Million Download Campaign - Palm Beach

Last week I got to attend the Palm Beach International Film Festival to screen our animated short Love Rain Down. I actually had to go straight down to FL after hosting an awesome summit on social media marketing hosted by BazaarVoice. I left with a mindful of creative business ideas, and headed straight into a meeting of people in the business of creativity.

 

On arrival in Palm Beach I was a little confused as everything was not necessarily happening in the same area.  The only other film festival I've been to is Sundance, where it's pretty much impossible to miss where things are going down. Just follow the nearest herd of people slogging through the snows of Park City in any given direction & you'll wind up at something awesome.

 

Palm Beach, however, had events going down around a much bigger town and in some of the neighboring ones, so the first thing I made sure to do was to literally get lost (no they didn't ask me to "get lost", I took it upon myself thank you very much). Once I finally figured out where things were, I managed to arrive at our screening just in time to see some remarkable short films. Two of them that particularly stood out for me were "Carboard Titanics" and "The Game". The first is a hilarious comedy about people putting they're all into something totally unnecessary - the building and sailing of boats made entirely of cardboard & a smidge of ducktape. The second is an ingenious & chilling animation of two people sitting down to play an otherworldly chess game with extremely high-stakes. Definitely encourage you to watch both.

 

Probably the best part of the experience for me, was the opportunity to speak to the attendees and filmmakers after our screening. Not only did we get an amazingly warm reception, but people were immediately looking for ways to collaborate. A filmmaker even asked me if I think of myself as a musician or a filmmaker first? He might as well have asked if I consider myself a humanoid or a jelly donut, but I was super flattered. ;)

 

I wound up having an amazing conversation with a group of filmmakers about the whole concept of open source culture and what it means for all of us as artists. Of course I had to tell them about the Million DOWNLOAD Campaign and they immediately "got it." It would be interesting to see how some of these ideas work in other areas of the arts. In the meantime, I've gotta' give mad love to the Palm Beach International Film Festival for recognizing & highlighting our work. Check out the other films & support creativity in all it's forms!

 

One love,

D.N.A

 

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Million Download Campaign - Download & Share

I took a weekend to relax away from Social Media & returned to find a flood of tweets, FB comments, messages etc. Thanks for all the outpouring of love! Rather than engage in a losing battle to answer all those notes individually, I'm going to let you all know what I'm up to it in the simplest way I can en masse:

Many of you know I've had a longstanding interest in how principles from the open source software movement, could be applied to other areas of culture. There are cool examples of it at play in areas ranging from visual art to farming and development, and of course in music. Back in 2004 I wrote the The FAM Manifesto, a text outlining a vision of how open source ideas could help revolutionize and ultimately expand and strengthen the music industry.

I'm going to spend the rest of this year doubling down on that theory. There's a huge opportunity for artistry, enterprise and society in rethinking how we "make, mix & move" music. The Million DOWNLOAD Campaign is all about putting that thought into action. DOWNLOAD & Share!

D.N.A 

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Sweet Mother

Today is a very special day for a number of reasons. I'll try not to be extra mushy about it, but it's my last day on The Stream. Over the last year I've had an incredible opportunity to speak to people around the world about things that they care about. From the challenges facing youth in Bosnia, to the revolutionary change happening in the Arab World, and the rise of Private Prisons in the US. I've been able to catch a glimpse of what moves people to stand up and be counted.

 

I've had the opportunity to work with an amazing team, who daily put heart and soul into highlighting the untold stories of those who are too often forgotten by global society - to literally give voice to the voiceless and to do so with dignity and honesty and somehow manage to have a good time doing it. In the past year we've challenged the prevailing notions of what broadcast media should be and dived headfirst into the possibilities of what it could be. We've taken heat for doing so, and we've received kudos. I can't tell you how wonderful the feeling is to work with a group of people so fully committed to giving people across the planet a chance to speak their own truth. I want to take this moment to speak a bit of mine.

 

Something that's been particularly moving for me in working on The Stream has been the chance to highlight amazing stories from Africa. Whether the continent's connection to the global Maker Movement, the rise of #OccupyNigeria, or the innovation happening across the continent.  This has been meaningful for me not only because I'm Ghanaian, but because for many years I was frustrated at the limited, skewed and often lazy depictions of who "we are" as Africans. Long before I joined The Stream I decided to make my own statement on that very point, through a music video showing a "day-in-the-life" of my hometown Accra:

 

 

The African continent has a wealth of material, cultural and human resources and I believe we are at a crucial juncture in our history where we have a real opportunity to see our great potential become manifest. In a few weeks I'll be making a visit to Accra to give a farewell send off to my dear sweet Grandma, who helped instill in me the love of my homeland, her people and all we have to offer (if you watch the video carefully you will see her). It was through her legacy and that of all my forebears that I learned the value of knowing when to speak and when to listen - so that others might also be heard.

 

In leaving The Stream I feel proudest that I was a part of helping so many people be heard. So I want to dedicate this special day to two very special women - my dear Mmaa whom I will never forget so long as I live, and the woman she gave birth to, who would grow to teach me the value of living for something greater than myself.  Today I honor you my Sweet Mothers.  I could never have come so far without you.

 

D.N.A

Million Download Campaign - The Race to 50K

 

So it's been another eventful week and we've hit a crucial milestone. Over the weekend we crossed 40K tracks & remixes downloaded from AFropolitan! This has been strictly through word of mouth & people like YOU sharing it on Facebook & Twitter, writing articles, posting about it on your blogs, translating it into seven languages, and telling friends and family to take a chance on some new music & a revolutionary concept. 

