Connecting people and ideas through improvisation

Take action – SOPA and PIPA could destroy the internet… really!

January 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

This may sound overly dramatic, but it isn’t. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two versions of legislation winding their way through Congress. Both are backed by the entertainment industry as a way (they say) to combat global video and music piracy.

The problem is this legislation is so vague it can give companies the power to order whole websites taken off the air for ANY sharing of content they feel violates their claims. Post a video of your kids with a movie poster in the background? That could get your blog taken down!

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and hundreds of other huge sites oppose SOPA and PIPA. They could not exist if this legislation had existed when they were founded. Sharing ideas and content is how the internet works!

That’s why many of these sites, like Reddit and Wikipedia, are going entirely dark on Jan 18th, 2012, in protest of this bill.

This video does a great job of explaining PIPA, and SOPA is generally the same thing (House vs Senate versions).  Watch this, and please contact your congressman and tell them to oppose this legislation!

Don’t rely on someone else to do this – if you love what the internet has to offer, take action!

UPDATE: I was on Fox 10 this morning here in Phoenix to talk about SOPA/PIPA. If you are looking for a good introduction to what is SOPA to pass on to friends or family, this video might help!

Filed Under: Ponderings Tagged With: , , ,

Plan less and explore the unexpected

March 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There’s a time for planning, and a time to riff. Planning helps you construct something specific, when details of your product are known. Creativity is often focused in the early phases of creation and limited once plans are set.

Riffing (or improvising) has boundaries and constraints, but the final product isn’t known until the end. Creativity lives throughout the process, but scope and attributes are sometimes limited by the lack of systematic planning.  This method is often scarier, which is why planning is so popular.

Before the most recent Ignite Phoenix, I ran around with a Flip camera and asked people to “show me what love looks like”.  Valentine’s Day loomed, and I thought it would stir some interesting reactions. It certainly did.

I ended up with about 15 minutes of clips and bits of people swooning, smooching, hearting, and being silly. These were people improvising to an improvised idea, and it showed. Brilliantly.

Unfortunately, I still had no plan what to do with all this great footage. Thankfully local Phoenix band, Super Stereo, provided a piece of the puzzle when they generously donated one of their tracks to the Phoenix music compilation CD. I got their permission to use a track and started seeing how things lined up with the footage.

It was pure, silly, fun creation. I had no vision for how this would turn out, and was along for the ride as things fell together. What I ended up with was a light little music video that showcased a lot of Ignite fans and friends having fun. A visual love letter.

It’s entirely not what I had in mind when I started, and it’s not going to win any awards, but I think it’s great. Could I have scripted it out all in advance, asked people to do specific things, and paced it better? Sure, but I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.

Creativity is as much about the process as the final product. Let go of your planning sometimes, explore, and see where it leads you. You may love it.

Filed Under: Improv Tagged With: , , , , ,

Improv session: Twitter Uncovered

February 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Last year Evo Terra and I sat down to riff on social media topics, and we’ve been working to get some videos out with the goofy output. This time up, the topic is Twitter – why it is so popular, how it evolved, and how it can make money:

These were fun sessions, and worked well because Evo and I both are nauseatingly familiar with this topic, and because we actively employed Yes, And. There is always an element of creation to improv, but if you don’t know the topic you’re improving about you’re going to get tangential comments at best. By always agreeing and accepting what the other players say and building on it, you find yourself going in new directions that neither of you would have explored individually.

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Filed Under: Improv, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Social Media Defined… or is that Defiled?

January 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Been working to shake the dust off of the site, and this video was a perfect vehicle. I sat down with local muppet Evo Terra at Sitewire and we decided to riff on Social Media. The first bit of silliness is below, and there are more to follow.

It’s safe to say we’re dead serious about everything we joked about. You can’t sneeze without getting twenty “Social Media Experts” wet these days, and the level of recursive pontificating on every atomic particle of social media is just insane. I have little doubt I could find serious analysis of social media somewhere online much more ridiculous than this.

The whole thing was entirely improvised, though hardly in the good sense of the word. Evo and I share the ability to, as he puts it, “turn on our mouth and let it run for a while.”  This is helpful in improv, but rarely results in quality.  We take turns trying to screw each other with bad set ups, and you can see in our faces when we get an idea we think is possibly dumber than the ones before it.  Yet we still managed to build some themes, create a little story arc, and leave no syllable of “social media” unscathed.

Many props to Joe Holt for editing this beast together.  I’ll link to the next ones when they come together, and in the meantime will keep oiling up the rusty hinges.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , ,