In celebration of our new logo design, and, well, mostly just to have fun, a group of Care2 team members has been working nights and weekends to create the world’s first “Flutterfrog.”  The creation will be a human-powered flight vehicle frog, with butterfly wings.  Not kidding.

The Flutterfrog will, if all goes according to plan, fly gracefully off a Portland, OR, pier on August 2nd as part of RedBull’s Flugtag.  The Flugtag, or “flying day” in German, challenges 31 teams to see who can fly their vehicle the farthest, with additional awards for creativity and showmanship.

As a significant portion of Care2’s software development has been powered by RedBull guzzling engineers, I can attest that this is a potent combination.  The Care2 team is headed by software engineer Alex Feinberg, who is backed up by a flight crew of four:  head of customer service Kristen Atkinson, software engineers Anthony Duerr and John Wyles, and operations engineer Seth Reid.  Additional members of the Care2 team have been helping craft the vehicle out of mostly sustainable and recycled materials.

The Flutterfrog is being developed in Anthony’s garage. It’s still unclear whether he volunteered this space out of a spirit of charity, or to get the rest of the team to clean up what was arguably a cluttered mess.  Regardless, development is well underway, and has involved lots of bamboo, substantial use of power tools and much merriment.

The local press got wind of the story over the weekend. For more on the story see here.