Melissa is getting pretty great at editing, but for what it’s worth, she’s still learning about it, had Adrienne Brawley the videographer edited this interview, you all would have giver her a high five for best editing job EVAH. Photo credit: http://caringoldberg.com/Ideas/ideas05.html

A big thank you to Liz Danzico who suggested that I interview Carin Goldberg for my project.

Meeting Carin was one of the highlights of my trip to NY.  Not only was she charismatic, knowledgeable, funny, and gracious, she also fed me and my film crew the best chocolate we’ve ever had. Which is why it’s hard for me to take issue with a point that she brought up about not being selfish enough. What exactly does that mean?

If you dig being selfish, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute to the cause, join the tweet team for $30, email me about how you’d like to help, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

I didn’t plan to do this interview. I didn’t know who Jeff Pulver was. I met his eccentric friend Geo Geller at a Webgrrrls party I sneaked into to meet my camera person Adrienne. I don’t know what Geo was doing there but he and Adrienne were chatting and drinking it up and became pretty insistent that I  interview Jeff.  They KNEW, even if I didn’t, that Jeff was the real deal, and I needed to have a conversation with him.

Geo took me out for some split pea soup after the party, at some point in the meandering of dialog he handed me his cell phone, mid call:

"Hi this is Melissa"

"Hi Melissa this is Jeff Pulver"

SURPRISE - an interview is born.

Adrienne and I met Geo at Grand Central Station two days later.  We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, or exactly where Geo was taking us. In fact, when we got to our train stop, Geo says, " I don’t know where he’s meeting us, or when, we can just wait in the Dunkin Donuts."  

It crossed my mind that Geo may have been plotting to enslave us into frying vats of donut holes for the rest of our natural born lives. What the hell were we doing in the dark standing in front of Dunkin Donuts? I was starting to rethink this whole "go with your gut" thing, starting to wonder if this "uncomfortable" intuitive moment was really just plain ole’ uncomfortable. How could I even think that I could make a movie with just an idea but no grand plan? I was starting to remember those public service announcements that played during Saturday morning cartoons, the ones about not going anywhere with a stranger.  I’ll spare you ALL the thoughts racing through my head in the small moments we waited because lo and behold Jeff Pulver pulled up in his SUV.  Luck 1 - Donut hole frying enslavement 0.

Sometimes, you just get lucky, and that’s OK.

To find out more regarding the fine line between abduction and intuition, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute to the cause, join the tweet team for $30, email me about how you’d like to help, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

Disclaimer: Melissa is getting really good at editing, however you should not be fooled into thinking that she has past the intermediate level of the editing experience just yet. Please make allowances. Shout out to Adrienne Brawley for shooting this interview, and to Lucy, my canine twin.

Liz Danzico. A month before we interviewed we sat drinking Clover coffee on a bench outside. The bench had been offered to us by a familiar looking famous guy who wasn’t quite famous enough for either or us to actually name - but we knew, and we were grateful that we had been afforded the moment to thank the mysteriously nameless celebrity. 

That knowing, that moment, that epiphonous magical flash when an idea becomes obvious, even if you can’t articulate it quite yet… what is that? What does that feel like?

For Liz Danzico, it feels just a tiny smidge uncomfortable. What? No still small voice? No tingles of sensational electricity? No instantanious calm?

"When I put myself in a situation where I’m actually uncomfortable, it forces me to look at myself a certain way, it reveals things and teaches me where the next path is. That kind of shows me a puzzle piece, and shows me how the pieces fit together for the next thing."

"When I’m looking for or presented with a new opportunity, and that opportunity seems like it’s going to be uncomfortable… I know that it’s going to be the right thing for me because that sense of feeling uncomfortable in any kind of way, it always reveals something new about myself and teaches me something new about myself that I know will lead to a really rewarding experience."

 It’s not a huge leap, it’s not a frightening all or nothing moment. It’s a tiny risk, a pin prick, a new item ordered from the menu. It’s teaching a language you know in a country you don’t, or picking up a camera and interviewing strangers, or asking an actor if the seat next to him is taken. It’s this tiny moment of preference for growth and newness that perhaps we have been socialized to ignore.

