A little known fact about the people behind Wufoo is that we like a good run. This past Fourth of July weekend, the entire Wufoo team participated in the 29th Annual Kiwanis Morton Plant Mease Midnight Run. The race helps raise money for the Dunedin and Countryside Kiwanis clubs and we were thrilled to be able to participate this year’s 5k.

We didn’t shatter any personal records or times because we ran mostly as a team, but it was good to have an excuse to run across a bridge at midnight in Wufoo garb. Thanks a lot to our new friend, Bryan, for taking our picture! It would have been a shame to have missed documenting the sweaty occasion. Also, happy belated birthday, Wufoo! You’re 2 years old!

Photo by Brian Solis

Chris and I have finally returned after a great week back in Silicon Valley showcasing Wufoo at the Under the Radar Conference and talking about some of our experiences at Startup School. Both events were top notch and we want to thank Dealmaker Media for inviting us out there for UTR and Jessica Livingston for putting on such an awesome lineup of speakers at Stanford. We had a ton of fun spreading the word, meeting our users and talking with people about how awesome it is to be making stuff people are excited to use.

We are also very honored to hear that Wufoo was voted the best-in-show winner by the Under the Radar audience, and that the judges voted Wufoo the winner in our presentation category. Many thanks goes out Debbie Landa, Randall Johnson, Will Price, Joe Cooper and a ton of others for helping us tweak our presentation at the very end. Apparently, we also get prizes which is extra excellent.

For those you interested in more of the the origins, personalities and thoughts behind the creation Wufoo, there’s a great interview just published over at Juxtaviews.com with me about some behind-the-scenes details. It’s been hectic around here lately and so it was nice to take a break and reflect on our work for awhile. The following is a quick excerpt from the interview:

Q: Can you tell us about some highlights and/or hardships that happened during your three months in the Y-combinator incubator?

A: Well, right before we went out there Ryan got Cat Scratch Fever. I won’t go too much into it, but it has something to do with swelling of the lymph nodes and apparently feels like somone kicking you in your precious place all over your body. This is a disease most common to the demographic consisting of 12 year-old girls. What it comes down to is only Ryan could get a disease like this. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really affect anything because he was over it by the time we got out there, but I like telling the story because Ryan is ridiculous and that’s the flavor that always follows us around.

Photo by Brian Solis

Hey everyone, just got back from San Francisco where I had a blast showing off Wufoo in a round of Blitz Demonstrations at the Office 2.0 Conference. I had a lot of fun watching some of the other companies do their best with the constraints. It was an interesting challenge compressing Wufoo’s essence into a five minute demo but we did alright. Out of 15 presentations, we were excited to take home 2nd Place for best demo!

The best part of the conference was meeting all the awesome people I’ve interacted with face to face. I had some great conversations with Avi and Andrew of DabbleDB and the Bezinger brothers, Tim and Brian. For those not in the know, the Benzingers are identical twins and only 19. They have some pretty neat stuff up their sleeves and I look forward to see what they’re going to be putting out in the next few months.

I was also pleased to finally meet Ismael Ghalimi, who put together a really impressive event in a very short amount of time. Here’s some Wufoo trivia for you: Ismael was Wufoo’s very first beta tester. After some begging on his end and disclaimers about “sketchiness” on ours, Ismael used Wufoo to take submissions for his Office 2.0 directory. There’s not doubt that he’s passionate about this space and we’re glad he invited us to come out there and be a part of it.

In other news, Chris got married last weekend and Ryan fullfilled his duties as best man by taking part in some pretty ridiculous debauchery. That does it for the news, we’re finally settled into post-conference, post-Honeymoon and post-hangover mode and ready to start kicking it again. Get ready for an awesome week!