It wasn’t much of a surprise to Sheryl and Richie when Silicon Valley came calling last month with an incredible offer to move CE/CBR west to Palo Alto, California. After all, our camps have been around for 92 years compared with the typical newbie startups like Instagram with roughly a dozen employees and is less than 2 years old.The Valley has long been aware of our amazing website and the 50,000 pictures we post every summer. Our families always rave about the quality of these photos. With all the new phone applications available to the masses, the expectations were out-of-control to have simulated camp experiences streaming all over the world without ever leaving their living rooms.
A few of the Upper Seniors and PCs heard of the potential take-over and were actually planning to order their meals by phone from Bunks 33 and 31, respectively. We rejected that out if hand because of our no cell phone policy.
With enormous sums of wealth available to these businesses, it didn’t surprise us in the slightest that the venture capitalists offered to “air lift” the entire campus, including all of the CBR quads, the Garden, “E”rena, both tribal rings, The Ridge and even the lake if we signed on the dotted line.
One Silicon Valley specialist told us “Everything is going mobile. We’ve got the hardware, the apps and now we need the user experience.” While many may romanticize of an IPO, and dream that their company will elbow its way into the realm of the giants, we are content to have the sweetest and nicest children enjoy a non-mobile, timeless experience at CE and CBR just as thousands of campers and their families have since 1920.
By the way,…..not to be outdone by Instagram, our new website has launched. It may not be Silicon Valley, but it is Blue Ridge and Equinunk, from a small town in northeast Pennsylvania
