I went out to Seattle recently to premiere Life In Perpetual Beta at a party sponsored by Whrrl. It went beautifully and was indeed the place to be that night during Seattle Geek Week, you can see photos and comments here. My flight was supposed to leave the next day, however was extended when I got a last minute invite to speak at the Gnomedex Conference (it’s been called the poor man’s Ted Conference.) I excitedly said yes before realizing that I had less than 2 days to prepare a 30min presentation to one of the most hyper critical, smart, and connected audiences I have ever known.

Holy shit, it’s a big stage and I can’t hide behind anything. What was I thinking?!

The above presentation is the result. Pay attention to how often I say "right" – this is because I needed to see them nodding to see if they were paying attention as every single head in the audience was bent over a laptop.

PS. Big things happening with the movie, and more interviews coming down the pike, stay tuned.

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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Pledge to help finish this film 

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

"There is something in the act of being and doing who you really are that even though people don’t agree with it they connect to it. There is something superhuman about being yourself."

Unlike most of the interviews here, Baratunde Thurston wasn’t suggested to me by my online community, I met him by chance and in person one fine evening in a very crowed room in Austin Texas. We were just in the right place at the right time – together.

 I realize that I may have been a little naive or elitist in thinking that having a large online network that helped me source interviews would bring me a good cross section of American culture.  A close look through my interviews (although each unique and brilliant) revealed that almost every interview is with a white male.  In the past I would ask my network specifically for suggestions of women and minorities that would be integral to the larger Life In Perpetual Beta story, but short of Oprah, no one could think of any other good interview candidates. I resigned myself to assuming  that surely my social circle would eventually produce some of these amazing people, but up to this point, they haven’t. I wonder if my social network suffers from the same naive thinking as I did? I bring this up not to shame myself or my community, not to stir the pot, but to point out the flaw in thinking that the internet connects us all, has already made us one big amalgamated multicultural family. Certainly the potential is there – but it’s up to us to do the connecting, it’s up to us to broaden our filters and see what’s out there.  

 I’m flabbergasted that I had to take my social networking goggles off to meet Baratunde, his story and lifestyle fit life in perpetual beta so well. Had I not been paying attention, or paying too much attention to my own social circle, I would have missed his brilliance and wit, although I’m certain I could not have missed his superhumanness across even the most crowded of rooms.
 

This interview was filmed in December, and it took months and months to get the tape from London, to San Fransisco to Chicago. After it got to Chicago, it took another month to get a camera to import it, and another three weeks to post it on this blog.  I tell you that because, life is messy, and priorities, at least for me, are constantly shifting. I really wanted to drive home the point that juggling all the things, people, and ideas in your life can be a long and frustrating process,  but if you stick with it, no matter what pace, great things can happen, interesting ideas emerge, and you may just find things out about yourself you never knew before.

I met Ian Sanders through an email he sent to me after he watched my interview with Gary Vaynerchuck, he was writing a book at the time that was very much in line with Life In Perpetual Beta and we continued that conversations over several months. Ian finished his second book, Juggle – Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life just a few months before he and I presented together at South By Southwest. The book is pretty great, and this film even gets a few sentences in it. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Ian’s book resonates with me as I juggle filmmaking, full time parenting, and life coaching.

I was so glad when camera person extraordinaire Adrienne Brawley volunteered to interview Ian while she was in London, so far, it’s my first and only remote interview.  Ian picked a wonderful spot to interview in, a quiet pub that wasn’t opened for the day yet, however as life has a tendency to do, plans turned on a dime, and what we have is an interview in a crowded pub all the way across town.  (Good thing Ian is a pro dealing with ambiguity) The background noise is a testament to rolling with it and juggling obligation, innovation, and ambiguity. Ian’s next book will be about this ambiguity, I’m sure of it.

For more on the future of everything, subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow the film on twitter, or for even more information of how she is juggling all of this follow Melissa on twitter.

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.

Sorry for the background fuzz, I used an external microphone instead of the built in focus mic or lav mic and it seems to have picked up NYC traffic from several stories above. note: I filmed this myself with a Panasonic HD camcorder.

 "There are people who are so professional that they can work on something they don’t care about, and I always feel somewhat unprofessional because I can’t do that."

 I’d never think to call someone professional who does a job they don’t care about, I’d call them delusional or something far worse, and I guess that’s why I’m a little taken by Jeffrey Zeldman’s way of speaking, I wish I could be that non judgmental about people who sell themselves short by doing something that they are dispassionate about. Indeed, I feel I am moving in that direction, towards loving these professional souls at top speed, although occasionally, I do reach my open palm out and whack one or two of them upside the head as I run past, at least now I’m holding my tongue.

[Added 7/10: I'm talking about a mindset here, not an absolute, I understand that people sometimes have to work at things they dislike to pay the bills]

It strikes me that now that we do live in an age where information is more accessible than ever, it should be easier to find things to make a living at that one does care about. Am I naive in this assumption, or as Zeldman says, a little elitist? Could he be right, that although we have all of these tools at our fingertips, most people are still apt to sit back and watch, going back to their boring unfulfilling professional jobs? I’m thinking very hard about this, because I thought I sensed that there was a shift taking place in the way people where thinking, that people were finding it easier to connect to what they are passionate about and pursue it, but could I be wrong? Could I be examining the same tiny percentage of people that would follow their hearts regardless of the tools as Avner Ronen of Boxee says, or is there really a shift occurring thanks to the worlds that have opened as a result of technology?

