What’s happened in the last 7 weeks:

I live in San Francisco now?

I went to Ikea for the first time in my life and successfully built all my own furniture.

Met the about.me team.

Worked with the about.me team.

Went to my first Giants game with the about.me team.

Started Code Academy-ing like a mad man.

Got Parking Tickets.

Talked start-ups and life with Ryan Freitas.

Spent Fourth of July at a BBQ with the internet (i.e. people who work for all the apps we use and love (Instagram, Path, Twitter… it was crazy)

Got more Parking Tickets.

E-Mailed Olympians and delivered a marketing campaign around them.

Met up with Tony Conrad.

Met the creator of Gumroad.

Went to a happy hour at LaunchRock and got told to go to Start-up Weekend.

Pitched Start-Up Weekend, recruited a team and got third place.

Started applying for my next job post-about.me (if you know anyone give a shout to patrickmillegan@gmail.com).

I got Charmaine’s text as I was walking from class at UofO to my job as a leasing consultant at an apartment complex in Eugene, Oregon. I briefly thought it would be cool if I could somehow get the about.me team to vote for me. From what I had gleaned from my knowledge about start-ups is generally that their work environment is fun and relaxed enough, that they would probably be just working and hanging out in their office, and on a Friday afternoon – probably looking for a distraction. Why can’t that distraction be me?

I kid you not, as I was looking up the address for the about.me HQ – in walk 3 Yemeni students who I didn’t know very well, but lived at the apartment complex, to tell me that they were going to San Francisco for the weekend and wondered if I would like to come with them. Funny how things work out sometimes, right? Their names were Ammar, Rabie, and Sami and they became very good friends of mine. I heard about the contest on 4/4, and on 4/5 I was in a red 2009 Mercury Milan with 3 awesome Yemeni kids driving to SF. So the #PSmoovment began (from my twitter handle @PSmoovvv).

I gussied up my about.me page, made a cover/profile photo for my Facebook and started blasting out the link http://about.me/pmillegan as fast and frequently as Oregon’s Offense scores touchdowns (S/O my alma mater: GO DUCKS!).

For the duration of the contest, my about.me page, in all of its glory, looked like this:

You can see all of the YouTube videos I made from my trip by searching “#Psmoovment” on youtube, or by clicking here.

I live-tweeted/YouTubed my trip in an effort to catch the eye of @aboutdotme, so that I could maybe secure an audience while I was driving down, but thought it would be more fun to show up unannounced and meet them for the first time as the kid who just kind of showed up at their doorstep. I ended up meeting 8 members of the about.me team, which turned into 8 votes (9 if you include Nicole, the front desk receptionist at AOL- Palo Alto).

They were incredibly nice, as nice as they could be to some guy that walked into their office. The AOL Palo Alto office was incredible and I could quickly tell that this was environment I wanted to be in. I hung out with the team for about an hour and then proudly exited the office.

As I drove back to Eugene from SF I knew I wasn’t going to have the time to really put into the campaign. I had 2 jobs and took 18 credits. So, when I got back I scheduled out my campaign. I wrote a press-release about my roadtrip that I was going to ship out to every relevant news sources I could find. I scheduled reminders to vote on my twitter through twuffer, and I decided that I would screen shot my vote total every morning and post to facebook. In addition, I set up a mailchimp newsletter that allowed people to sign up for daily reminders.

My launch was complete, my campaign was in place, and now it was in the hands of the many to respond to my call for more votes. The only follow-up I did was holding some videos of a-12-year-old-me-singing-some-of-your-favorite-disney-tunes hostage until I got a certain amount of votes.

In the end I ended up getting the call to come to San Francisco to intern with the amazing people at about.Me. I am honored and excited to be spending the Summer as their intern in SF, and can’t help but feel super SUPER blessed/lucky/fortunate to be given this opportunity.

Oh yeah, and THANKS TO ALL THAT VOTED FOR ME!!!

Now all I have to do is make the most of it and kill it at this internship.

