Dancing Around the World, Paid For, Everything Inclusive

If you did not hear about Matt Harding yet, then it is about time. He is the guy that became famous for "dancing on the Internet", okay, there are a bunch of guys that are "famous" doing that, but he is the one who did it in public at places around the whole globe.

  The story goes like this...

1. A 32 year old deadbeat who was born in Connecticut, USA and ended up working for a company in Brisbane, Australia decided in 2003 to quit his job and use the money he had saved to do a trip through Asia until he was broke.
2. During the usual posing for tourist photo graphs and home videos as proof for his friends and family that he was at the places he said he was, a friend suggested to do his funny dance, the only dance Matt knows and do that instead of the usual boring posing.
3. He did that for the rest of his trip until he ran out of money. He published his short videos on a web site that he mainly created for his family to check what he was doing and where.
4. The stuff went somehow "viral" on the Internet thanks to social media. It also caught the attention of a company called Stride Gum, who thought that doing more of this kind of videos sponsored by the Stride Gum brand would be a fantastic idea. Matt thought so too, especially when he was told that Stride pays for the whole thing, everything inclusive.
5. The result is his second video, which made him even more famous.
6. Seeing one dude dancing alone got kind of old when Matt had an idea. How about having people dancing with him, people who contacted Matt over the Internet. Stride thought too that it is a great idea and off he was for the third trip around the globe.
7. That video is the 2008 video  and made Matt even more famous. So famous in fact that he was asked to talk at social media conferences etc.

His 2006 and 2008 videos were viewed over 11 Million times EACH on YouTube alone! "Nicht schlecht Herr Specht" as we say in Germany to something like that.

Here are some interesting facts about the locations that Matt visited.

Three videos were released, labeled 2005, 2006 and 2008. Each with the results of an entire trip lasting several months to over one year. The first video from 2005 included 20 locations, the video from 2006 included 36 and the last one from 2008 included a whopping 69 places.

There is also an out-takes video for the 2006 trip with a few locations that are unique and did not make it into the final video. That means that the actual number of places visited is higher than the ones I mentioned.

Unique Places shown in his 3 Videos Abu Simbel, Egypt Agra, India Ala Archa Gorge, Kyrgyzstan Alhambra, California Amsterdam, The Netherlands Angkor Wat, Cambodia Antseranana, Madagascar Area 51, Nevada Atlanta, Georgia Auckland, New Zealand Auki, Solomon Islands Austin, Texas Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Bangkok, Thailand Batik, Morocco Beijing, China Bengal Jungle, India Berlin, Germany Brisbane, Australia Brussels, Belgium Buenos Aires, Argentina Cape of Good Hope, South Africa Chakachino, Zambia Chicago, Illinois Christmas Island, Australia Chuuk, Micronesia Cologne, Germany Delhi, India Demilitarized Zone, Korea Dubai, United Arab Emirates Dublin, Ireland East Jerusalem, West Bank Easter Island, Chile Ephesus, Turkey Galapagos Islands, Ecuador Giant's causeway, Northern Ireland Guam Gurgaon, India Half Moon Caye, Belize Hanoi, Vietnam Haute-Picardie, France Impenetrable Forest, Uganda Istanbul, Turkey Kilimanjaro Summit, Tanzania Kjeragbolten, Norway Kuwait City, Kuwait Lancelin, Australia Lemur Island, Madagascar Lisbon, Portugal Lisse, The Netherlands London, England Los Angeles, California Luang Prabang, Laos Machu Picchu, Peru Madrid, Spain Mexico City, Mexico Miami, Florida Mokolodi, Botswana Monte Alban, Mexico Montreal, Quebec Monument Valley, Arizona Moscow, Russia Mulindi, Rwanda Mumbai, India Munich, Germany Mutianyu, China Neko Harbor, Antarctica Nellis Airspace, Nevada New York, New York Panama Canal, Panama Paris, France Paro, Bhutan Petra, Jordan Poria, Papua New Guinea Prague, Czech Republic Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Rock Islands, Palau Routeburn Valley, New Zealand Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia San Francisco, California Sana'a, Yemen Sao Paulo, Brazil Seattle, Washington Seljalandsfoss, Iceland Seoul, South Korea Siberia, Russia Singapore Sossusvlei, Namibia South Shetland Islands Soweto, South Africa Stockholm, Sweden Stone Town, Zanzibar Suhbaatar, Mongolia Sydney, Australia Tagaytay, The Philippines Taipaei, Taiwan Tel Aviv, Israel Teotihuacan, Mexico Thimphu, Bhutan Tikal, Guatemala Timbuktu, Mali Tokyo, Japan Tongatapu, Tonga Tsavo, Kenya Vancouver, British Columbia Vava'u, Tonga Venice, Italy Very Large Array, New Mexico Wadi Rum, Jordan Wainivilase, Fiji Warsaw, Poland Washington D.C., USA Westport, Connecticut Yangon, Myanmar

Unique Countries of Islands Antarctica Argentina Australia Belgium Belize Bhutan Bolivia Botswana Brazil Brunei Cambodia Canada Chile China Czech Republic Ecuador Egypt Fiji France Germany Guam Guatemala Iceland India Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Madagascar Mali Mexico Micronesia Mongolia Morocco Myanmar Namibia New Zealand Norway Palau Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Peru Poland Portugal Russia Rwanda Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Taiwan Tanzania Thailand The Netherlands The Philippines Tonga Turkey Uganda UK United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zanzibar Places he visited Twice Brisbane, Australia London, England Los Angeles, California San Francisco, California Sydney, Australia Tokyo, Japan* Places he visited on every trip New York, New York Seattle, Washington   *Tokyo actually appears three times in his videos, but only in two of them and not three. Tokyo is the only real duplicate within any of his videos. Tokyo appears twice in the 2008 video. Once in location #29 and the second time in location #42. Also, if you look at the overall data, he rarely made it to the same place twice. 8 places that he visited more than once, out of 114. ... not bad.

YouTube - Where in the Hell is Matt Harding? - Megamix

Link to my megamix video  on YouTube, also available for download in .AVI (XVID/MP3) format and 640x480 resolution via Mediafire.com at this URL.

Here is a link to Matt's presentation at the 2008 Gnomdex conference, which was held between August 21 and 23, 2008 in Seattle, WA, where he talks about what he did and how he did it to travel around the world not only once or twice, but three times. Once on his own expense and twice on somebody else's.

Gnomedex is by the way the tech- or geek-conference organized by Chris Pirillo, who is also notoriously known for his online video stuff and live chat.

What is odd to me now is the fact that just when I decided to write this post about Matt, his web site went offline. WhereTheHellIsMatt.com does not resolve at all. There is a cached version of the site in Google, with a date of either November 8 or 9, so the site was up about a week ago. I hope that this down-time is only a temporary glitch. However, if I would be Matt, I would have a word with the hosting company (unless that company happens to be the sponsor for his web site hosting hehe)

I put up the link to his web site anyway, hoping that it will be up very soon.

Other Links

• Matthew Hardings Public Picasa Albums
• Matt's Typepad Blog
• MattHarding2718, his YouTube Channel 

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC