Vincent Denietolis was a client of mine (Jordan Erickson) when I first told him about Cool Mic. My day job then was as an independent I.T. consultant and network support technician. Vinny and Kris Rietman owned a billing company and I took care of their network. Vinny was a great business client, a friend and someone who believed in allowing projects like Cool Mic to bloom.
Back then (circa 2015) Cool Mic was imagined as what SubJam is today. Vinny was intrigued by the concept of a mobile app that would help musicians and artists connect with fans through live broadcasts. Cool Mic, as history dictates, became a more generalized and F/OSS Icecast source client because of the ways we were seeing it used post-release. Back then, however, Cool Mic was an app that would give bands and artists of all types a way to promote and interact with fans. Internally the Cool Mic team forked the project into what is now SubJam, a hyperfocused music social livestreaming platform.
In December, 2015 we arranged a meeting to discuss funding and the recent Kickstarter campaign I had launched to get development finished and Cool Mic pushed out to the Google Play Store. Both Kris and Vinny were excited as both were very much into music and Vinny was a professionally trained operatic singer.
I remember the night well - I drove 30 minutes in a heavy downpour through a challenging mountain highway to get to the place in which we were meeting. He also drove about the same amount of time but in the opposite direction. We met at a nice, classy restaurant and bar to have a drink and chat about Cool Mic. The majority of the conversation was actually focused on our families, however - he absolutely adored his son (which is a talented piano player) and couldn't speak enough about him. I gained valuable perspective as a father from him and it was one of the most enjoyable business meetings of my life.
As the conversation progressed, he asked me to give him the rundown on what Cool Mic was. I showed him similar apps along with the current version of Cool Mic and he was excited to help complete funding to get it out into peoples' hands. He believed in what we were trying to accomplish and wanted to be a part of it. I will never forget how good it felt to have one of the first people validate the idea. Cool Mic's development cycle was completed, released and is now enjoyed by people all around the world!
Cool Mic's development continued for the next couple of years and Vinny was excited to hear the continued progress with that and with SubJam. In June of 2018, however, Vinny died of a heart attack. The world lost a great soul that day. In memory of him and his contribution to Cool Mic and SubJam, we decided to name our microphone-mascot after him. So here's to Vinny, a great man who, among many other achievements in his life, helped this project see the light of day!