"What’s authentic is what’s inside of you, and what’s creative is what you can achieve based on your insticts… and if you can follow your instincts you can follow a creative path…You need to establish a pattern of how to strip away the excessive things, because so many things get in the way."

So then the question is: How do we strip away the excess, and how do we know what our authentic intuition is?

If you also want to find the link between authenticity and creativity, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute to the cause, join the tweet team for $30, email me about how you’d like to help, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

Disclaimer: Melissa edited this interview herself, and while she’ll tell you herself that she’s come a long way, she’s still at best semi-pro. Had the brilliant professional Adrienne Brawley who shot the film edited this video it would’ve been nominated for award after award after award.

  When in May I first approached Seth Godin to interview for Life In Perpetual Beta, I had no clue as to what exactly I was going to do with the film once I finished it.  In fact, I had no idea about many of the aspects of the film and admitted as much.  I guess it was no surprise then that he politely declined my invitation stating that perhaps I should get back to him when I knew more about what I was doing.  My metaphorical ducks were not in a row, in fact, I’m not sure I even had any ducks at that point.

"This job might not work out, this project might not fly, but what will I have learned as a result of it so that I’ll be better positioned to do the next one?"

Six months later my friends, I re-introduce myself and ask again, this time with a much clearer vision of what this film is becoming and a track record of how much it has already become. I was very excited to get this interview, and I was incredibly proud of myself for not giving up on getting this interview filmed once Seth Godin did say yes.  Do you know that all that stood between me and an interview with Seth Godin was the cost of one lousy plane ticket? I don’t know about you, but that asking for help & money part, that took all I had to push through to finish this interview. (Seriously, who takes on a project like this and doesn’t have the $300 to get a plane ticket? This pride over tiny sums of money has been a deal breaker for me with so many other projects.)

"A lot of people start stuff, get 80% of the way, lose interest or lose support and then stop… It’s way better to set up a life where you are pushing through the dip. It’s way better to say, I start a project, I push it to it’s logical conclusion, fail or no fail, but I did that and I have one more brick in that wall and can keep building those together, but don’t be a dabbler, don’t be someone who just goes after experiences."

Anyhow, I pushed through this little dip with the support of some really great people.  I went to New York and I interviewed these amazing people with amazing perspectives, one of which was Seth Godin. And now, I will spend a majority of my time editing all of these interviews into a 90 minute film. Because this duck, this passion of mine, is worth pursuing 100%.

"You can spend a lot of time getting all your ducks in a row, but it’s way more important to do something with the duck."

If you’d like to see what else happens with this duck, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute to the cause, join the tweet team for $30, email me about how you’d like to help, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

Remind me not to render video on the "Streaming Web" setting again, not very pretty, but it works for today!

If you think creativity is the new black, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute, join the tweet team, email me, or scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily.

Disclaimer: Melissa edited this wonderfully shot video. Had a professional edited Adrienne Brawley’s beautiful work, sponsors would throw money at Melissa and not ask one question about deliverables.

I met Brian Solis in Mountain View, Ca, home of Google and The Computer History Museum.  While waiting in the museum courtyard for my camera person to set up, I spotted a Babbage Machine in the museum window, it’s one of only two in existence.        I begged my way into the closed history museum and was on such a high from getting to see a piece of "thought antiquity" brought to life that Brian Solis could have said anything to me and I would’ve thought it was brilliant.  As luck would have it, what he said was brilliant anyway. It was a pleasure to meet and interview him.

I blindly interviewed Brian, he was an interview suggested to me by Brett Petersel of Mashable and Jane Quigley of Crayon. I had no idea what he was going to say, and honestly, I wondered why I agreed to talk to a PR guy. But wow, Brian Solis seems to be tapped into what is happening to our society as we adapt new technology to the way we want to live. And you know, he hit my soft spot for education (I send my 13yr old to a school where kids learn at their own pace whatever it is that they are interested in… I think the current public school model is a curiosity killer)

"Everything is changing to the point where (educational) content has to change or it’s just going to become irrelevant, it may actually hold (students) back… in the real world."

Does this make anyone else think about my first interview with Jason Fried, how he said that a person’s scholastic achivements mattered little to him and his company’s hiring process, what did matter was their level of curiosity and skill for the job at hand.

