This morning I attended the press screening for The Social Network together with 80+ journalists, representatives from Sony and security guys in night goggles who patrolled the isles looking for hidden photo or video cameras. I think the journalists liked it. They seemed to enjoy the movie and LOLed regularly.
Me? I was blown away.
Seriously. I left the theatre after the movie ended, walked back to the office all dazed and confused with red eyes and a hot head. I think this movie marks a definitive turning point for us. For everybody? No, just ‘us’. I mean the people who read this blog, the people I call my friends and the entrepreneurs who work in our industry. That is ‘us’.
Let me explain: I started working with the web in 1996, launched my first company in 1997, sold it in 1999, became a paper millionaire, lost everything in 2001, started another company, sold it in 2003, made a lot of money, started a new company, then The Next Web and a whole bunch of other companies. I’m pretty sure I’m a paper millionaire again.
But besides all that, I absofuckinglutely and totally love with what I do. There are no words to describe the thrill of working with the most important invention of all time: The Internet. In fact, not just ‘working with’ the Internet but making possible, growing, reporting on and playing a part in it.
Not that I didn’t try to explain it to other people. In 1996 people simply didn’t understand. In 1999 they didn’t understand either but they noticed that there was some money to be made. In 2001 they sighed in relief because the thing they didn’t understand apparently turned to shit and seemed to drag all those damn geeks with it. In 2003 they wondered why I was still doing what I did but I still had a hard time explaining why I loved my work so much.
Now, in 2010 you would think they would understand. But no, I still get people who seriously ask me ‘How the hell will facebook ever make money’ or ‘I don’t get Twitter and all those people who need to tweet what they are having for breakfast’. I don’t exactly blame them for being ignorant dinosaurs but damn, they don’t make life easier either.
Now back to the movie and why I think it is so cool: the reason it is so incredibly mesmerizing to watch, the reason I’m going to send my friends, family, hell, even enemies too is because David Fincher (the director) did such an amazing job of catching exactly why I love the work I do. Never before have I seen a movie /show/book catch the thrill of working on start-ups, writing code or blogposts and seeing the world interact with your inventions. This movie is going to do for tech entrepreneurship what Wall Street did for Wall Street.
That is the reason why I came out shaking and close to tears. Not tears of sadness but of happiness. I felt invigorated, energized and ready to go back to work and try to change the world.
So, are you a geek, an entrepreneur, do you like the Web and think it will be ever better in the future? Are you thinking about starting a business or are you running one? Do you like, dislike or don’t even know Mark Zuckerberg? Are you on facebook, twitter or still holding back? Then drop what you are doing and go watch this movie.
What Internet activism looks like
Anil Dash hits one so far out of the park it attains orbit in this response to a silly Malcolm Gladwell column that decried Internet activism as incapable of achieving meaningful change. It's all must-read stuff, but here's the bit that made me want to stand up and salute:
Today, Dale Dougherty and the dozens of others who have led Maker Faire, and the culture of "making", are in front of a
movement of millions who are proactive about challenging the constrictions that law and corporations are trying to place on how they communicate, create and live. The lesson that simply making things is a radical political act has enormous precedence in political history; I learned it well as a child when my own family's conversation after a screening of Gandhi turned to the salt protests in India, which were first catalyzed in my family's home state of Orissa, and led to my great-grandfather walking alongside Gandhi and others in the salt marches to come. Today's American Tea Partiers see even the original "tea party" largely as a metaphor, but the salt marches were a declaration of self-determination as expressed through manufacturing that took the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party and made it part of everyday life.
To his last day, my great-grandfather wore khadi, the handspun clothing that didn't just represent independence from the British Raj in an abstract way, but made defiance of onerous British regulation as plain as the clothes on one's back. At Maker Faire this weekend, there were numerous examples of clothing that were made to defy laws about everything from spectrum to encryption law. It would have been only an afternoon's work to construct a t-shirt that broadcast CSS-descrambling code over unauthorized spectrum in defiance of the DMCA.
And if we put the making movement in the context of other social and political movements, it's had amazing success. In city after city, year after year, tens of thousands of people pay money to show up and learn about taking control of their media, learning, consumption and communications. In contrast to groups like the Tea Party, the crowd at Maker Faire is diverse, includes children and adults of all ages, and never finds itself in conflict with other groups based on identity or politics. More importantly, the jobs that many of us have in 2030 will be determined by young people who attended a Maker Faire, in industries that they've created. There is no other political movement in America today with a credible claim at creating the jobs of the future.
Make The Revolution
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bench craft company rip off
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Catherine Herridge - Fox <b>News</b> | Gender Discrimination | Age | Mediaite
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint yesterday against Fox News for a gender and age discrimination case dating back to 2007. The FNC correspondent, Catherine Herridge, is still an employee with the company, ...
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This morning I attended the press screening for The Social Network together with 80+ journalists, representatives from Sony and security guys in night goggles who patrolled the isles looking for hidden photo or video cameras. I think the journalists liked it. They seemed to enjoy the movie and LOLed regularly.
Me? I was blown away.
