(note: You can look at the slides and text here; video will be posted as soon as I get it.)
A week and a half ago, I received an email asking me if I'd be willing to do an Ignite talk for the March 4 NYC event, part of Global Ignite Week. If you're not familiar with Ignite, here's the deal: You have 5 minutes to give your talk; you create a PowerPoint presentation to go with the talk, but here's the kicker: You must do 20 slides, and the slides will advance automatically every 15 seconds. Talk about creative restraint inspiration! Not only is it an amazing challenge and a great place to flex your speaker muscles, but the Ignite platform also reaches far and wide into multiple communities, and can be a huge opportunity to reach lots of audiences with your message. Was I up for it? Sure.
Then the panic set in. Oh my God, what I have I signed myself up for?
Though it's been eight months since I actually launched the crowdfunding for my book (and then wrote about how it was going), it seems to have kicked up a new firestorm of discussion over the past weekend. Much of it began on Twitter; then a few people wrote up blog posts covering it. I only discovered the discussion after it was well underway (evidently I'm difficult to track down online, and not much of a conversationalist anyways, heh), so the last few days have been spent correcting factual errors and offering catch-up insight as to why I believe so deeply in this model. I'm hoping now to sum up a few of the arguments I've made elsewhere, but moreso I'd like to pull back and look at some big picture issues.
For background, here are the series of posts that sum up the first discussions on Twitter, and subsequent responses:
There seem to be two sets of argument made against crowdfunding in much of the discussion I've seen: one, it reveals the funding seeker as a shameless self-promoter and snake-oil salesperson; two, it destroys the ethos of publishing either by allowing publishers to never have to produce advances again, or by allowing just any ol' work to be produced without blood/sweat/tears.â„¢
In case you were looking for the lighter side of the State of the Union, you've come to the right place. Sonal and Deanna, while eating pie and playing this drinking game, are here for your entertainment. We'll kick things off around 8pm or so… maybe closer to 8:30 once we figure out the pie situation.
This was shot in June 2009 in Toronto for GetInvolved. It was a really fun conversation with the producers… I talk about free-for-all organizing, how influence is changing, the importance of authenticity–and I start the first Twitter Anon meeting, to boot.
Some more thoughts on my previous post, and a couple of things to clear up. Two misconceptions arose from my post because I chose not to lay out a lot exposition on some of my own beliefs on how the world works. Let me rectify that now.
A post from Internet analyst/author/smart-person Clay Shirky titled "A Rant About Women" has got quite the discussion going around the Intertubes. Read (or at least skim) it before continuing; let me also take this introductory opportunity to do the obligatory feminist thing and thank the dude for taking time out of his busy schedule to wrestle with the giant questions of why don't women do as well as men at X. Here it comes… thank you. OK, so I'm being a wee bit sarcastic, but seriously: it really is nice to see these conversations happen outside of the usual suspected fora of listservs, blogs, etc, all for and by the ladies.
Much of the resulting discussion has been a bit heavy-handed on both sides– "OMG, he's totally right!" "OMG, he's totally wrong!" Some great points have already been well covered by others, especially Jezebel blogger Anna's point that women aren't allowed culturally to be the aggressive jerks that successful men are. This was also the place where I had the most visceral reaction — the conclusion that we need to teach women to be more like men: more assertive and aggressive, demanding of what they want and need. This approach to solving the "where are teh womenz" problem misses the mark in a way that 70s & 80s power feminism also missed the mark for me. The "we're just as good as men" statements and subsequent actions set the wrong frame. It assumes:
(note: You can look at the 
In case you were looking for the lighter side of the State of the Union, you've come to the right place. Sonal and Deanna, while eating pie and playing this 
