We have customers around the world doing extraordinary things with our software, but Ben Saunders is taking it to a whole new level.
Ben and his team are using Basecamp to organize an expedition to the South Pole and back, unsupported and on foot. This is the same journey Captain Robert Scott died trying to achieve 100 years ago, and no one has attempted it since.
Ben has been a professional polar explorer for more than 10 years and is one of only three people to complete a solo journey to the North Pole. He will be joined by Alastair Humphreys, who has cycled 46,000 miles around the world, and renowned nature photographer Martin Hartley.
You can follow the expedition, which launches this October, at Scott2012.org and be sure to follow @polarben on Twitter.
Special thanks to Temujin Doran for letting us use his amazing arctic footage.
Janne Jääskeläinen
on 10 May 12Cool video. :) It would be pretty nice to hear more stories like this about companies from different industries, how (and why) they use Basecamp.
Doug
on 10 May 12@37signals
The title is misleading.
Neither the software nor the expedition team are yet in Antartica.
A more appropriate title would be “Basecamp helps organize an Antartica expedition”
Jermaine
on 10 May 12Loving the animation at the end. Creative stuff!
Sara H.
on 10 May 12+1 Doug
A shorter appropriate title would be: “Basecamp organizes Antarctica expedition”
Carl
on 10 May 12@Sara H. // A shorter appropriate title would be: “Basecamp organizes Antarctica expedition” //
Doesn’t that make it sound like the Basecamp team are going to Antarctica?
The vitriol over a title. If it was purely descriptive it’d be boring and terrible. I’m pretty sure this blog isn’t a peer-reviewed journal guys.
Anonymous Coward
on 11 May 12Nice work on the video, looks great. As I was watching it I thought “surely there will be no dickish comments about the video.” I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Erich Menge
on 11 May 12^^ That was me. I’m not an anonymous coward, just forgot to type in my name.
Chad
on 11 May 1237signals
I had my computer volume maxed out and could barely hear the audio in the video.
Any way you can make the audio louder?
GeeIWonder
on 11 May 12@Carl
Peer reviewed journal. Good one. Sounds like you have a firm grasp of that type of process.
Anyhow, SvN ain’t that, but what they are is a place that focus on the minutiae of getting a message (signal) out. They have done similar nitpicking for similar ‘errors’, and part of their readership is interested in such things. So I think it’s fair game. Not the end of the world or anything - didn’t detect any vitriol at all. You might want to look that word up - oh there’s some.
Mark
on 11 May 12@ Erich, there were no “dickish comments about the video” at the time you posted.
@Carl, I see what you’re saying, but Basecamp is software, it’s not a team; the team is 37s. It reminds me of a scene in The Office when, during a special office event, Michael Scott said “I’ve got to make sure that YouTube comes down to tape this.”
Anthony Mastrean
on 11 May 12I hope your client plans like Amundsen did in 1911, successfully reaching and returning from the South Pole well before Scott’s team. You can read about that here1 and here2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen#South_Pole_Expedition_.281910.E2.80.9312.29 http://artofmanliness.com/2012/04/22/what-the-race-to-the-south-pole-can-teach-you-about-how-to-achieve-your-goals/Erich Menge
on 11 May 12@Mark it is a bit dickish to criticize the name of the video saying it is “misleading.” Not vitriolic, just a bit dickish.
stanislawsky
on 12 May 12Would you allow dog poop in the kithchen of haute couture restaurant? Well, probably no. Yes, DHH, I know you are concentrating on {quotes} more important things {quotes end}. But hey, Anthony Maestrean copypasted some long url’s and they are (kind of) defacing your blog.
Yeah, yeah, is it uber tragedy? No. But hey, it’s a poop in haute couture restaurant.
It makes me sad as a developer. Test driven development. Khe-khem…
Yeah, I know, sh*t happens. But guys, that’s html 101.
And yes, I am sure, that this bug slipped because you’ve payed your full attention to Basecamp security and whatsoever.
Have a nice weekend, please don’t delete my post and I will read your reply in monday.
Piotr
on 14 May 12Truly inspiring story! And a very creative use case for Basecamp.
I agree with the sentiment that the title is a little bit misleading: my initial expectation was of Basecamp helping scientists/researchers/etc, who are already in Antarctica, with organizing their projects.
Anyhow. Thanks for sharing this.
And all the best for Ben and the team!
This discussion is closed.