Hi, I’m Johnny Monsarrat!
I’m an idiot who got up stuck on a mountain one night in 1999. Then my girlfriend and I got trapped in deep snow on a mountain at night in 2008, and that time we didn’t even have hiking gear. But that’s a story I’m saving for my upcoming book, Soulburners.
I have two MIT degrees, but none from my time at Harvard and Brown. I got to play with a lot of cool robots, though, and in 1994 my team and I built the first mobile robot that was driven over the Internet. I also connected the first Internet hot tub as a friendly prank. Then I dropped out of Brown to found Turbine, the videogames company that made Lord of the Rings Online and now employs 400 people as a division of Warner Brothers.
In 2009, I set five world records with the Wheel Questions project, a community art kiosk where anyone could ask a question about life and get an answer. I answered most of 12,000 questions, all by hand, on little colored cards that got hung on the display. You’ll find a lot of videos questions and answers there, too.
These days, I run the Events INSIDER, New England’s the most popular events blog. It’s all possible through two patents with some groovy technology. That’s how I built the world’s largest high-tech and business networking calendar, now available as a mobile app.
Check out some of the friendly pranks I’ve played, and have been played on me. And see the Halloween carnival to prevent suicide that I ran on Boston City Hall Plaza for the Samaritans.
I hope you’ll write me and say hello. It means a lot to me to hear from people. Where have you traveled to, and did you do something stupid that makes a good story? Email me at johnny@eventsinsider.com.