About

Josh BabetskiHi! My name is Josh Babetski. This is my official site.

You can also usually find me online using the handle/nickname/username of "quixado™," which is a shortening of QUIXotic BravADO™, the name of this site. You can find a list of the online communities I frequent most in the sidebar.

I'm the founder of Collective Detective™, where we develop social location gaming and entertainment applications. Our project Collectivus™ is in limited testing; Supporters Union
is in the concept and design phase.

I'm a New Yorker who just recently moved to Austin, Texas with my lovely fiancée Traci, our son, and two very odd cats. In addition to tech, I follow soccer and the business of the sport, pick at designing our future house, and have an odd knack for pop culture trivia.

Puzzy from Collective Detective

Puzzy

I get asked this a lot so: The avatar you'll find me using all over the Internet is of a blue jig-saw puzzle piece. His name is "Puzzy" and you'll find him running around Collectivus as a virtual object called a "Thingie."

Contact

Online Communities

Chat / Call

Professional Profile and Projects

Collective Detective

CD is a micro-business I founded in 2002 to create interesting social gaming and entertainment applications. We've participated, designed, and consulted on a few transmedia and interactive experiences over the years.

Collectivus

I'm currently working on Collectivus, a social location game currently available as a small prototype. We have a few hundred physical rubber ducks, and thousands of virtual objects located all over the world — we call them "Thingies." These Thingies travel from place to place, each recording a narrative of the places they've been and people they've encountered. This creates a unique way to randomly discover new people, places, and stories when a Thingie is encountered. I wear many hats on the project: Creator, Co-Designer, Product Manager, and Co-Developer. A small team scattered across the U.S. works on Collectivus.

Other Places to Find Collectivus

Supporters Union

In 2013, we'll be launching Supporters Union, a new project related to recruiting and connecting supporters of soccer.

Follow Along for Supporters Union Updates

Myxer

Director of Product Management

In 2013, I began working with Myxer out of Austin, Texas. I'm helping drive the web and mobile product roadmap for a new social music product launching later in the year.

Interactive One

Director of Social and Local Products

In 2011, I was recruited by Interactive One to re-imagine and modernize their flagship online product: BlackPlanet. So we created BlackPlanet Next, a social curation engine that allows the BlackPlanet community to create discussions from content on social networks, as well as filter and surface relevant trends not seen as part of a larger social community.

I also created an Email and Event Services platform, a new user profile store to centralize and better manage the member data and email marketing and newsletters from across the company's portfolio of radio, social, content, and partner properties. Other projects I was involved in: Revising, repositioning, and developing mobile applications for the original BlackPlanet application; launching BlackPlanet Radio, and launching and migrating content partners to the iOne publishing platform.

MapQuest

Senior Product Manager and Evangelist / Marketing & Distribution; Senior Software Engineer

I spent 7 years at MapQuest, where I split my time mostly on three major areas: Social/Community Engagement and Marketing, Product Development and Management, and working as part of the Business Development team on Distribution initiatives. I joined MapQuest as a developer in 2004, where I worked on modernizing the client-side code for MapQuest.com. I also worked as part of the team developing MapQuest APIs.

Notebook

Recent Flickr Photos

Recent Twitter Posts