TEAM MUNZEE

June 30, 2014

Meet Munzee Munday: Peter Vogt

Here at Munzee we’re constantly encouraging our players to meet and greet and build the personal relationships that make this game so great. Over the next few weeks we’ll be showcasing members of Team Munzee so our players can get to know us a bit better. So each Munday (see what we did there?) check in to see a new member of Team Munzee and you decide if you trust the game in our hands. This week we get to know our new designer, Peter Vogt.

Name and Title:
Peter Vogt, User Interface Designer.

Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Norfolk, Massachusetts. Equidistant between Boston and Providence (yes that’s a word, yes that fact is true, and yes I’m damn proud of our little town). I went to college in Connecticut and have been living in Texas the past few years. Hate to admit it, but I’m probably never leaving.

Tell us about yourself:
Well, I’m slowly creeping up on the wrong end of my twenties, but I don’t feel too awful about it at the moment. I’m a lover of technology, hound dogs (we have two – Bonnie & Huckleberry), cinema, gaming and music. Firearm and Central Texas-style barbecue enthusiast. Retired punk rocker. Lifelong geek.

How long have you worked for Munzee?
Just about a month.

How did you find Munzee?
I found their post for a designer on Reddit’s “for hire” section. The thought of working for a mobile game company based out of McKinney of all places really intrigued me, so I sent a reply pretty much right away. They impressed me, I impressed them, here I am now.

What do you enjoy most about Munzee?
The community of Munzee impresses me the most. It feels really good jumping on board with a company whose fans, friends, family and local community are so gung-ho about the product. I’ve kept a pretty close eye on the Munzee Facebook groups ever since joining up and love reading the feedback and seeing people come up with really creative and awesome new ways to Munzee. I love the support and love we get from the town of McKinney. Everything about and surrounding Munzee is special and fun right now. My co-workers are incredibly talented, informed and helpful people. Rob is an outstanding leader.

What is your favorite Munzee?
I love the virtuals. I’ve deployed in all of my previous hometowns and it’s great seeing someone from Massachusetts drop by my childhood home to play.

What are some of your other hobbies?
I live and breathe my craft in the sense that I’m always trying to learn as much as I can about design, development and working with tech startups. I love creating products, communities and shiny fancy internet stuff. At home and in the office. My girlfriend and I watch a metric ton of movies together which has become a hobby all on it’s own, as we’re always looking for new and obscure stuff to geek out over. Chasing after our two beloved (and dumb) hounds is a daily task in and of itself and on weekends you can find me smoking briskets, ribs and sausage while tending to the fire pit of my offset cooker. It’s named Cool Runnings and it definitely feels the rhythm.

Famous last words?
“It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”

Check back next week to get to know another member of Team Munzee!

June 23, 2014

Meet Munzee Munday: Dylan Derryberry

Here at Munzee we’re constantly encouraging our players to meet and greet and build the personal relationships that make this game so great. Over the next few weeks we’ll be showcasing members of Team Munzee so our players can get to know us a bit better. So each Munday (see what we did there?) check in to see a new member of Team Munzee and you decide if you trust the game in our hands. To start off, here is one of our latest recruits, Dylan Derryberry.

Name and Title:
Dylan Derryberry, Master of Media, AKA glorified writer, AKA whatever Rob tells him to be.

Where are you from?
I grew up in McKinney, TX long before Munzee thought it was cool. I’m just that kind of trendsetter.

Tell us about yourself:
I’m a 24 year old Master of the Universe. I’m father to two Welsh Corgis, who like me as much as most teenagers like their fathers, and I’m expecting my first non-fur child in August with my wife Wylie. No, she’s not named after the city, Texas players. After graduating from McKinney High School (Go Lions) in 2008, I took my skills a bit north to Colorado Mountain College (Go Eagles) in a small town outside of Aspen. While there I got my Associate of Arts, studied theatre, enrolled in Advanced Snowboarding 101 (real class) and River Orientation (also, real class) and blogged about the student experience. After two years in the snow and three vehicles lost to a Texas kid driving on ice, I transferred to the University of Kansas (Go Jayhawks) where I studied journalism. After many nights of studying, singing karaoke and slinging liquor part time, it was finally time to graduate and get a big kid job. Jury is still out on Munzee’s qualification as adulthood.