Seriously. I left the theatre after the movie ended, walked back to the office all dazed and confused with red eyes and a hot head. I think this movie marks a definitive turning point for us. For everybody? No, just ‘us’. I mean the people who read this blog, the people I call my friends and the entrepreneurs who work in our industry. That is ‘us’.
Let me explain: I started working with the web in 1996, launched my first company in 1997, sold it in 1999, became a paper millionaire, lost everything in 2001, started another company, sold it in 2003, made a lot of money, started a new company, then The Next Web and a whole bunch of other companies. I’m pretty sure I’m a paper millionaire again.
But besides all that, I absofuckinglutely and totally love with what I do. There are no words to describe the thrill of working with the most important invention of all time: The Internet. In fact, not just ‘working with’ the Internet but making possible, growing, reporting on and playing a part in it.
Not that I didn’t try to explain it to other people. In 1996 people simply didn’t understand. In 1999 they didn’t understand either but they noticed that there was some money to be made. In 2001 they sighed in relief because the thing they didn’t understand apparently turned to shit and seemed to drag all those damn geeks with it. In 2003 they wondered why I was still doing what I did but I still had a hard time explaining why I loved my work so much.
Now, in 2010 you would think they would understand. But no, I still get people who seriously ask me ‘How the hell will facebook ever make money’ or ‘I don’t get Twitter and all those people who need to tweet what they are having for breakfast’. I don’t exactly blame them for being ignorant dinosaurs but damn, they don’t make life easier either.
Now back to the movie and why I think it is so cool: the reason it is so incredibly mesmerizing to watch, the reason I’m going to send my friends, family, hell, even enemies too is because David Fincher (the director) did such an amazing job of catching exactly why I love the work I do. Never before have I seen a movie /show/book catch the thrill of working on start-ups, writing code or blogposts and seeing the world interact with your inventions. This movie is going to do for tech entrepreneurship what Wall Street did for Wall Street.
That is the reason why I came out shaking and close to tears. Not tears of sadness but of happiness. I felt invigorated, energized and ready to go back to work and try to change the world.
So, are you a geek, an entrepreneur, do you like the Web and think it will be ever better in the future? Are you thinking about starting a business or are you running one? Do you like, dislike or don’t even know Mark Zuckerberg? Are you on facebook, twitter or still holding back? Then drop what you are doing and go watch this movie.
What Internet activism looks like
Anil Dash hits one so far out of the park it attains orbit in this response to a silly Malcolm Gladwell column that decried Internet activism as incapable of achieving meaningful change. It's all must-read stuff, but here's the bit that made me want to stand up and salute:
Today, Dale Dougherty and the dozens of others who have led Maker Faire, and the culture of "making", are in front of a
movement of millions who are proactive about challenging the constrictions that law and corporations are trying to place on how they communicate, create and live. The lesson that simply making things is a radical political act has enormous precedence in political history; I learned it well as a child when my own family's conversation after a screening of Gandhi turned to the salt protests in India, which were first catalyzed in my family's home state of Orissa, and led to my great-grandfather walking alongside Gandhi and others in the salt marches to come. Today's American Tea Partiers see even the original "tea party" largely as a metaphor, but the salt marches were a declaration of self-determination as expressed through manufacturing that took the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party and made it part of everyday life.
To his last day, my great-grandfather wore khadi, the handspun clothing that didn't just represent independence from the British Raj in an abstract way, but made defiance of onerous British regulation as plain as the clothes on one's back. At Maker Faire this weekend, there were numerous examples of clothing that were made to defy laws about everything from spectrum to encryption law. It would have been only an afternoon's work to construct a t-shirt that broadcast CSS-descrambling code over unauthorized spectrum in defiance of the DMCA.
And if we put the making movement in the context of other social and political movements, it's had amazing success. In city after city, year after year, tens of thousands of people pay money to show up and learn about taking control of their media, learning, consumption and communications. In contrast to groups like the Tea Party, the crowd at Maker Faire is diverse, includes children and adults of all ages, and never finds itself in conflict with other groups based on identity or politics. More importantly, the jobs that many of us have in 2030 will be determined by young people who attended a Maker Faire, in industries that they've created. There is no other political movement in America today with a credible claim at creating the jobs of the future.
Make The Revolution
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Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Catherine Herridge - Fox <b>News</b> | Gender Discrimination | Age | Mediaite
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint yesterday against Fox News for a gender and age discrimination case dating back to 2007. The FNC correspondent, Catherine Herridge, is still an employee with the company, ...
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Catherine Herridge - Fox <b>News</b> | Gender Discrimination | Age | Mediaite
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint yesterday against Fox News for a gender and age discrimination case dating back to 2007. The FNC correspondent, Catherine Herridge, is still an employee with the company, ...
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101
Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.
The WORCESTER PARK Blog, Surrey ¦: Sky <b>News</b>
"I came out of my front door this morning to see a VERY low flying BA jet passing over Trent Way - just seen on the news that it had to make an emergency landing after just 10 minutes. Never seen one that low even though we're used to ...
Catherine Herridge - Fox <b>News</b> | Gender Discrimination | Age | Mediaite
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint yesterday against Fox News for a gender and age discrimination case dating back to 2007. The FNC correspondent, Catherine Herridge, is still an employee with the company, ...
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