2008 Woodie Awards
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AU alum relies on strangers for travel
By Carolyn Phenicie on 8/30/07
Matt Danzico, a 2005 graduate of the School of Communication, will spend this fall learning to make beer in a basement bathtub in El Paso, Texas, snowboarding with a stranger in Vail, Colo., and working a day on a professional wrestling tour in the Midwest.
Danzico is the founder of Around America in 2.0, an Internet-based film project in which he will travel around the country for 80 days, relying on strangers to volunteer to feed, house and transport him. He will then turn the experiences into a weekly Web television show.
Danzico, currently a reporter for in the New York bureau of the Japanese newspaper the Tokyo Shimbun, created a video asking for volunteers and posted it on three Web sites, including YouTube and blip.tv. He also created his own Web site, www.aroundamericaproject.com, where he explains the project in greater detail.
Danzico started his project to explore whether the connections made over Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook can be translated into trust and connections in real life, he said. Web 2.0 is a term for how the Internet is evolving and refers to how users can more easily generate their own material.
As of July 31, the video had been online for two weeks and Danzico had received 25 volunteers. He had to turn down some volunteers because many lived in the same city - and because a few e-mails led him to believe they could be dangerous or simply creepy, he said.
Because one of the goals of the project is to explore whether relationships built online can be translated into real relationships, Danzico said he will not stay with any friends or family along the way, even as backup.
In addition to the Texas beer-maker, Vail snowboarder and pro-wrestling tournament, Danzico has received offers from an online video comedian who wants Danzico to join him on the road and a sorority in Moscow, Idaho. Someone else, an immigrant from the Middle East, wants Danzico to document the immigrant experience in the United States. One man in D.C. offered to transport Danizco to his next destination in a homemade airplane that Danzico said "looks like a hang glider with sheets and a motor."
Danzico is the founder of Around America in 2.0, an Internet-based film project in which he will travel around the country for 80 days, relying on strangers to volunteer to feed, house and transport him. He will then turn the experiences into a weekly Web television show.
Danzico, currently a reporter for in the New York bureau of the Japanese newspaper the Tokyo Shimbun, created a video asking for volunteers and posted it on three Web sites, including YouTube and blip.tv. He also created his own Web site, www.aroundamericaproject.com, where he explains the project in greater detail.
Danzico started his project to explore whether the connections made over Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook can be translated into trust and connections in real life, he said. Web 2.0 is a term for how the Internet is evolving and refers to how users can more easily generate their own material.
As of July 31, the video had been online for two weeks and Danzico had received 25 volunteers. He had to turn down some volunteers because many lived in the same city - and because a few e-mails led him to believe they could be dangerous or simply creepy, he said.
Because one of the goals of the project is to explore whether relationships built online can be translated into real relationships, Danzico said he will not stay with any friends or family along the way, even as backup.
In addition to the Texas beer-maker, Vail snowboarder and pro-wrestling tournament, Danzico has received offers from an online video comedian who wants Danzico to join him on the road and a sorority in Moscow, Idaho. Someone else, an immigrant from the Middle East, wants Danzico to document the immigrant experience in the United States. One man in D.C. offered to transport Danizco to his next destination in a homemade airplane that Danzico said "looks like a hang glider with sheets and a motor."
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