GoPro Inventor Nick Woodman (STEM Trailblazer Bios) Paperback – Illustrated, January 1, 2015

Nick Woodman didn’t grow up dreaming that he’d take “the tech world by storm” with some magnificent invention. Living in the midst Silicon Valley would set even the most unimaginative boy dreaming of success, but not Nick. He’d much rather ride the ocean waves than the high-tech ones. It wasn’t a dream, but rather something he did from the time he was an eight-year-old boy. Nick did have a tech side and he wanted to head to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) not for their programs, but for their waves. Black’s Beach just called out to him. USCD didn’t want Nick, but his persistence and an appeal won them over. Persistance was a quality that would serve him well.Nick found out that economics wasn’t his thing, but Jill Scully, his future wife, was. One wife and a college degree later, he was soon off on the dot-com run and started a website to sell electronics later the FunBug game website. They looked good, but ultimately both were flops. It was the “end of the ‘dot-com’ boom” and it sure looked like Nick had to rethink what he could do career-wise. It was back to riding the waves ... in Australia and Indonesia. It would give him time to think, but while he was surfing, he “wanted to capture some of his greatest waves on camera.” Now just how could he surf and take pictures at the same time?Well, the big idea was simple: “He attached a disposable camera to an old wrist strap from a surfboard.” Nick then attached it to his wrist. It was a hands-free approach, that actually worked! The simple fact that it worked wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Nick had to create a plan and of course he needed money. His earlier ventures tapped him out financially and he had to raise some cash. The business was going to be called Woodman Labs, but instead “it would be known by the name of its products: GoPro.” In this book you’ll learn about the evolution of the GoPro, how he got someone to manufacture it, his early sales, and many more interesting facts about how Nick Woodman “turned his tech vision into reality.”This is the amazing biography of Nick Woodman, the GoPro inventor extraordinaire. Many young action-oriented sports aficionados and camera buffs will enjoy reading about how Nick rode the wave to success, literally and figuratively. The writing is conversational and will really draw in the young reader as they learn about Nick and his struggle to find a successful venture. For example we learn that one way he raised cash was “driving up and down the California coast selling the belts” he bargained for. In the back of the book is an index, a glossary, a Timeline (1975 to 2014), source notes, and additional recommended book and website resources to explore. There are additional free complementary educational resources on the publisher’s website.STEM TRAILBLAZER BIOS: Aerospace Engineer Aprille Ericsson Alternate Reality Game Designer Jane McGonigal Astrophysicist and Space Advocate Neil deGrasse Tyson Computer Engineer Ruchi Sanghvi Flickr Cofounder and Web Community Creator Caterine Fake Genetics Expert Joanna L. Kelley Google Glass and Robotics Innovator Sebastian Thrun GoPro Inventor Nick Woodman This book courtesy of the publisher.