Kiva Nerdfighters to #1
The nerdfighters kiva group is about to become the all-time largest group on the site. I think it would be an awesome Hanko de Mayo event if it happened today.
Join now and let’s get to #1 on Hank’s birthday! Also, thanks to everyone who has emailed their senators and congresspeople today. You guys are amazing.
(Kiva.org is a web site that allows regular people to make low-interest loans to business start-ups in the developing world.)
This is a Hank Green appreciation post.
Hank Green is one helluva man, if you ask me, and I really owe him one. First off, Hank has taught me incredibly valuable lessons ranging from how to exit the friend zone to giraffe sex. In all seriousness, I have learned a lot from Hank and his awesome nerdy music never fails to put me in a good mood. Hank also named his album after me, making my name quite known in the wonderful land of Nerdfighteria. I cannot tell you how many friendships that caused and for that I am thankful. That being said, I have decided to name my first album Hank Green. The album will include 10 of my original piano solos, each named after incredible people that have one time or another, reminded me to be more awesome. HAPPY HANKO DE MAYO!
Ellen Hardcastle’s birthday present for Hank.
(Hank named his most recent album after a nerdfighter as part of the 2010 Project for Awesome. Ellen Hardcastle won the raffle. I’m so glad HER first album will be called Hank Green. She is a fantastic pianist, btw.)
It’s Hanko de Mayo!
It’s Hanko de Mayo! We all know Hank loves the James Webb Space Telescope, so hopefully he’ll like our gift. In addition to his gift, nerdfighteria is celebrating Hank’s birthday by letting our elected officials know that Increasing Awesome through scientific exploration is important to us. You’ll find the email I wrote my congressperson and senators below. You can copy it, amend it, or write your own. Here’s how:
AMERICANS:
Find your congressional representative here:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
And your senators here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Click through to their contact pages to email them.
NON-AMERICANS:
I do not know how to email your representatives, but I do know that it is possible in every democratic country, and since the James Webb Space Telescope is a collaboration among many nations, it’s likely that your government is involved. So let them know how much space exploration and science funding matter to you!
Here’s my letter:
Dear Congressman Carson,
My name is John Green. I’m a voter in your district, and I’m contacting you to ask that you work to increase federal government support for NASA and other scientific initiatives. NASA projects like the James Webb Space Telescope offer us the opportunity to understand the very beginning of our universe. For centuries, government-backed scientific programs have improved the lives of every person on the planet, and they are a gift to every person who will live after us. It’s vital that the United States lead the world in increasing awesome through scientific exploration and discovery. So please support NASA and projects like the James Webb Space Telescope.
It’s a big universe. And it is our privilege and responsibility as human beings to work to understand and appreciate it.
Best wishes,
John Green
HUGE thanks to everyone at NASA and Northrop Grumman who made Hank’s present possible, especially Ron Birk, Charlie Atkinson, and Rolf Danner. And thanks to Michael Gardner at ecogeek for facilitating the whole process. Happy Hanko de Mayo!
Is Advertising the Future—Or the Past?
Hank and I have always felt varying degrees of discomfort supporting our YouTube videos with advertisements. We don’t control the content of the ads or who sponsors our shows, and many times we disagree with the advertisers.
I do not, for instance, think gold is a good investment, or that Obama is a terrible President, or that sexy geeks are just a click away. I also don’t particularly enjoy being supported by for-profit universities, oil companies, and Super PACs.
Recently, some nerdfighters have been upset about ads they’ve seen on vlogbrothers videos, and we share their concern. But these videos are a big part of our jobs—we spend a lot of time making them and trying to be good leaders of this community—and while there are other ways we make money (t-shirts, books, music, etc.), the ad revenue is a vital part of how I buy diapers.
But it’s not really that much money relative to the size of nerdfighteria, because online advertising rates are so low. Even so, I still think that most nerdfighters would rather glimpse an ad than use kickstarter or something to create a delightfully ad-free world of vlogbrothers. But with ad rates pretty stagnant and the success of kickstarter projects like Ze Frank’s, I’m beginning to wonder A. if I’m wrong, and B. if creators of online video might find themselves turning to new models of supporting their work rather than continuing to seek corporate patronage. Also, C. these days, I find myself personally more inclined to support online video projects and their creators directly.
EDIT: To be clear, I am not suggesting some awful subscription model in which you have to pay to watch videos. That would be gross. I’m suggesting a model like the one you find here in the US with National Public Radio: some people pay to support the station, but the listening experience is available to all, regardless of whether they pay. (There are bonuses for members, of course: tote bags or This American Life CDs or whatever.)
Mostly, I’m curious what you think. Do you want to watch stuff supported by ads, or supported directly by viewers? Are there youtube channels (not just vlogbrothers or crashcourse or scishow but any YouTube channels) you’d give $5 or $10 or more per year? Or do you like the current system and believe that advertising should continue to play the central role in visual media funding it has since the earliest days of television?