I think that society is changing and in turn it’s going to change how we structure our own goals and in turn how we meet those  goals. I think that It’s going to open up a broader set of opportunities and ideas for us, ones that we that never thought or deemed possible.

 That is presisely what I was thinking.  Is the planned life, the one that we plot on a timeline, is it worth living anymore? Is the method of planning from the future backwards to achive a goal a dying and irrelivant way to live? With so much of the world opening up to us, is it possible to follow our interests and intuition and still prosper? Is it possible that instead of conforming to our world, we will find ways to conform the world to us. Are collaboration and communication really the cornerstone of the new economy? Is creative thinking a currency?  My sources are telling me yes. What do you think?

If you think creativity is the new black, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.  If you want to contribute, monitarily or otherwise, join the tweet team, email me, or scroll to the bottom of the page and donate to the film.

I guess what goes around comes around. Here, videographer Adrienne Brawley and designer Xuanlana Nguyen interview me! How Life In Perpetual Beta came to be and how it’s evolved.

For more karmic circles subscribe to Life In Perpetual Beta. If you want to get the insider scoop follow me on Twitter or even better join the LIPB twitter production team for updates interaction and cool schwag.

Disclaimer: Melissa herself edited this video, if the phenominal videographer Adrienne Brawley edited it, you would nominate it for every award possible.

As usual,  I reached out to my friends on twitter for an idea of who I should interview while in San Francisco.  Chris Saad of Faraday Media,  The Data Portability Project, & JS-Kit was on more than one persons "must interview" list.  I did a quick scan of Chris’s personal blog and knew that once again, my twitter pals were right, I had to interview this guy.  I swear sometimes, twitter is like the magic 8 ball of the internet.

I’m blown away that Chris Saad has ALWAYS been interested in technology and how the internet will change things for us.  He was on the news at 10 yrs old talking about it!  I don’t know anybody that has been that passionate about one thing for that long. He’s the anomaly in my interviewee list in that regard. Are you doing exactly what you wanted to do when you were 10?

Another thing.  This is a whole new area of expertise I never guessed existed. He pays attention to what people pay attention to online? He’s like a technological sociologist/anthropologist/sleuth/advocate/seer.   That’s a pretty cool gig if you can create it and have the intellect to sustain the amount of lateral thinking required. (Um, I’m no rocket scientist but what he does seems exciting but mentally taxing to me.)

So many more questions arose for me from this interview, so many things I want to know about and I understand all fit together, the hard part is dissecting what it is I want to know personally, and what I want to investigate further for this film. Perhaps I can take Chris’s advice and build a better filter, i.e. it may be time for me to build that storyboard.

Seems to be a theme with me these days. Everything belongs but nothing fits.

For more references to rocket science and magic 8 balls subscribe to Life In Perpetual Beta.  If you want to get the insider scoop follow me on Twitter or even better join the LIPB twitter production team for updates interaction and cool schwag.

Disclaimer: Melissa edited this beautifully shot interview. Had the same time an attention been used in editing and uploading it as was taken in filming it the Rapture would be upon us at this very moment.  Thanks to Adrienne Brawley for the San Francisco filming.

Xuanlana Nguyen is an artist, web designer, and the sole proprietor of Loetus Creative, but most of all she’s a story teller.  She is passionate about communicating a story in everything she creates whether it be a web site or an illustration, she is intent on using her creativity to communicate some kind of narrative. She views her one woman design company as a venture in new school storytelling, an interesting mix of collaboration to bring about a meaningful interaction for both her clients and the people that ultimately visiting the websites she creates.  An interesting way to articulate collaborative creativity I think.

She also touches on her work with incarcerated young women and her passion for helping them to tell their stories through their creative process.  You can tell by watching Lana talk that it’s a very important part of what she’s doing.  In fact, I would almost go as far as to say, that these interactions are exactly what she is in business for.  She designs websites that tell a story so that she can afford to teach other young women to design artwork that tells their story.  

I would’ve loved to interview Lana for longer, and had the construction workers next door kept their promise of remaining quiet for 20 minutes I could have. I would have gotten her perspective about what it’s like to be a female entrepreneur following her own path as opposed to the one her mentors set for her.  I would’ve asked her if she thought the expectations were different between men and women in regards to creative thinking and problem solving.  I would have asked her views about why it is that so many women stay in the background of their businesses.

