Where the Hell is Matt? site

Matt is a 32-year-old from Connecticut. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made the "Where the Hell is Matt?" site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he was.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. This turned out to be a very good idea.



A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal. The second video made Matt even more quasi-famous. In fact, for a brief period in July, he was semi-famous.



Things settled down again, and then in 2007 Matt went back to Stride with another idea. He realized his bad dancing wasn't actually all that interesting, and that other people were much better at being bad at it. He showed them his inbox, which, as a result of his semi-famousness, was overflowing with emails from all over the planet. He told them he wanted to travel around the world one more time and invite the people who'd written him to come out and dance too.

The Stride people thought that sounded like yet another very good idea, so they let him do it. And he did. And now it's done.



Matt lives in Seattle, Washington with his girlfriend, Melissa, and dog, Sydney. He hasn't had a real job since Stride called him up.


The project explained in a conference in 5 minutes - video