How long have you worked for Munzee?
Although I may have just started a few weeks ago, Team Munzee has welcomed me into their home without hesitation. Their mistake.

How did you find Munzee?
After moving back to McKinney after college graduation I began writing for the local news publication Town Square Buzz. After two months of putting my journalism degree to good use, the publication had to shut down for financial reasons. Out of work, again, my editor-in-chief suggested I reach out to Munzee. The rest is (very short) history.

What do you enjoy most about Munzee?
Aside from the fun work environment, I’m regularly astounded at the dedication the players have for this game. Whether it’s players coming to visit Munzee Headquarters, the ever-growing game map or how many notifications I get on Facebook at 2 in the morning, the loyalty to Munzee amazes me.

What are some of your other hobbies?
After witnessing true art in the form of Gordon Bombay and the District 5 Ducks, I became engrossed with ice hockey at a young age. I played throughout high school and even played a couple weeks in Germany my senior year. In Colorado I attempted to organize a team for the school, which was a blazing success of a failure, but fun all the same. In Kansas I played a year with the school’s club, but busted my shoulder in Chicago and decided it was probably time to call it quits. I still try to get on the ice as often as possible (which isn’t often enough) and cheer on the Dallas Stars in the regular NHL season. Come playoffs, it pays off to be a Chicago Blackhawks bandwagon fan. Other hobbies include watching movies, crafting and working around the house. I’m told I’m never satisfied, which I’m not totally against.

Famous last words?
Worrying is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do, but doesn’t get you anywhere.

Check back next week to get to know another member of Team Munzee!

March 13, 2014

Team Munzee Player of the Week: Scott Foster (Coolant)

We’ve received a lot of feedback regarding Player of the Week interviews, and some of the top requested interviews are for the players that make up Munzee as a company. You want to get to know Team Munzee. Who are the mysterious, magnificent faces behind Munzee HQ? Well, this week, we’ve decided to start interviewing our own. And what better person to launch Team Munzee interviews than the man that brought us the new website: Scott Foster!

Who are you?

My name is Scott Foster, 31 years old, married with 2 kids ( 3rd kid due in a month ) and VP of Technology for Munzee. My player name is coolant.

Coolant developed a love of all things Apple and Tech at a young age!

Where in the world do you live?

Just north of Dallas, TX

When did the co-founders first come up with the idea of Munzee?

I met Aaron at a Computer Gaming LAN Event called TANGO (Texas Area Network Gaming Organization). He was one of the founding members of TANGO and I went up to him and asked if they had somebody that ran Counterstrike (a computer videogame) tournaments. He said no, so I said I would do it. Aaron moved on from doing TANGO and I kept doing it for many more years.

Here is a picture of Aaron and I (and the rest of the TANGO crew) from Jan 2001:

Then life happened, Aaron and I lost touch for many years until we reconnected on Facebook… Fast forward 10 years later (2011), my wife and I were moving back to Texas from Pennsylvania. Aaron knew I did coding and asked if I could help him with a project called “Munzee”. Aaron is a very smart individual so I knew I had to help him out, and it sounded cool. So the four founders – Aaron, Chris, Josh, and myself met for a wonderful Mexican dinner ( https://goo.gl/maps/wWId5 ) on a cold Februrary night and started making Munzee a reality.

And here’s a picture when Munzee became an actual business!

We know you’re busy at work, keeping the servers running, and keeping the game going strong. When does your Munzee day start, and when does it end?