Also of note is that both Jeffrey Zeldman and Chris Saad alluded to world peace being brought about by the connections that technology enables, I wonder if people thought that about the telephone, the automobile, the plow, the printing press… I wonder if we will ever get there.

For more on run by head slaps, 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.

Jonathan Fields was pointed out to me at the very beginning of my filming career by blogger Clay Collins. Back then, I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was doing making this film, or what it would turn out to be. I had a friend helping me brainstorm that was working on a way for me to "monitize" Life In Perpetual Beta – make it a real cash cow, and that part although exciting, sucked the life out of me.

Trying to turn a passion into money was just no fun for me, maybe it was the friend (he did turn out to be a little more than criminally crazy) or maybe it was just the model we were trying to implement, but it totally turned me off to making this film into a business. This is probably why it took me so long to come around to interviewing Jonathan Fields, after all, he wrote a book entitled Career Renegade – How to Make A Great Living Doing What You Love.  I was having no part in that, no sir. It took me some time to finally come around to interviewing him, as jaded as I am, I’m glad I gave it a shot. Turns out, he’s a great guy, with a great personal story, and a great message to share.

Truthfully though, there are a lot of stories like Jonathan’s out there, a lot of people who have high paying jobs that quit them to go do something that traditionally makes far less money. It’s funny how our culture has brainwashed us into thinking that this is phenominal, that people who give up high paying high powered jobs are a little loco.  How is it that we’ve come so far from center that we don’t think it’s crazy when people don’t choose a career that fulfills them?

‘There is something more to life than just chasing the buck."

So here I am with a passion for interviewing and filmmaking, getting ready to form Life In Perpetual Beta into an LLC so that I can distribute it properly when the time is right, and at the same time editing the video for this blog post, when a conversation I had with a venture capitalist comes to mind, he says to me, "Melissa, it’s a great concept, but I don’t understand how it’s going to make money."  It turns out, I don’t either, but I am still making the film.  I’ve decided that there is no reason to force it, because if there is anything I have learned from making this film it’s this: The unfolding of an idea organically is so much more powerful than forcing it down a set path, at least, that’s what I’m banking on. There is something more to life than just chasing the buck.

This project is funded by contributions from people like you. To support the film, pay the film crew and get a cool tee shirt (eventually) , and get invited to exclusive film related events join the tweet team for $30, or you may also scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like. For contributions over $600 please contact me directly at movie @ lifeinperpetualbeta.com

For more ramblings from melissa pierce , subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.

I pridefully can say I filmed this interview myself with my Panasonic HD Camcorder.

 It’s so absolutely fitting that the last interview for my film is with Twitter… because, if you’ve been following along kids (and I sure hope you have) you will know that my entire film has been sourced on Twitter. From having conversations about who best to interview and what information to research, to places to stay while I’m away from home, even the funding of Life In Perpetual Beta, all done 140 characters at a time, in real time.

Every time I stepped outside my front door to go and do this thing I’ve never done before, someone was there to send me encouraging words, last minute directions, a plane ticket, or $30 to help pay the camera crews.  And in return I showed them/myself just what is possible when you have no idea what you are doing, but you have a group of people who are as passionate about your dreams as you are. I showed that if ideas feed creativity, and creativity feeds a passion and they are both well fed… the impossible becomes possible, and a stay at home mom/college dropout can find a way to make an intelligent documentary film.

So anyway, there I was, interviewing Biz Stone, Mr. Twitter himself, him having no idea that my entire life changed when I was introduced to Twitter, he being ever so gracious and patient (and it was hot in that room, so hot, and I was already so nervous).  And what came of it was this very professional interview, as-if I had been doing it all of my life. It was an effortless conversation, but thrilling at the same time. I can’t wait to show you the rest of it when the film comes out. 

There will be more interviews on the blog (because I just can’t stop now), and more production updates, and probably more than a few notices about raising funds for the film via investment or otherwise. (films actually do cost money to make, Who knew?) But the filming of Life In Perpetual Beta is now truly over. Now comes the hard part.  Now comes the compiling of all the brilliant interviews. Now comes the synthesizing down into soundbites and video clips. Now comes the marketing and distributing. Now comes the work I can’t fudge my way through, I actually have to take time to do it right… or do I? Has living more publicly, as Biz suggested, changed even the way that films are edited and distributed?

So there Biz and I were, talking about the unfolding of how people are changing the way they think of themselves as a result of technology, and in that blue blue room with the sun shining in just so (later I would have to ring out my dress and do my best to neutralize the smell of sweat with the air freshener in the bathroom – you have not lived until your underarms have smelled like an orange for the entire 4hr flight home from San Francisco to Chicago) … in those moments, I was in my zone, I was doing what I was born to do. So in my zone in fact that I forgot all of that stuff about what a struggle it might have been had I not had twitter. I thanked Biz for his time, and never once thought to thank him for creating something that changed the course of my life. So, thanks Biz, thanks Jack, thanks Evan, thanks Twitter, thanks for making the thing that I desperately needed ever before I knew what it was.

This project is funded by contributions from people like you. To support the film, pay the film crew and get a cool tee shirt (eventually) , and get invited to exclusive film related events join the tweet team for $30, or you may also scroll to the bottom of the page and support the film monetarily with whatever amount you’d like. For contributions over $600 please contact me directly at movie @ lifeinperpetualbeta.com

For more ramblings from melissa pierce , subscribe to life in perpetual beta or follow Melissa on twitter.