The Witty People Community: The Basic Idea

I’m creating a new community blog, which, as a placeholder, I’m calling The Witty People Community. Here’s the basic idea.

Thirty (or so) witty, articulate, creative people, each doing what they do best.
A shiny new website.
One topic per month. Something simple and open-ended.
Each day, one post, relating to the topic, from a member of the community, in their own way, on their own terms.

Eventually, we will get sponsors for the monthly topics. When that happens, the contributors will choose, on a case-by-case basis, if they want to make contributions on the sponsored topic. If they do, they will share in the money paid by the sponsor.

All contributors retain ownership of their own work. They only agree not to use it anywhere else until the month is over.

That’s basically it.

I know a lot of amazing, creative people who deserve to get paid for their work. I also know a lot of people who work in online advertising, and who are looking for people who can contribute quality content in a context that makes sense for a sponsored situation.

The problem – and I find this very interesting – is that those two groups of people don’t know each other at all. They are without a way to naturally find one another. Independent creative artists, by nature, do not trust advertisers (and they shouldn’t). Advertisers, by nature, do not trust independent artists to function under the conditions that make sense for sponsorship (and they shouldn’t).

Of course, advertisers employ artistic people all the time, to design ads, to write copy, to direct commercials. But those people, many of them very talented, are applied artists.

The real trick for advertisers is in monetizing the power of fine artists, that is, artists who are motivated mainly by something other than money to begin with. And the real trick for fine artists is in finding a way to earn money from their work without feeling that they, or the work, are being exploited.

So here’s an example. The first month for the community will, I hope, be June. Let’s say that the topic for June is “cooking.”

• One serious foodie contributor writes a recipe with a prosaically written background essay, talking about her relationship with her grandmother who gave her the recipe.
• A professional performance artist posts a video of herself doing a bizarre five-minute public mime performance of cooking breakfast, shot guerilla-style in a public place while perplexed bystanders stop to observe.
• An award-winning poet posts a poem about the relationship between cooking and other types of creativity.
• A food writer posts a personal essay about the pros and cons of cooking for lovers.
• A cultural studies PhD candidate writes a manifesto about how the whole idea of “cooking” is different in the third world, and why Americans need to wake up to this difference before their garden of privilege collapses.

So maybe the sponsor for that month is, say, Corningware. They get some good press for doing something risky and interesting. The contributors get exposure from each other’s audiences, as well as the publicity from the site in general, as well as some money. Hopefully, everybody wins.

The community could also, in theory, be retained to offer their insight and creativity into conversations already in progress on other sites.

So that’s the basic idea. I welcome comments and questions both in this thread and by email (michael AT armyofsparrows.com), whether you want to be a sponsor, contributor, or just make suggestions.

p.s. Right now I have about fifteen people in mind, so assuming most of them want to participate, we’ll need about fifteen more.

p.p.s. A lot of applied artists are fine artists in disguise.

image by frankh