Life In Perpetual Beta

World Premiere

Date: May 26th

Time: 6pm

Place:

Charlie Chaplin Theater

St. Augustine College

1345 W. Argyle Ave.

Chicago, IL 60640

 You have no idea how excited and nervous I am to announce the world premiere of my very first documentary… hell, my very first film… ever. Or maybe you do know, maybe you know what it’s like to put your heart and sweat into a project and see it through to it’s fruition, to send it out to be judged by a jury of heaven who knows… but I hope it’s you. I hope you will join me in watching what two years of crowdsourcing, DIY filmmaking, and asking questions has gotten us. I hope you come out and see what 45hrs of interviews looks like edited down to 40 minutes of documentary.

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It’s hard to believe but the first edition of Life In Perpetual Beta is almost complete, and yes, I am just as surprised as you are that I’ve actually managed to get this far. Who would have thunk that a year ago a woman with no experience, no connections, and no idea what she was doing would be in the final stages of wrapping up a documentary film? I didn’t even think it was going to happen, yet, here I am, writing this blog post, answering emails from distribution companies and scheduling screenings at conferences, and I couldn’t have done it without you.

Every time I thought the project was too big for me, you stepped in with encouragement, every time I was faced with an obstacle I just couldn’t overcome, you showed me a way around, and when I admitted I couldn’t even afford the airfare to get to an interview with Seth Godin, in less than 10 minutes, you not only got me a plane ticket, but had arranged a place to stay, paid for dinners, and offered enough cheer-leading to ensure that I would float to New York on a cloud of gratitude.

 At the risk of sounding like an absolute cheese ball, it has been a Cinderella story between you and me, only we are all going to the ball, and Prince Charming isn’t a person but a movie we’re all so excited to meet. The clock’s about to chime, but this dance is going to go on well past midnight.

All that’s left to finish and show the first Life In Perpetual Beta film (yes, there will be more) is a little professional work on the audio and all the things that go into premiering it at film festivals and distributing it on DVD, it’s going to cost around $7000 and I was invited to raise the funds on Kickstarter to do it, only this time I’m offering more than a t-shirt for your support, I’m offering early release DVDs and tickets to film festival screenings,  I’m offering private group screenings and Q&As with whichever of my 40 interviewees I can get there, I’m offering copies of the original interviews and and rights to make your own cut of the film. Kickstarter is an all or nothing fundraising platform, so if I don’t raise $7000 by June 6th, Life In Perpetual Beta gets nothing. If I do however – our film will be honeymooning with audiences all over the world.

Please pledge to support Life In Perpetual Beta on Kickstarter and after you do, tell everyone who it will make a difference to to do the same, digg it, stumble it, tweet it, reblog it. The money won’t be taken out of your account until we reach our goal in June, and June really is the perfect month to break out those glass slippers.  

Thank you so very very very much, 

Melissa

Life In Perpetual Beta interviews Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV on authenticity, creativity, and the future of journalism. This interview was conducted & filmed by Adrienne Brawley of Pixel Chick Productions.

For more on the future of everything, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.

I recently spoke at the 140 Character Conference in NYC. I could not believe how nervous I was, with everything I’ve accomplished over the last year, I don’t know why I thought public speaking was going to be easier. What I realize though, is I will be doing a lot more of it as the Life In Perpetual Beta doc comes into fruition – so I better get cozy up on that stage.

What I also realized is this, even with the advent of social networking, getting the word out is still a lot of work. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. I think raising awareness about the film and blog series will take more work than making the film itself.

It was a pleasure to have met Juliette. Thanks to Brett Petersel for the introduction, and Adrienne Brawley for the cinematography.

 This video is in two parts.

Part 1: Where Juliette is interviewing me.

Part 2: Where I am interviewing Juliette.

I wanted to show you these two parts for a few of reasons. I wanted you to see what kind of give and take actually takes place in an interview.  It is a fallacy to think that the interviewer is the Chuck Norris of her trade and always in control of the conversation. I also wanted to show the difference between Juliette’s, professional experienced style, and my own bumbling way of going about things. If I can pick up a camera and make things happen, anyone can – and in my experience, social media has indeed accelerated my metamorphosis from a Chicago housewife to a film producer.  Lastly, I chose the particular conversations for it’s timeliness. Juliette and I spoke in depth about many things, but with the presidential inauguration around the corner, I thought that these pieces were the most relevant.

This project has been funded by small contributions from people like you. To support the film, get a cool tee shirt, and get invited to exclusive film related events join the tweet team for $30, or email me about how else you’d like to contribute, you may also scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like.

For more accelerated change, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter. 

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.

(the original written contents of this post were so tangential that I’ve removed them from this site, to read the original post, click here.)

If you’re also riding the whale, 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.

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.

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 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.