Well, today the fantasy business league got to go into the dugout for a visit.
I’ve followed Mark Cuban’s blog for years. This is a guy who is in the big leagues for sure. He started Broadcast.com and sold it to Yahoo back when that was a good thing. He’s gone on to other huge successes, including buying the Dallas Mavericks and appearing as himself on the Simpsons. It doesn’t get much better than that, unless he buys the Cubs, which would be just fine with me.
So today he decided in what is his classic style to get into the whole “stimulus” thing by trying a completely open source method of soliciting business ideas and then giving the criteria to fund them. The ideas were to be submitted right on his blog.
Many people reacted, as so often happens, with fear, saying that they didn’t want their precious idea to be distributed to the public. I’ve been there, but then I learned the reality is that there are plenty of great ideas out there, and unless it involves some kind of hard science, it is exceedingly rare that the idea on it’s own is worth 10 cents. Actually doing the work -- usually called “executing” in today’s parlance -- is the only way to succeed.
So I took an idea that I’ve had for more than a year and posted it. I worked hard to follow the rules that he put out there, something that very few of the others did.
And he responded. In length. Twice. So far.
His response to my idea (Second Saturday Science is what it’s called, more on that in another post) was so genuine, so engaged, and so, well, out there, that a reporter was inspired to do a story.
The stories about the crappy economy have moved way past depressing and are now downright annoying. It is, however, the biggest story going on right now, so this reporter, Craig Civale, to his credit wanted to do a story about a stimulus plan that might actually pay off, you know, this year.
His station, WFAA, is in Cuban’s town of Dallas, so it was a natural for him to do the story. He called me, and I actually answered the phone -- something that doesn’t seem to happen much these days. He asked a few questions, and then called back a few minutes later and asked if I’d go down to the ABC station in Denver to tape an interview.
No problem! If Second Saturday Science is going to take off, it’s going to need some publicity, so I hustled my arse down there and answered some questions. I understand it’s already been on the air in Dallas, and should be on the interwebs soon enough.
So, will this be my new “job”? I don’t know. If Cuban signs on to be a part of it, than for sure yes. He will be able to help me draw attention to it and open doors in ways few others could.
If not, well... stay tuned!
