Swagbucks.com co-founder Scott Dudelson exited the company in July after it received a $60 million investment. And he quickly took advantage of his newfound free time by traveling with his wife, Melissa.
The couple spent a month driving through Italy. Stateside, they took a few days to drive along the 300-mile Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina.
“It’s one of the most scenic routes in the country,” said Dudelson, 35.
And now that he’s no longer bogged down by his former job as chief operating officer at Swagbucks, he has more time to indulge his other passion: concert photography.
A lifelong lover of music, Dudelson managed to squeeze in freelance gigs while at Swagbucks. But nowadays, he shoots two or three shows a week for a number of websites, as well as Getty Images Inc. in Seattle.
Some notable recent shoots include the Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Va., where he photographed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as the Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas, where he shot acts such as Foo Fighters and Outkast.
“I try to get a picture that captures the essence of the artist,” he said. “I don’t always succeed, but when I do it’s tremendously gratifying.”
Explosive Competition
David Ackert’s work environment became more playful in October when he received several packages filled with Nerf missiles emblazoned with the slogan “Hit your target.” They were promotional items for Ackert’s business development coaching firm, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to launch one.
“The range was really quite impressive,” Ackert said. “So it almost hit someone on the far side of our community space.”
This faux pas inspired an assassination game that now plays out every Friday at Office Slice, his co-working space in Sherman Oaks. Each of his four employees plus others at the co-working space – a dozen or so in all – gets a list of targets upon entering the building. The players “assassinate” their targets using the Nerf missiles in addition to “grenades,” which Ackert explained are simply paper airplanes with the word “boom” scrawled on them.
“We have one guy who will only use grenades,” said Ackert, 45, who is president of Ackert Advisory. “He will say, ‘Oh, can you get that out of the printer for me?’ Then you open the printer, and there’s a piece of paper in that says, ‘Boom, you’re dead!”
Staff reporters Omar Shamout and Hannah Miet contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
