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Do I really matter?

Fred Oliveira on June 28, 2005

I was both overwhelmed and humbled to see how my profile was up on They Matter, next to people like Evan Williams (Odeo), Jeff Taylor (Monster.com), Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and Niklas Zennström (Skype). Seeing those names and my face somewhere in the middle both shocks me and makes me aim higher. I felt like I had to say a couple of things about how I feel and think:

I try to make a difference. If you read WeBreakStuff regularly, you probably know I’m from Portugal, which isn’t really what you could call IT-heaven, or anything like it for that matter. People aren’t used to pushing the envelope around here, and while that saddens me, it also makes me want to change it somehow. Lately, my attempts have been paying off. Getting job offers almost daily (several times a day sometimes) to create new and interesting stuff for companies, getting calls thanking me for the advice I’ve been giving and being picked by Google to develop a project for the Gnome Foundation and the Open Source world, makes me believe it is possible to have some sort of impact, even if small.

I can’t see myself in the same lines as I see the other people who’re featured in They Matter. They’re the geniouses, not me. I’m just trying to get my ideas out, and helping others get their own ideas out. It sounds like a good plan to me. Good enough to make me want to continue. Thanks for the support, everyone.

By the way, I know most of you are waiting for the 3 upcoming parts of “5 steps to a better blog”. I have 2 of them almost ready to publish, so stay put. Thanks for everything, again.


Comments on this post

Tristan Dunn

I stumbled upon your site a few days ago and haven’t went a day without it, yet. Your design is very pleasing to the eyes, you have some great content and I can’t wait to hear or see more of GoPlan.

You definitely matter. Keep it up.

Oh, and I matter, too. My nickname is Bucky and I own this shirt: http://www.cafepress.com/buckymatters

Christoph

I discovered your site also only a few days ago but I have to say that I’m deeply impressed of your knowledge, especially when you think of your home country, as you’ve mentioned serveral times on your blog.
Well, I’m nearly in the same boat, although here in Austria the IT-thing is a little bit better (and I am not as skilled as you are).
And yeah, write some more about your GoPlan’s.

Good luck and keep up the good work!

Bernardo Raposo

Oh and I find much more interesting to be next to Jill Miller than Niklas Zennström for instance :P

Congratulations for the site reference by the way, I guess I’ve skipped it in the other post… :>

Michael Arrington

Fred - Congtratulations. This is awesome!

Mike

Matt B.

Now you’re famous!

Vitor M. Costa

Congrats Fred, it’s really nice to see that our comrades are doing some nice work in the world wide web :-D
keep up the good work.

Cheers.

André Neves

Nice going Fred…

It’s great to see there’s people in Portugal that have the guts and brains to do good things.

Keep up and congratulations once again.

pheres

I can only say, thay you deserve it , at least for the work you are doing here and what you plan to do.

And once more, good development in the SOC

António Pratas

Well, if you’re there, then that means that at least someone thinks that you matter. And i believe that you deserve it, since you’re working so hard. I like the fact that Richard Stallman is in there too.. makes it a little more important doesn’t it?
Keep the good work and try to make Portugal a little more important out there.

Btw, congratulations on the aproval in the Summer of Code project.

oneoo

Nice going Fred…

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