Who the eff is Hank!
(Source: weasleycansaveanything)
SOMEONE PUT LIPSTICK ON AND KISSED THE BUS BUT SHE ONLY KISSED HANK. #hurtfeelings
How to Run a Business That Doesn’t Suck: The Hank and John Green Rules
So Hank and I run or help run several businesses at the moment: Vidcon, DFTBA Records, the juggernaut that is 2-D Glasses, ecogeek, vlogbrothers, scishow, and crashcourse, as well as administering the nonprofit Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. These are not huge businesses or anything (and in some cases are not even profitable), but many of them have employees and revenue and function like any other business, so recently Hank and I have developed some Rules for Running a Business That Doesn’t Suck, which we thought we’d share.
Rule 1: Don’t be a dick. This is the governing law of the Internet, as created by the great Wil Wheaton, and we try to apply it to our businesses. Not being a dick mostly means treating your clients and customers respectfully, and focusing on creating value rather than creating profit, and generally being reasonably kind and personable when it comes to business relationships.
Rule 2: Increase Awesome or Decrease Suck. If an idea won’t increase world awesome or decrease worldsuck, we won’t do it. (And if we’re doing something that no longer feels like it is increasing awesome or decreasing suck, we stop doing it.)
Rule 3: Minimize lawyering. Hank and I tend to lose interest in any endeavor when a lot of lawyers become involved. Basically, if we require lawyers other than our cousin Mike or the people he works with, we don’t do it.
Rule 4: Employ more people per dollar of revenue than PepsiCo. This is very important to us. So one of the emerging metrics for a company’s “success” is revenue generated per employee. PepsiCo generates more than $196,728 in revenue per employee. (That may seem ludicrously high, but it’s much lower than many companies: Google generates $1,900,000 every year per employee.) The thinking goes that successful companies generate a lot of money per employee. Our thinking is that it is both good business and good citizenship to invest revenue in new employees.
Rule 5: Keep promises. We try to keep promises even when they are very inconvenient and expensive to keep, such as when Amazon Germany ships out a thousand unsigned preorders of your new book even though you signed more than enough copies for them to ship to their customers.
Rule 6: Pay tops out at 10x average worker pay. Pretty simple, really: The highest paid employees of a company shouldn’t make more than 10 times the average employee’s pay. (Current estimates in the US indicate CEOs make between 185 and 310 times more than the average worker.) Capping this at a multiple of ten means everyone is invested in seeing the company grow and succeed.
Rule 7: Have awesome customers. If you don’t like the people who watch and read and wear the stuff you make, then you will not have any fun. Speaking of which…
Rule 8: Have fun. Our grandfather wrote thousands of lists in his life—grocery lists, lists of business ideas, pros and cons of taking different jobs. Almost all of his lists ended “Have fun!” We think this is good advice.
Tour de Nerdfighting TICKET UPDATE
Hi!
So 11 of the 16 Tour de Nerdfighting events are now sold out. But there are still tickets available for the following cities, and if you live nearby, you should totally come, because it is pretty fun.
NEW ORLEANS, LA - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18TH at 6 PM
Octavia Books at Temple Sinai
6227 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118
Tickets: HERE or by phone at 504-899-7323
HOUSTON, TX - FRIDAY, JANUARY 20TH at 7 PM
Blue Willow Bookshop at Pasadena High School
206 South Shaver
Pasadena, TX 77506
Tickets: HERE or by calling (281) 497-8675
AUSTIN, TX - SATURDAY, JANUARY 21ST at 7 PM
BookPeople at Westlake Community Performing Arts Center
4100 Westbank Drive
Austin, TX 78734
Tickets: HERE or by phone at (512) 472-5050
ALBUQUERQUE, NM - TUESDAY, JANUARY 24TH at 7 PM
Alamosa Books with Albuquerque Bernalillo County Public Libraries at KiMo Theatre
423 Central Avenue Northwest
Albuquerque, NM 87102-3219
Tickets: HERE, by emailing info@alamosabooks.com, or by calling (505) 797-7101
PHOENIX, AZ - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25TH at 7 PM
*NEW VENUE*
Changing Hands at Phoenix College
1202 W. Thomas Rd.
Phoenix, AZ 85013
Tickets: HERE or call (480) 730-0205
Everything else is sold out. (Sorry!)
Five years ago today, I uploaded my first Brotherhood 2.0 video. I want to thank everyone who has been with us on this adventure so far. DFTBA.
I went on a walk in the woods to make a Thoughts from Places video. Then I saw my parents’ goats having sex. Then I got lost in the woods. I hope you enjoy this video, and that you share it with your friends, who will not think that you are weird at all for reblogging it.
