In a community building adventure that lasted just seven months, I joined five software engineers on a ride that went from iPhone app launch to Twitter exit. These are some the stand-out lessons I’ve taken away.

I reached my breaking point and I couldn’t do it anymore. My hip flexors and adductors were shot, I couldn’t lift my leg, and my IT band was incredibly tight, making it rather painful to walk normal. That was it, I was done. No more dancing. I needed to find an answer to why my hip was hurting so much. For the next two years I tried everything under the sun and short of a shaman…

I’ve wanted to release tortugas since I spent a month in Mexico last December and heard you could help liberate them. The stats on this are quite staggering. The Californian lady who helped run the tortuga camp – where they protect the eggs until they hatch – along with the local biologists, told us that there used to be 250 odd species of sea tortugas. Thanks to poachers there are now only 8 left. That’s not all…

(Photo: Natalia Delgado)

Because they are fresh, they don’t act like gurus and they absorb their surroundings with a beginner state of mind. They realize that to move forward they’re going to make mistakes, so they might as well hurry up and make them.

The gurus are the one’s who won’t take a step backwards; they are done with making mistakes and enjoy the comfort of thinking they know, but that is a mistake. Teachers are especially susceptible to this, and must realize it.

I never read much until my third year of University when I sat in on a presentation by Andrew Hewitt, author of The Power of Focus for College Students and then 24-year-old millionaire, at the University of Victoria. Although I was heading into the Entrepreneurhsip program, my ideas of career direction and opportunity were rather inside-the-box, status-quo and undiscovered. What does being “rich” mean? Why do people work 9-5 jobs? Why do we try to attend the best schools, get the highest grades, and land the highest paying jobs? Most people don’t take two seconds to re-think the default answers to these questions, and I didn’t either.

In June 2011, I joined two Romanian hackers and ex Google interns, on their quest to build the next layer of the social internet: relevancy and content curation. Summify is your social news summary. Plunk in your Facebook, Twitter, and Google Readers accounts and POOF! The algorithms go to work and pump out your personalized social news summary, showcasing your top five to ten stories of each day or every few hours, via the web or on your mobile.

In celebration of 10 years with my crew, we hosted the Filthee Feet 10 Year Anniversar on July 1-3, 2011. Famous Circle organized the event and we enjoyed getting down with our friends from across the country and even, Japan! All most all of the original crew members came out to chill together and it was a great time, looking back on our accomplishments over the years and kicking back with the people we love vibing with. Watch the video here…

Image by Arthur Tiojanco

Only a few months after Circle Prinz, Famous Circle teamed up with the BboySpot to host Outbreak Canada. Serving as the Canadian prelim for the Outbreak Hip Hop World Finals in Orlando, Outbreak Canada drew a solid crowd of 350 dancers and spectators from around the Pacific Northwest. The South Koreans, Taiyo and Style Jack of the NON/Last 4 One crews took the win and the trip to Florida. Watch the video here…

Photo by Glen Co

Circle Prinz Canada has been one of the few events in Canadian history to draw dancers (b-boys and b-girls) from across the country – BC to Quebec – as well as four US states: Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Virginia. After hours of ciphers and battles, Battle Born crew from Las Vegas came out victorious, winning the trip to represent at Circle Kingz in Switzerland – one of the most notorious underground battles in the World. Here’s a video of how it went down…

Photo by Carlo Solanoy