Take a look at this video.

Awesome, no? The guy is called Matt and you can read all about his exploits (and see an earlier video he made of different places) over at wherethehellismatt.com - his FAQ is an interesting read in itself.

See, if I were a TV executive and somebody came to me and said “I want you to give me a large pile of cash to travel around the World” I would be thinking “Michael Palin” and “sounds like a good idea”. However, if they went on to tell me they wanted to make a 3-minute video of them dancing in remote locations and that was it, I suspect I would have a problem seeing the vision. Because nobody would sign up to spend the money on a project like that. It makes no sense - who is the audience? How do you sell advertising or recoup costs? It doesn’t work!

This though, works. And it works because it has a guy who is inspired with a great taste in music behind it. It works because it was a great deal cheaper to produce than we probably think. It works because it’s unique and original. People are good at original/unique, TV execs by their nature are not. This thing works because it is an inspired piece of creativity that doesn’t really rely on the “money thing”. Matt doesn’t care about audience, or demographics or ROI. He cares about making people smile. 500 years from now, I hope smiling is an accepted form of currency, but right now it takes guts to do that.

Now if you were to go and do the same thing, nobody would care. It worked for him, he’s that guy who dances around the World, you never will be[*]. But if you come up with a different idea, you can go and do it. The technology is now moving to your favour, you are getting empowered by the minute. If you feel like doing it, you can find a way to do it.

That, I confess, is the driving factor behind the first round of projects I’ll be releasing soon: people with great ideas being able to do amazing things, just because they can and the tools are there to empower them. If any of my projects results in just one piece of content being created as good as Matt’s there - as uplifting, and eye-opening - I will feel justified in never caring much about the money.

[*] Note, I am not saying you can’t travel around the World and dance on video like Matt. If that’s what you want to do, cool. Just realise you’re not going to get a gum company to sponsor you or as much attention as Matt, because you’d just be a copycat. But if you want to stand in front of the great pyramids and flail your arms about in front of a camera, I hope you love every minute of it. It’ll probably be better for you than sitting there reading this right now.