Next Monday the Million DOWNLOAD Campaign will have been in effect for three months. To help us commemorate that moment we are asking you to help us make a real statement. We want to hit 50K tracks downloaded by next Monday April 9th, which means we need to get 10K this week!

To do that we we need your help. Please share this blog post through your social networks, email lists, blogs, newsletters, fan sites and anywhere else you can think to post it. Share it with a friend who would also be willing to share it on their blog, social networks etc. Host a listening/download party & send us the pics! Invite us to do a Skype presentation to your students, colleagues & friends about what this is all about and why we're doing it. Even if you've done ALL this things before, we are asking you to pick two of them to do again this week.

The thing that makes this project so special, is also what makes it so simple. Fundamentally, this is about sharing music you love with the people you love. Imagine you download a great song from iTunes and you want your best friend to hear it. How do you share it? Either you need to ask them to go buy it themselves (which is a good thing to do), or maybe you play it for them when you're together (which is also a good thing to do). But what if in a few clicks you could share it with your friend, your mom, your college roommate and whomever else you think would love it, and they could download and discover the sound that's got your ears abuzz! How easily can you do that today, and how easily can they check out a new and amazing artist they've never heard of before?

The Million DOWNLOAD Campaign not only gives us an opportunity to share our music with you, it also gives us all an opportunity to reflect on how we really want to discover, enjoy and share new music. When we hit that million mark we will have made history by showing the incredible power of an open source approach to sharing music, to put a band and a movement on the map. Help us get to 50K this week. DOWNLOAD & SHARE!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Healthcare 101: Part II

 

In yesterday's Healthcare Part I post I wrote about the basic factors that create the need for an individual mandate if you want to have a functioning private insurance market; particularly one that doesn't penalize people for pre-existing conditions nor engage in denial of coverage shenanigans. But there's another side of this argument. Conservatives will tell you that this is an unprecedented example of government overreach. That it creates a slippery slope towards government forcing us to buy all sorts of things, and that an individual should not be forced to participate in a market they don't want to.

 

It sounds like a reasonable argument, but in fact it's highly disingenuous. It's the kind of argument that's promulgated by people who are either ignorant of how healthcare works (which is kind of understandable, since it's so durn complex), or by people who are playing politics with the nation's future (which is much less understandable the more you understand what they're doing). Let's start with the latter group of people and think about why their argument stinks.

 

First, it can't be said often nor emphatically enough that the idea of the individual mandate is in fact a REPUBLICAN IDEA. It was championed by the Heritage Foundation and prominent Republicans like Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and of course most famously: Mitt Romney. The idea was pushed forward during the "Hillarycare" debate as an alternative to Bill Clinton's proposal that would mandate employers cover the cost of health insurance. Republicans countered with a proposal that "individuals" should be mandated to provide their own insurance, which fit with their ideology of supporting the business community and promoting individual responsibility.

 

In fact, Republicans thought the individual mandate was such a good idea that then-Governor Mitt Romney, made it a center-piece of his Massachusetts healthcare reform initiative and lo & behold it worked! 98% of Massachusetts residents and 99% of children now have coverage. Unlike the Affordable Care Act, the Mass law punted on addressing cost controls (though one could definitely argue Obamacare doesn't do enough on this either), but it did manage to expand coverage and apparently improve health. Gov Romney went on to crow that it should be a model for the nation, which it became under President Obama. Confused that this doesn't sound like what Romney is saying today? That's because it isn't. Romney today hates Obamneycare, because...well, because Obama did it. Call it an Etch-A-Sketch moment...

 

The GOP establishment believes healthcare to be a good political issue for them, and so they've switched sides on their own proposal. Craven? Perhaps. Surprising? Not if you've been observing the recent trend towards increasingly partisan politics in this country. But what about the people who are not political salamanders? The ones who are generally worried about their freedom? I saw a Tea Party leader on Hardball Monday night, who spoke passionately against the dangers of Obamacare. She repeated again and again that the American people "don't want it." Chris Matthews asked her a question about the uninsured. She responded that she herself had once been uninsured and the doctors and hospitals had worked with her - that no one would be turned away.

 

In that moment she made the other side's argument.

 

This woman may not realize it, but she's effectively a free-rider in our healthcare system (or at least she was). When doctors and hospitals "worked" with her to reduce her costs, what they wound up doing was one of two things: A) eating the costs themselves or B) passing the costs on to Govt. Either way, the rest of us wind up paying for her care in the form of higher insurance premiums or taxation. If you don't believe me, just look at the case of Mary Brown. She's the lead plaintiff in the Healthcare lawsuit currently before the Supreme Court. She just filed for bankruptcy leaving behind a raft of unpaid medical bills. Guess who's now paying for her so-called "freedom?"

 

People have talked for years about the sense of entitlement in our society, but this takes it to another level. You want to be free not to pay for health insurance, you figure the tooth-fairy is gonna' pick up the tab anyway, so damn Obamacare to heck right? In the end it seems some conservatives truly love individual responsibility...as long as they don't have to practice it themselves.

 

To be fair, there ARE ways to have a viable healtchare system without an individual mandate - conservatives just happen to hate all of them (well, maybe all but one). In the next post we'll take a look at the good, the bad & the ugly alternatives to Obamacare.

 

D.N.A