff stay at home but it is not sustainable and for the vast majority of us – transportation is a necessity not a luxury. Options for transportation is vital as we enter into this era of increasing gas prices and increased demands on our transportation infrastructure. Perhaps this is a good wakeup call for some of us to exercise our Plan B’s and see how they work out. I for one am glad the snow has melted and now I can get around on my bike, now it is just a case of getting my legs back into shape!

When all is said and done I hope the strike is averted because the increased congestion and huge increase in carbon footprint during this kind of strike is really not what is needed right now. For all of the new PickupPal members that joined because of the possible TTC strike – welcome – I hope you find PickupPal to be a useful Plan B.
Cheers - Eric