Elliot Darvick

Strip away the beat, the images, and the preconceived notions, and you'll find an incredible source of inspiration in hip-hop: Lyrics.

That was the driving force behind the co-creation with Yoni Sarason of The Inspirational Hip Hop Project, which resulted in the launch of HipHopInspires.us, the largest internet collection of inspirational quotes derived from hip-hop lyrics. 

Since its inception in May of 2009, HipHopInspirses.us has served out over one million quotes to individuals across 147 countries and 5 continents, demonstrating that the inspirational power of hip-hop is truly universal.

A dear friend of mine, Adam Reich, successfully argued before the California Board of Parole for the release of 50 year-old woman, Connie Keel, who had been imprisoned since the age of 21. She had been convicted in the first degree for a murder she had nothing to do with, and 29-years later she was a Governor’s approval away from freedom.

Unfortunately, there was little precedent that supported hope the Governor would approve her parole. Adam came to me and asked me to build him a website to support her case and put public pressure on the Governor. I told him of course, and that we’d create a digital campaign to support it too. #FreeConnie was born.

Together we built FreeConnie.com to support people who wanted to take actions, as well as a '#FreeConnie' Twitter campaign to drive interest and connect with the media. I credit Adam’s Herculean effort to use the digital tools we created to draw attention to the issue, resulting in significant press coverage both locally and nationally, and ultimately in the Governor’s approval and Connie’s release.

Admittedly, this is kind of a shallow question, but Celebrity Car Parade was launched initially as a Wordpress.com blog to test out how many people really cared. Answer: A lot. Within the first two weeks it was the fastest growing blog on Wordpress, a Yahoo! Pick of the Day, and featured on Autoblog.com.

Soon after creation, the concept was acquired by Autobytel, which at the time was launching their new flagship MyRide.com. Celebrity Car Parade would go on to generate over 10 million page views for MyRide and was regularly featured on the homepage of ESPN.com, which had a car section powered at the time by Autobytel.

While I no longer run Celebrity Car Parade, and only remnants of it remain, I learned a lot about the power of tapping into the niche interests of the public.