I’ve had the sincere pleasure over the last 12 months to lead the development effort to launch (RED)Wire, a subscription music service to benefit Project Red, Bono’s and Bobby Shriver’s global effort to affect Aids and Malaria in Africa. Launched by Don MacKinnon, the founder of Hear Music (which Starbucks acquired as Starbucks Music), the project mission was to create a digital magazine where a portion of the monthly subscription funding the anti-retroviral medications necessary to prolong the life of infected individuals. As a developer, you dream for the opportunity to participate in landmark projects so when the opportunity came to lead the project technically, I jumped in with both feet.
The problem is immense in that as of this writing, 12.5 million children under the age of 18 have had at least one parent die of these deadly diseases. While in the U.S., we are aghast to hear of a single death that touches our neighborhoods, the silent deaths of the 4,400 daily in Africa draws little concern, whether the barrier of many thousands of miles or the “Not in my backyard” thinking that pervades our communities.
In a career of Software Development supporting applications with the sex-appeal of a printer driver, the chance to be a part of this effort certainly was exciting, challenging and ultimately motivating. Further feeding my thoughts was the chance to take a blank-slate approach to bringing the application to market, one where decisions were not pre-ordained by pre-existing technology platforms. It was the opportunity that dreams are made.
Move ahead a year later, the intialial release of (RED)Wire has gone live with some success, a little fanfare and a lot of lessons learned. As I have told many along the way, there’s a book in here so here is the start of that effort. While my first literary effort, I think of this as much personal therapy as anything else. There were and are substantial lessons learned along the way that some may benefit from as well as just an interesting story worth telling.
It is my plan to contribute weekly to the effort of getting this out. It is more of a hope than a plan at this point as my career is at a crossroads and taking care of that priority takes precedence over all else.
KFB