The contest was simple: drive traffic to your page and gather as many votes as possible until contest end on April 22nd. This was a win-win for me, because not only would I be telling people to vote for me, I would be able to use this as an engine for announcing to the world and all my social networks that I’m graduating, searching for a job in a specific field, and that I’m good at what I do – marketing and driving traffic. So, yes obviously about.me was getting free marketing, but I saw it as an extremely valuable trade-off because even if I didn’t win the contest I would be getting a lot of value myself.

I got Charmaine’s text as I was walking from class at UofO to my job as a leasing consultant at an apartment complex in Eugene, Oregon. I began brainstorming ideas to get the votes rolling. Of course I had my own personal networks on Facebook and Twitter, but I wanted to reach the biggest audience possible. I figured the best way to do this would be to do something newsworthy enough to get picked up press and shared by people I might not even know.

As I walked into the leasing office, I briefly thought it would be cool if I could somehow get the about.me team to vote for me, and even better, if I could get them to do it in person. From what I had gleaned from my knowledge about start-ups is generally that their work environment is fun and relaxed enough, that they would probably be just working and hanging out in their office, and on a Friday afternoon – probably looking for a distraction. Why can’t that distraction be me?

I kid you not, as I was looking up the address for the about.me HQ – in walk 3 Yemeni students who I didn’t know very well, but live at the apartment complex, to tell me that they were going to San Francisco for the weekend and wondered if I would like to come with them. Funny how things work out sometimes, right? Their names were Ammar, Rabie, and Sami and they became very good friends of mine. I heard about the contest on 4/4, and on 4/5 I was in a red 2009 Mercury Milan with 3 awesome Yemeni kids driving to SF. So the #PSmoovment began.

On twitter, my name is @PSmoovvv - a nickname I got from playing basketball in high school, so #PSmoovment was natural. I gussied up my about.me page, made a cover/profile photo for my Facebook and started blasting out the link http://about.me/pmillegan as fast and frequently as Oregon’s Offense scores touchdowns (S/O my alma mater: GO DUCKS!).

For the duration of the contest, my about.me page, in all of its glory, looked like this:

You can see all of the YouTube videos I made from my trip by searching “#Psmoovment” on youtube, or by clicking here. I’ve actually been told that it makes for a pretty good watch. But, back to the story!

I live-tweeted/YouTubed my trip in an effort to catch the eye of @aboutdotme, so that I could maybe secure an audience while I was driving down, but really I wanted to show up unannounced and meet them for the first time as the kid who just kind of showed up at their doorstep. To many of my friends surprise, my road trip paid off and I ended up meeting about 8 members of the about.me team, which turned into 8 votes (9 if you include Nicole, the front desk receptionist at AOL- Palo Alto).

They were incredibly nice, as nice as they could be to some guy that walked into their office. The AOL Palo Alto office was incredible and I could quickly tell that this was environment I wanted to be in. I hung out with the team for about an hour and then proudly exited the office.

Side note: My thinking also behind this trip was that I wanted to show my networks/people who would vote for me that I was clearly putting more effort in trying to get votes than it would take to type in “http://about.me/pmillegan” and click vote. If I was willing to drive 600 miles, couldn’t they take the 2 clicks and 5 seconds? This was the thinking that inspired this video of me shouting at a group of people near the Golden Gate Bridge.

As I drove back to Eugene from SF I knew I wasn’t going to have the time to really put into the campaign. I had 2 jobs and took 18 credits. So, when I got back I scheduled out my campaign. I wrote a press-release about my roadtrip that I was going to ship out to every relevant news source I could find. I scheduled reminders to vote on my twitter through twuffer, and I decided that I would screen shot my vote total every morning and post to facebook. In addition, I set up a mailchimp newsletter that allowed people to sign up for daily reminders.

My launch was complete, my campaign was in place, and now it was in the hands of the many to respond to my call for more votes. The only follow-up I did was holding some videos of a-12-year-old-me-singing-some-of-your-favorite-disney-tunes hostage until I got a certain amount of votes.

In the end I ended up getting the call to come to San Francisco to intern with the amazing people at about.Me. I am honored and excited to be spending the Summer as their intern in SF, and can’t help but feel super SUPER blessed/lucky/fortunate to be given this opportunity.

Oh yeah, and THANKS TO ALL THAT VOTED FOR ME!!!

Now all I have to do is make the most of it and kill it at this internship.

