Yesterday while driving I heard the song Say by John Mayer. It ended, the station went to commercial, I flipped, and on the next station the same song was starting from the beginning.
Call it overplay, perhaps, but I don’t believe in coincidence.
Actually, as I heard the song the first time, tears were welling. When I heard it again, they rolled down my face in silent splendor. The universe is a truly incredible place, and I know little of it but this: it is good.
Here’s what the song reminded me I need to say: “Thank you Sam.” Simply, without fanfare or pretense, from the core of my being: I am grateful.
So, thanks. Not from Epic Change to Jive, but from me to you. Thank you for teaching me a memorable lesson in the power of fearlessness, audacity and hope. Thanks too for bringing help. You can’t imagine how much we needed it.
That’s the other thing I need to say: “thank you.” Yes, you. If you’re here & you’re reading this, somehow you found our story compelling enough to follow along. Perhaps you’ve volunteered, donated or spread the word. Whatever your contribution to the growing energy of this project, I appreciate you. I don’t have the language to adequately convey my gratitude.
To say I’m amazed by what’s happened in the last few days is a vast understatement. Because in addition to being a total sap, I’m also total nerd at heart, I decided to do some simple analysis of the buzz that’s been generated by my guest post on Go Big Always. Besides, I thought you just might be curious too. Here’s what I found:
So far, to my knowledge, since Friday, Epic Change has appeared on eight blogs that reach literally thousands of readers. In them people I’ve never met have said that “Twitterland is rockin’” with my post on Sam Lawrence’s blog. I’ve even been referred to as a “web celebrity.” While I’m not certain that’s true, it’s flattering and the attention to our cause is much needed and welcome - so keep it coming! Here’s where you can participate in the blogosphere discussion about Epic Change:
At least two additional bloggers, TeensyGreen & SocialButterfly, will be posting soon about our efforts.
We’ve even been tweeted by @Scobleizer:
For those of you who don’t know who he is, I’ll be totally honest: until a few months ago I didn’t either. I just got my personal twitter account on April 9th. Before that, near the end of February, I’d started the @EpicChange blog autoposter that I rarely posted live. So, I’m still learning about the Twitterverse and its amazing landscape of incredibly bright contributors. Apparently, though, Scoble’s a big deal. Like, the stuff of legends when it comes to technology and the web. I’m grateful to @dahowlett, the prolific, long-time ZDNet blogger, as he’s been incredibly persuasive at pulling Scoble and several others into the cause to various degrees. If you read @dahowlett’s post, he points to serendipity as the reason he personally decided to “pimp Epic Change.” (btw: feel free to pimp us anytime.) Serendipity has surrounded this effort from the very beginning, which means to me that we’re headed in the right direction. Serendipity was even the title of the very first post on this blog.
Here’s a few other statistics about the explosive buzz generated from just one random chance taken in the middle of the night less than a week ago:
Most notably, check out the explosive growth in the number of followers we now have on Twitter (89%)! Perhaps more importantly, since Friday, there’s been a 355% uptick in the number of you that are reaching out to me via tweet each day, and a 54% increase in the number of daily emails I receive, including direct messages from Twitter. This is a really cool indicator, because it means that I’m not hunting for supporters…you’re looking to get involved. And that totally rocks. It means whether you’re a social benefit organization or someone interested in creating social change, you should be using social media tools, and especially Twitter. The tools are powerful. That said, as I mentioned to @LordLeopard today, social media tools will not change the world. But we can more easily by using them effectively. As an aside, note that the indicators marked with a double asterisk (**) are potentially skewed because we simultaneously were running a direct email campaign to our 500+ d-list subscribers last week for National Volunteer Week.
Of course, now’s the hard part: transforming this word-of-mouth momentum into a community of meaningful, engaged collaborators in the creation of Epic Change. Are you in?
In the next few days, I’ll post an update about my three birthday wishes: in short, we’ve made some amazing progress, but we definitely need your help, so donate, volunteer & make a video sharing the reason why the stories of children in Tanzania matters to you. In my next post, I’ll include my own version. To preserve your own creativity & unique perspective, I hope you won’t immediately watch it, but will instead first create & upload one of your own.
For now, I really need to go to bed. It’s 4am here in Florida, and I really need my beauty sleep.
G’night.
Wait, am I already sleeping?
Pinch me, this could be a dream. Yes, it’s that good.
Posted: May 7th, 2008 under The Foundry.
Comments: 5
