WhyGoSolo is for making spontaneous offline connections happen. It is the ideal solution to quickly create one-on-one or small group connections for active participation in offline activities. And the perfect solution for bridging your online worlds (blogs, other social networking communities, Facebook) into offline interaction.

Our worlds and communities are becoming blended between online and offline and WhyGoSolo makes bridging back and forth as simple, easy, convenient and as fun as possible by being embedded in our members online world and providing the tools, features and services to take the interaction offline.

With WhyGoSolo you're always able to find or post activities you're interested in doing, and find someone to do your favorite activities with. Post on WhyGoSolo and watch the announcement propagate through the web with our applications, widgets, and partnerships throughout the web.

It doesn't matter what your interests are: sports, the arts, culture, food, games, you'll be able to find a like-minded person with the same interests to go and enjoy your favorite activities. No more wondering what to do on your day off, on the weekends, in the evenings or when you have some free-time. With WhyGoSolo... you can always find something to do with someone new and exciting.

WhyGoSolo was thought of by a former Marine, don't be scared... she's pretty cool, but she designed WhyGoSolo to be action oriented with getting results and positive outcomes in mind... It's about taking an active role in meeting new people, living out your passions, doing the activities you love, networking and exploring new possibilities. It's about enjoying life and having fun. Use the web to enable the finding of exciting and new things and people but, get OFF the web and go enjoy them.

Now, meet the team that is bringing you WhyGoSolo:

Management Team | Development Team

Ann Bernard (Founder and CEO)

Ann has a habit of paving her own road and taking the paths of her liking. Paths with the biggest challenges and excitement. Although she had the perfect college resume in high school, she fell in love with the Marine Corps and never looked back. Life is our greatest teacher, and she has always been one for jumping right into it.

She joined the Corps at 17, and served on active duty for ten years; first as an enlisted Marine working in the logistics field, and later, after receiving a Meritorious Commission; she became an Information and Communications System Officer. At the age of 25, she was leading a detachment of 120 Marines and taking responsibility for over 100 million dollars worth of equipment to establish multiple communication nodes and a full command operations center for a major deployment overseas. Her last position in the Marine Corps, was as the Executive Officer of Expeditionary Support Company at the Marine Corps Network and Operations Security Command in Quantico, VA, which included a tour in Iraq. Ann has multiple personal military awards.

Ann came to realize she had a natural gift for understanding three things: business (strategizing), the web and people. She combined the three together and created WhyGoSolo. Ann is a passionate, outgoing and slightly nutty (in a good way) entrepreneur with big dreams of making a difference in the world, through helping people lead better lives. Her energy and enthusiasm are contagious. Being innovative, creative, and leading a team to making big things happen in the world, are the reasons why she gets up in the morning.

D. Keith Casey Jr. (CTO/COO)

D. Keith Casey, Jr. has been in software development for over ten years in a variety of roles. In the recent past, Keith has worked on large-scale PHP-based content management systems for news, political, and technical organizations ranging from personal blogs to Mobile.FoxNews.com. His level of involvement has ranged from CTO-level planning and strategy to cutting code and optimizing databases. Keith has also been involved with multiple start-ups through various degrees of involvement and has run his own Software Development company for over three years. He possesses an excellent mix of technical and business skills. His knowledge and pragmatism are key to proper implementation of technology to best support organizations and corporations.

Keith is a frequent presenters at various technology conferences: the Better Software Conference, ZendCon, and DCPHP Conferences. He is very active in the Open Source community with dotProject, a web-based Project Management System; and blogs regularly at http://CaseySoftware.com/blog and elsewhere. In ancient times, he earned a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rose-Hulman.

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Michael Buselli

Michael Buselli has been excited about computers since 1983 when his school purchased Apple computers. Michael quickly picked up Logo right away and then BASIC in 1986. In high school Michael captained a team of three to win the National GTech Computer Contest by leading the design and entry of a short but elegant program to recognize words amid a jumble of data. While in college Michael learned Unix administration, and during a class project he led a team of five in creating a multi-user web-based card game in Java. Michael has also picked up many other languages including C, ML, Kornshell, Perl, and Ruby. Michael has a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics from the University of Chicago.

Michael has worked professionally as a C programmer, Unix administrator, and security engineer-architect in his ten years working full-time in technology. He has given presentations at UniForum Chicago and at Chicago Area Ruby Group meetings.

Michael lives in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife of three years. In 2004, he served as the present of the board for his church. In his spare time, Michael is an administrator for Age of Chaos MUD.

Lindsay Donaghe

Lindsay is a certified girl geek with a passion for technology and design. She has been a developer for more than 13 years working in all tiers from database to front-end, and working for companies from 10-person start-ups to international enterprises and consulting in-between.

Lindsay specializes in web development and user interface design and is one of the rare breed of developers who can code up a storm and also create nice, clean, usable and pretty design. She enjoys working in Photoshop as much as hacking reems of code and does both as much for a hobby as a living. Lindsay also spends a lot of time keeping up with the latest offerings on the internet, participating in betas and following the cutting edge for gadgets, technology and science.

When not staring at a computer, Lindsay trains in Aikido and teaches a kid's class with her husband, Tad. Lindsay satisfies her creative urges by exploring amateur photography, creating beadwork and jewelry, doing general crafty work and taking on the task of decorating and refinishing furniture in her new house, all while still finding time to spend with her family and pets (umbrella cockatoo, cockatiel and shi-tzu).

Darcy Laycock

As the youngest member of the team, Darcy has been around computers since the age of 5. With several years of programming and web development under his belt, Darcy settled on Ruby as his language of choice - developing primarily with Ruby on Rails as well as Merb / DataMapper.

Having just finished the final years of high school, Darcy plans to attend university next year to study Software Engineering doubled with Computer Science. Currently he blogs about all things code related at NinjaHideout (http://blog.NinjaHideout.com/). When he's not writing code and working on his next big project, He's usually sleeping, reading or trying to better understand the world.

Brian Self

Brian Self has been designing websites privately for 11 years and has been building computers since he was 8 years old. Currently studying Applied Sciences at Harvard University with a major in Multimedia and Creative Content, Brian strives to raise the bar in today's web 2.0 industry. Currently he co-owns a photography and web design firm with his fiance Chelsea and is the founder of Tech ReLeaph; a conference held in British Columbia centered around web 2.0 industry involvement in overseas affairs and national not-for-profit organizations. When he isn't coding and designing, Brian spends his time brewing beer, playing World of Warcraft and is an avid and competing Snowboarder.

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