Patrick Millegan hopes to win $1000 and dream job in Palo Alto, California

Eugene, Ore. (April 13, 2011) – University of Oregon senior Patrick Millegan had no appointment when he showed up to gather votes from About.me’s Palo Alto office for its internship competition. The competition is simple – participants compete to gather the most votes by directing traffic to their About.me profile in order to win $1000 and a paid summer internship with the company.

“Within the first 48 hours of the contest I had traveled 600 miles and was watching the About.me team vote for me,” said Millegan.

Millegan reported that About.me’s product marketing manager was impressed with how quickly Millegan developed and executed his strategy to win. He had successfully talked his way into their company and had each of the available team members voting for him.

Millegan leveraged his use of social media by posting live YouTube updates via Twitter with the hashtag, #PSmoovment, that tracked his voyage to Palo Alto, California. About.me team members took notice when he posted a video of himself outside their Palo Alto office. See his videos at YouTube.com/Psmoovvv .

You can help Patrick win by voting every day at http://about.me/pmillegan. To get reminders every day until the end of the contest (4/22) opt-in here: http://eepurl.com/kKCLX.

For more photos see http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmillegan/page4/

Throwin the ‘O’ up

Meeting the About.me team

The headline reads “This summer, about.me is giving you the chance to win an unforgettable internship at
The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, AOL Video, about.me or AOL Events.”

Immediately I went to work with launching my campaign to win the contest.

This is what my plan has loosely been so far…

Step one: opt-in to contest

Step two: redo my about.me page to make it easier for people to vote and tell Facebook friends/Twitter Followers about my entering in the contest and brand it as a #PSmoovment on twitter

Step three: within 24 hours of contest launching drive to About.me headquarters in Palo Alto from Eugene, Oregon to introduce myself to the about.me team and to get them to vote for me.

Step four: document the whole experience on Twitter and Facebook with tweet/posts/youtube videos

Step five: get to Palo, Alto with no appointment, and talk my way into meeting the team and convince them to vote for me.

Step six:  after meeting the team, drive back to Eugene and pitch my story to news outlets

Step eight: make it easy to vote for me by creating an email reminder on mailchimp that people can opt-into.

Step nine: pick a celebrity to get my supporters to tweet at profusely on a specific day to try and get a RT

Step ten: make profile pictures that my supporters can put as there profile picture

Step eleven: think of more ideas like this, and get the most votes by 4/22

Ready Go!

Today I woke up to a world that was covered by 6″ of snow and had no electricity.

With my boss telling me not to come into work today, my car being snowed in without a shovel, having no finals, no power, no internet, I had no other choice but to forget about my obligations and build something awesome in the snow. I called up my friend Devin, and built a freakin’ awesome igloo.

On my way back to my house from my igloo adventure, I noticed one of my neighbors (an older lady), trying to shovel the snow off her driveway. Knowing that I had nothing else to do, I walked over to my neighbor, whom I hadn’t me before, and introduced myself and told her that I would love to shovel her driveway  for free. Her name was Linda. She eagerly accepted and 20 minutes later she had a snow free driveway. She thanked me, offered me $20, and the use of her snow shovel. The wheels started turning and Patrick Millegan’s Snow-B-Gone Snow Shoveling service was in business.

I went to the door next to the house I had just shoveled and asked if they would like there driveway cleared for 20 dollars. They were on board, and 20 minutes later I had 20 dollars. I stopped for a moment to bask in my 40 dollars and thought how can I make the most of this? In order to capitalize on this idea, I called a few friends and found someone who was interested in making $10/driveway. I then went door to door for about 30 minutes, found 6 jobs took down their phone numbers, and then texted him the address of people who wanted their driveway shoveled. Upon completion of a house I told him to send me a picture of the shoveled driveway. I found the jobs, and my friend executed. I let the customer know when he was finished by calling them with the number I had taken.

Today I made myself 100 dollars and my friend 60 dollars by using a borrowed snow shovel and my iphone. Pretty cool day.

Model: Kelsey Thompson

Jeremy #LinTopBackgrounds

Jeremy #LinTopBackgrounds

Officially launching #LinTopBackgrounds, as a way to track Jeremy Lin Desktop backgrounds.

-PWM