When it comes to any website, it’s a job that requires 24/7/365 monitoring. I work mostly 8am – 6pm Monday through Friday, but I am constantly tweaking things on the weekends or late at night just to make things better. For instance, the weekend is the busiest time for Munzee. So I may work all week to fix a problem and find it’s not working so well on the weekend. Also, a lot of Europeans play Munzee and they are 6-7 hours ahead of Munzee HQ. I’ve woken up many times at 4am on a Saturday just to make sure people in Europe can have a great time playing Munzee or stay up till 4am to make sure Australians can have fun too!

When Munzee first launched, did you consider yourself an active player? How would you compare yourself to the active players today?

No. I’ve never been a real active player. I always joke that I am afraid to capture because if it takes a while or doesn’t go through, it’s another thing to fix. Although if I go to a big park, airport, or stadium – I’ll capture some munzees just to prove to Rob that I play Munzee. I also will capture some socials if I know the person or just want to test things. Playing Munzee is like the people that work at a McDonalds will eat anything EXCEPT McDonalds.

What’s your favorite Munzee? Why?

When Munzee first started, anytime Aaron and I were together – we would deploy munzees to grow the map. We went into downtown Dallas and I deployed a munzee at Dealey Plaza. It’s the infamous Dallas location where JFK was shot (grassy knoll, sixth floor musuem, etc…). It’s a popular tourist place and I figured maybe somebody would surely discover Munzee there. Nobody did for a while, and I honestly forgot about it. Fast forward a few months, and I was telling Lance (my boss at the job I had when I started Munzee) about this fun game I made called Munzee. He seemed mildly interested, but nothing happened more from that. He then comes to me the next day and says “Hey! I found that Munzee at Dealey Plaza.” I was shocked. Somebody I talked to actually played Munzee. It was the first time that I thought that Munzee might actually become something more.

Side note – I still talk to Lance and he is very proud of where Munzee is. You can check out that Munzee here: http://www.munzee.com/m/coolant/2/

What surprises you more: new player growth, clan wars, or super high scores (1 million points)?

Wow, that’s tough. I love all 3. I think my favorite part about Munzee is that there are so many different ways to play. You can join a clan and work on beating other clans, you can be #1 on your friends list, you can try to get all the badges, trade social munzees, etc. I can’t wait till Rover comes out and see how people use that.

Where do you see Munzee in three years?

Three years is a long time. Munzee itself is just three years old! I hope it continues to grow; 10 million deployments, 100 million captures, and a million users sounds great. But, I hope that people will still feel like it’s THEIR game. I always want to be a company where people feel that they always have a connection with Munzee HQ. We are so grateful for our players, so we want to make sure we always have a connection to them.

If there were one Munzee player you could meet (or have already), or one Munzee location you could go, who or where?

I really want to meet robje64 – “Dutch Rob”. He has been tremendous as far as helping Munzee grow in Europe and telling me when there are issues. He seems like a great guy and will always have a special place in my heart. Also that mustache he has looks amazing. 😉

Tell us about yourself! If you’re not working for or playing Munzee, how do you spend your off-time?

Playing with my family! I have a 3.5 year old daughter, 1.5 year old son, and another girl that’s due in a month. My kids and my wife make up most of the day when I am not working on Munzee.

But if they are napping or late at night – I still love video games. I love Final Fantasy games – Final Fantasy 6 is my favorite game of all time and has my favorite song in it, “Maria and Draco.” I think all Zelda games are great, and Counterstrike: Global Offensive! I have recently got into watching “Speedrunning” -it’s people trying to beat games as fast as they can using all kinds of glitches, exploits, and timing (something I find very interesting). I also love sports, mostly college sports like basketball and football. Texas A&M is my favorite team – Gig’em Munzee!

Thanks so much Scott for being this week’s Team Munzee POTW!

Check out Scott’s POTW Social here:

If you know a player that should be nominated for Munzee Player of the Week, shoot us a message at iLoveYou@Munzee.com -Please note, this is a super active campaign. We may not be able to get back to everyone, but you’re helping to grow the list of amazing people in the Munzee community!