Big Project for 2009

As I promised earlier this month I will fill you in with my plans for 2009.

Last year was a difficult year for me, work-wise. I’ve felt for a long time that there was something missing in the things I was working on. Though the topic of social media still fascinates me, mere consulting on it didn’t feel right. There was this little voice that kept telling me I lacked passion.

In hindsight I think my Birthday Unconference was an accelorator in my search for what was missing. Asking the participants to summarize the day, taping it on camera and making this video out of it gave me so much joy. A feeling I hadn’t experienced for quite a while.

The past few months an idea started to take shape in my head. It taps into my research aspiration, my joy in editing, my curiousity. It’s about a topic that fascinates me. It’s for practicing my skills. It’s something I’ve never done before.

That doesn’t tell you much . Until I’ve come up with a better name the project is called Big Project for 2009. The idea is to collect stories on video. Stories told by people I’ve come across in the past years, on conferences, BlogWalks and other meetings. Smart people who approach their work different. The Networked worker. I’m curious about their choices, to leave a certain company/job, to become independent, or an entrepreneur. I want to know what role their family plays in such decisions, whether personal circumstances forced them to their independence, or perhaps they ’saw the light’.

The whole project is still in the earliest phase. I haven’t decided on a very specific topic, or  whom I want to interview (only freelancers?). Last week I sent 20 people an e-mail with this question:

If I were to do an interview with you, what would be themes, questions or events you would like to touch upon?

With this question I’m collecting feedback so that I’ll be able to set clearer boundaries for my research. Then I know better what questions I need to ask when I start doing the actual interviews. So far I received some wonderful responses (plus the first people on my ‘to interview’-list ).

The end goal I hope to achieve is making a documentary of the collected stories. It’s rather big, this project. If I want to, this could be a fulltime job. There are all kinds of practical issues involved (I want to do most of the interviews face-to-face, but with a tight budget….), but this is one of the projects that I will keep going this year. Even into 2010 if I have to. That’s a promise!