Website introduces the movers and shakers of tomorrow

As college students, we live in a volatile, exciting environment of limitless possibilities. The person who lives one dorm room away could revolutionize social networking, music, film or business, and drastically alter our everyday existence.

The Daily Brink team wants you to meet those groundbreaking, barrier-crossing, foundation-shaking people of tomorrow, today.

The Daily Brink (www.dailybrink.com) shines the spotlight on people who are setting out to create change in the world. You might have not heard about it yet, but you will.

Each week, five shadow figures appear on the Daily Brink’s home page. Each, one of the shadows drops to reveal a portrait. Clicking on the picture will take you to a profile, featuring an interview and a gallery of portraits of the subject.

The interviews themselves are very informal — jokes and humor are littered throughout the questions about the subject’s inspiration and passion. Each interview always ends with the question, “How can Daily Brink help?”

The individuals interviewed hail from a variety of fields and backgrounds — musicians, models, bloggers, activists, a jam anarchist and even a 10-year-old technology genius.

The founders of The Daily Brink come from our very own Trojan Family: Gary Goldman, a senior majoring in international relations (global business) and Jeremy Allen, who graduated from USC in May with a degree in studio arts.

The duo initially had an uncertain start.

“This had never been done before, so we kept thinking something would go wrong, that somehow it wouldn’t work out,” Goldman said.

Despite their doubt, the two extended the Trojan connection further with the addition of webmaster Ryo Chiba and head photographer Zack DeZon, both USC alumni.

The idea for the website came to Allen after interning at Interview Magazine, which contains a section that features interviews with someone on the cusp of something new and exciting in a variety of fields.

“I felt it was the most interesting part, and I wanted to devote an entire publication to just that,” Allen said.

The pair began to find potential interview subjects by talking to their friends.

“I have this theory that everybody knows at least three people who are doing something fascinating, especially people from USC,” Allen said. “Every school at USC is the best at what it does, so whenever we seek out someone special, we know they’ll be there in any profession.”

This led to the discovery of the site’s very first “brinker,” Patricia Manuel. Manuel is the 2009 national U.S. boxing champion and is training to be the first female boxer to represent the United States at the 2012 Olympics.

“You would think that she had a lot of press around that, but no, she’s an African American butch lesbian, and the press doesn’t want to talk about that,” Goldman said. The day after the interview was published on the Daily Brink, Manuel was featured AfterEllen.com.

In addition to interviews, visitors to The Daily Brink can also utilize a social networking component to connect to these “brinkers,” with each interview page featuring a comment box that contains the subject’s e-mail address.

Clicking on the connect box will allow viewers to see what the subject is looking for — be it donations to pet organizations, volunteers, representation, or just promotion of products and activities.

“You read about someone, you get a chance to connect with them and then you can help them,” Goldman said. “It’s a full circle.”

Since the website’s launch on Sept. 6, the Daily Brink has received about 16,500 views. Despite being in its nascent stage, Allen and Goldman have several plans for the young project, including an iPad application, blogs, podcasts and even expanding to cover “brinkers” across the world.

“The site is based on the foundation of forward thinking,” Goldman said. “We never want to be complacent — we always want to be one step ahead.”