Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!
There are not a lot of people in this world that do things “just because” anymore. Think about it. How often does someone go out of their way for you, to make your day better, and maybe a little easier in the process? Chances are you know a couple, but not several, people who still believe in this doing-good-for-no-reason-but-to-do-it thing. Like people that call your boss to tell him/her what a great job you do. That doesn’t happen anymore. Or people that send thank you notes. Actual thank you notes.
I’m fortunate to have a friend that I can call on when the times get tough. His name is Andrew Norcross. Now, do Andrew and I go way back? Like almost a year, yeah. Have Andrew and I met? Despite living a couple zip codes away from each other before I moved to Chicago, no. Has Andrew helped me in some way? More than once. More than I can count on one hand, actually.
Andrew, better known as @norcross, is single-handedly one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met. Ask any question regarding computers, software, web dev, coding, anything, and he’s got your back, or knows someone who does. Andrew has come to my rescue many, many times, and twice when it could make or break me.
The first time was during dress rehearsal for the Spotlight Gala this spring. The culmination of my entire semester, I, the account executive for my student run agency “team”, had to condense a whole semester of learning into just seven minutes on stage in a presentation. My creative director decided to shoot and edit her videos in a software that wasn’t taught or supported by the school, rendering the files into some format that couldn’t be played by a PC or a Mac correctly.
I reached out to my Twitter network, with a pretty good idea of who would respond. And he did. Andrew came to my rescue with links on how to get the movies to play in PowerPoint and how to make sure they were in the right format for the presentation. They weren’t. He had me upload the videos to his server, he converted them, re-uploaded them, and then I could download the correct file format.
My presentation went off without a hitch.
The second time, I was in NYC editing footage for work when the videos I had downloaded wouldn’t open in iMovie. I called Andrew directly this time, and he did the same thing, helped me convert then we pulled the videos off his server. We weren’t able to get the videos done that night (because we were so frustrated), but Andrew got them to us in the file format that we needed to get it done first thing in the morning.
And he helps on the smaller, less-emergency-type-situation things too. Last night during #blogchat, I was asking about how to fix my fonts because I was messing with the code and jacked everything up. Andrew hopped in, fixed my fonts and looked through the rest of my code to make sure there wasn’t anything else wrong. He caught a couple (read: a ton) of errors and fixed them and helped me with some spacing issues.
I don’t know a lot of people that do good because they can. I thanked Andrew profusely last night and he simply said “it’s what I do”.
Do you know anyone that does good just because they can? Better yet, has Norcross helped you? What are some things you’ve done lately just because “it’s what you do?”