I could have asked her why she thought that when I asked around for examples of women who were good representations of the core themes of Life In Perpetual Beta… men and women alike came up with nothing.  But I didn’t get that chance, so now I’m asking you?  I know they are out there, I know that their stories are amazing,  so why is it we have such a difficult time recognizing them?

 i struck out on my own a year ago this next month after a meandering pinball path from berkeley to art school to ad agency to nonprofit arts to my own solo gig (under the guise of Loetus Creative). My trajectory mirrors the way in which I live my life and how I approach my work both personally and professionally; it suggests a seeming discontinuity that like a snowball picks up momentum and direction that becomes clear closer to the end, but it’s useful to enjoy the ride and not freak out.

My sense of purpose comes from an interest in communication and voice. What I think I share with other women entrepreneurs/professionals is figuring out how to push my interests/aptitudes in a way that also services a community. For me personally, it is about the small and local successes that have nothing to do with recognition, money, or web traffic, but are instead measured by impact, resonance, or personal reward for the work you do. For example, I work in visual communications, which often means redesigning a brand and an online presence for a client, but the same principles apply to the art classes I do with the young women at Juvenile Hall. In either case, I measure my success in how clearly I am able to help my "client" articulate an idea or story, thereby allowing them to connect to a greater audience or community.

This is a very "feminine" approach to working that is integral to what I do both in form and function: it relies on the actual process of communication and collaboration that is sometimes slow and circuitous, but ultimately the most meaningful to everyone involved. The goal is not just tangible deliverables, though these are useful byproducts– but it’s about listening as much as telling. How I see it, that’s the real business of good communication.

I’m not sure if I fit the criteria for your film in terms of convention. I am not much of anybody in the public sense and my ideas aren’t absolutely original. But I remember my friend alex saying to me ‘determine what is important to you and do it on your terms." I think that’s what i’m doing now in arbitrary strokes, and by that litmus test, I am wildly successful. I consider it an overdue subscription to the book of yes (http://loetus.com/exchange/20080601/iplay/) and I am clumsily tearing pages from it with slow, concentrated delight
 

For more slow concentrated delights subscribe to Life In Perpetual Beta.  If you want to get the insider scoop follow me on Twitter or even better join the LIPB twitter production team for updates interaction and cool schwag.

Despite the clever way she edited Loren’s hat to magically jump back when he discusses puppetry, Melissa is not a professional film editor and thus you should not blame her New York camera man Chris Cavs for her shortfalls in editing.

I was a little nervous before this interview, after all, the character Loren Feldman portrays in his satirical parody blog at 1938 Media is more than a little vicious and has been called a bigot a bully and downright evil. I wasn’t sure I was ready for what was coming.

The morning of the interview I had thought up a myriad of arguments Loren and I would have during our interview in New York’s Central Park, if Loren wanted a fight, I was going to be prepared.  I was so prepared for our jousting match that it was a little bit of a let down when I met the man, but I didn’t really notice the let down at first as I was too busy heaving a sigh of relief.  He was nice, he was charming, he was alive with possibility in all the ways good people are.  Don’t get me wrong, he still had a very strong personality, but he wasn’t the character I had come to expect from his blog. Thank God.

Regardless if you think it’s satirical genius or tasteless drivel, 1938 Media’s brand of in your face, envelope pushing parody and satire is a very interesting study of the dynamic shift in expectation we have with regard to authenticity and personal interaction online.  At some point we have stopped expecting that brands would market for and produce content that was true to the brand itself and have little to do with the people who produce it. Instead we have pushed the envelope so much in the direction of transparency and full disclosure that we expect many entrepreneurs online to use their personalities as a commodity, to use themselves as a "personal brand".  It’s one of the many reason’s why what Loren does throws so many of us for a loop. His juxtiposition to the 1938 Media brand has exemplified (for me at least) that it is still possible to be a person without being a "personal brand".

Which brings me to a frustrated phrase I hear quite often from my coaching clients:

"but I am not my day job."

 I wonder, how long that will still ring true for people as we integrate our personal and professional lives online…

For more sighs of relief subscribe to Life In Perpetual Beta.  If you want to get the insider scoop follow me on Twitter or even better join the LIPB twitter production team for updates interaction and cool schwag.