First of all, free rice is an advertiser sponsored site that supports the World Food Programme, it is run by the United Nations. Every time you answer a question correctly, the advertiser donates 10 grains of rice. About a year ago, Ronda started a contest asking her fans to go to the site and play as part of a group. The previous group (RondaMMA) and the current one RondaUFC have raised a total of almost 85 MILLION grains of rice. That's a lot of hungry people. The top ten people in the group will win a prize - actually, it is the top 13 as of now because we said anyone who donated over a million grains would get a prize no matter what.
BUT you are not out of luck because we are also pulling 10 names at random. For every grain of rice you donated you get a chance to win, so the person who donated 600,000 grains gets 600,000 "tickets" but even if you donated 50, you do have a chance to win. You need to
1. Go to the free rice site.
2. Register (it's free)
3. When you play, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PICKED RondaUFC as the group.
That's it. On my blog, I had said we would pick five people at random but Ronda told me that she had told people ten random winners, so ten it is.
Prizes - some people will get Ronda Knows t-shirts and Keep Calm and Break Arms t-shirts, all signed by Ronda and donated by the really nice people at Fight Chix.
Other people will get judo towels (they're nice) and t-shirts donated by the even nicer people at Judo Unlimited, also autographed.
I am not sure what the top two people get. Last time, she gave them limited edition Topps cards. There were a few that were a kind of misprint and Ronda owns all of them except for the two she gave away. She's kind of busy with the fight this weekend but I'll find out next week. I THINK I know what one of the prizes is but I don't want to say the wrong thing and then have someone disappointed.
Ninja gamers - All of you who said you supported our game but did not actually pledge, you have six days left to go to the Kickstarter site and get a license for the game, a signed photo of Ronda posing for a fight scene in it , a poster and other cool stuff.
Answers to three questions about that:
1. What the heck did Ronda have to do with this? We wanted to make a FUN adventure game to teach math. Since Ronda plays games a lot (used to be a game forum moderator), we had her test everything before we released it and she contributed a lot of ideas for improvement. After the fight, she is posing as a model for some of the fight scenes.
2. Why are we doing the Kickstarter? My company received $100,000 to develop a beta version. HALF of the companies in that group will get a $450,000 grant to create a full-blown product. A big part of the selection process is "commercial potential" . So, if we can get a few hundred people to each pledge $15 to get a beta version of the game or $50 to get a full version, plus a photo of Ronda plus we'll sponsor a student in a reservation school, that shows a lot of commercial viability.
3. Where does the money go? How much is attorney fees, CEO salary, etc. ? Of the money we are raising, half will go to art work. Our company is good with programming but we need to pay people for the graphic design and animation because all of us but Ronda suck at art and she is busy punching people. Another 30% will go to documentation - writing up a user's manual, a wiki for tech support so if something doesn't work we can fix it right away or tell you what to do on your computer to get it to work (don't block pop-ups) and how, an FAQ for users to find answers to their own questions. The final 20% goes to game expenses. This includes mostly software used for game design and a few smaller expenses like a 3-D mouse. The CEO (that is me) is paid from other contracts. We aren't asking people in the public to back this project without a lot of skin in the game ourselves. We're not jerks.
Since this blog is getting really long and I have more to do before I head out to the weigh-ins in Anaheim ... just a little bit on the
Don't Throw Up, Throw Down - Ronda has been pretty busy with this fight. As soon as it is over, we'll have more details on this. What I can tell you now:
Clinic with Ronda Rousey - March 9th at Glendale Fight Club
There will only be 30 or 40 tickets sold.
No spectators allowed except for parents of minors - if you have a 13-year-old you bring we're not going to ask you to leave!
100% of the money will go the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Clinic. In fact, checks will be made out to them.
No, Ronda has no other clinics planned. She is only doing this to raise money for the fund to fight eating disorders.
Shameless plugs section
The book from me and Jim Pedro, Sr. WINNING ON THE GROUND is now out as an ebook.
for the Kindle, here
the Nook, here or
Sony or other ereaders, here
You can get it in the iTunes store, too.
And it comes out on paperback in March, those of you into dead tree media can order it in paper back from Black Belt here We expect that our book will be available in paperback by the clinic, and if so, we are donating copies that Ronda and I can sign. All money from that will go to Didi Hirsch as well
1 comment:
Dear Dr. De Mars,
If I may, a shout-out to your daughter, Ronda with the hope that she wins BIG in her upcoming championship fight. (I think you did one helluva job as a judo competitor, mother, and as an educator. Bravo to you!)
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