I had the distinct honor of being one of about 60 people who was part of the hoopla for Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin. The whole rollout was coordinated to happen the morning of the book’s release, which meant organizing dozens and dozens of people, scheduling interviews, getting links correct, and a whole lot more.
The woman who organized the entire thing is Ishita Gupta, whose official title was “head of hoopla” for Seth Godin. After the big day was over, I marveled at the accomplishment and realized that even though Ishita and I had exchanged e-mails a couple of times, I really didn’t know her as well as I should. After our interview, we ended up talking for another half hour or so, and I’m really glad to be able to get to know her better and work with her. You’ll be glad to get to know her, too.
In our conversation, Ishita and I talk about the hoopla, about being part of Seth’s Alternative MBA Program, her upcoming online magazine fear.less stories, the late Howard Zinn and the iPad.
Yesterday on Twitter, I noticed someone posting about a film they’d seen on Hulu called Lemonade. I follow around 11,000 people on Twitter, so I see a lot of stuff flit by — but for some reason I clicked and ended up watching the whole film.
And now I’m here to tell you that you should make the time to watch Lemonade - it’s interesting, well made and really important. It’s true stories about people who lost their jobs and found their lives.
I had the real pleasure of talking to two of the filmmakers - creator Erik Proulx and director Marc Collucci. The interviews are both excellent and inspirational. But if you haven’t seen Lemonade yet, I’ve included both the trailer and the complete film below. You might want to watch those first, then come back and listen to the interviews.
Erik Proulx is Lemonade‘s creator and he’s also featured in the film. As he says, he was laid off and found his life’s work. He started a blog called Please Feed The Animals for recently unemployed ad people, became active on sites like Facebook and Twitter and then started work on Lemonade.
We discuss some of that history in our interview, plus how building a treehouse can land you a job, the pivotal role Twitter paid in the project and some behind the scenes details of how he put the film together.
Marc Colucci is the director of Lemonade. If you’re interested in filmmaking, you’ll want to check out the interview with Marc; we discuss some technical stuff like the different cameras used on the film and Marc’s philosophy on getting interviews from people in a documentary. We get pretty geeky for a bit but even if you aren’t a film nerd, there’s a lot of great material in here…
Here’s the trailer…
And here’s the entire 37 minute film that you can watch free through Hulu…
I have had the unique privilege of being able to interview a number of really amazing people in the past few weeks; from artists like Amanda Palmer to bloggers like Chris Gilllebeau to entertainment industry executives like Chris de Faria. One unifying theme in all these interviews is the idea that we are at a point where being a creative individual, not a commodity, isn’t just a nice idea — it’s becoming an absolute economic necessity.
Best-selling author Seth Godin today released his full fledged treatise on that very subject, his new book Linchpin. Godin begins the book by telling you that you are a genius and spends the rest of the book making the case why it’s important you believe him.
I had a 40 minute discussion with Seth Godin a couple of weeks ago and in the next few days I invite you back to hear the entire thing, which I’ll be posting as an MP3 a few more segments on YouTube. If you’re Seth Godin fan, I think you will really enjoy the entire interview because I was able to get Godin to discuss a little bit about his process, and his relationship with his readers.
If you’re interested in more Seth Godin hoopla, you’ll definitely want to check out the Squidoo page Seth has put together that links to a number of other articles and blog posts about the book. (And please vote up this post!)
The second part of my interview with performer Amanda Palmer. She talks about wanting to be a rock star, insecurity, Madonna and reaching a wider audience.
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