If millions of people recycled the fear gripping our world economy into something more positive, who knows what we could create?
I am working on a very cool social experiment on Facebook called Fun Not Fear, which can be found at http://www.tinyurl.com/funnotfear. This social experiment is the brain child of Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good. You can read more about Phil’s impressive bio at http://tinyurl.com/PhilTerry.
I will tell you more about Fun Not Fear in a moment, but let me give you a bit of background on how it got started. Phil, the crazy ideator that he is, decided to start a social experiment on Facebook to celebrate the birthday of the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin on February 12th. Leveraging the power of viral marketing and the network effect, Phil and his team were able to grow members of this social experiment from a mere 400 people on January 29 to 200,000 members on February 12th, Darwin’s birthday. Since that time, the membership has continued to grow and a new goal has been set to reach 1 million members by November 24. Talk about the art of the possible.
The Darwin experiment, http://tinyurl.com/DarwinExperiment, led to an even bigger idea, which is Fun Not Fear. The goal for this experiment is much more aggressive than the Darwin experiment – 123,456 members by April 1, 2009, which is a mere week away. Just like the Darwin experiment, Fun Not Fear will achieve its goals through the efforts of its members spreading the word serving as connectors and boundary expanders.
The Fun Not Fear experiment has a very simple premise… Creating a playful campaign to combat fear. This is a particularly relevant topic in these difficult economic times where people are concerned about their livelihoods, from their jobs to their homes, retirement and so much more.
As stated on the Fan page for Fun Not Fear on Facebook:
With the broad economic crisis, there’s a lot to be fearful about in our world today – yet neuroscientists teach us that chronic fear clouds the mind making it difficult to think and act wisely. So, can we take the energy from fear and turn it around into something positive – something that can bring people together in these difficult times?
To date, we have been able to grow our membership to just over 4200, which is well short of our goal of 123,456 by next Wednesday, April 1. I am hoping you will help by joining yourself and forwarding on this blog post to your friends and family. We are not stopping at 123,456 as our goal, we have set an even greater stretch goal to achieve 128 Million members by January 30, 2010. Be part of what could be one of the coolest and most amazing social experiments happening today.
Please use the power of your network to help us, this is an incredibly worthy cause. The volunteers working on this campaign have incredible life stories. One of our volunteers is a cancer survivor and attributes the power of laughter and fun to her continued recovery. She even signs her emails with “Have a Fun-nominal Day”
As part of this social experiment, we are posting a Book of the Day, Good News of the Day and a Quote of the Day on Facebook to share with the Fun Not Fear community and all those indirectly connected as part of our Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. In addition to these posts, there are numerous other submissions made by members of this experiment. We invite you to be a content contributor as well. I have learned a lot over the past few weeks by reading many of the posts.
We are not just looking for warm bodies, but rather advocates who believe is the spirit of fun and want to do their part to help others to overcome their fears, while also letting the submissions of others help you with yours. If you are a parent, there is some great stuff to share with your children. If you are an educator, there is great content to use in the classroom. If you are a mere passenger on this spaceship earth (wow… where did that come from, stream of consciousness, but I am going to leave it as I am on a roll), we can all benefit from participating in this social experiment. This is not something just for a day or a week, but something to think about in your everyday life.
Don’t let stress and fear have a grip on your life, learn to have fun in all that you do. Learn to laugh in the face of adversity and learn how to share that new gained knowledge with others.
If you are still with me through my rambles, we have a special event coming up on April 1 which all our members are invited and encouraged to attend. Phil Terry has been able to set up a very cool webinar for April 1 at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. One of the special guests for this webinar will be Bob Mankoff. Bob is the cartoon editor of The New Yorker and an expert on the serious business of humor and play. There will be some great conversation during this webinar, to be sure!
If you would like to participate in the Webinar next Wednesday evening, you can click on the link below. Citrix has donated all of the webinar facilities for this and future webinars.
Sign-up for the Fun Not Fear webinar featuring Bob Mankoff:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/409237164
I will leave you with this closing thought from our Fun Not Fear Fan page:
Fun, play, humor, creativity, and foolishness are seriously important and, if millions of people recycled the fear gripping our world economy into something more positive, who knows what we could create?
Sign up today and tell your friends… so they can tell their friends, who will tell their friends and so on and so on…
Join Us Today: http://www.tinyurl.com/funnotfear
