If you’re interested in a perspective on science fiction and fantasy that doesn’t come from the big 3 magazines, or if you’re interested in stories that are more long-view than current crisis, it’s well worth your $11 at Amazon (or Powells, or your local bookstore) to have this in your collection.

Plus, it has one of my stories in it.

If you hate my work, well, think of it as, “Well, less than 10% of the book is Stoddard.” If you like my stuff, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at range of other work in there as well.

Obligatory links to Amazon and Powells here.

And yeah, I know, I’ve been a little quiet on the blog front. Buried at work; more unpopular opinions to come this week.

And now, a disclaimer. Especially in the light of the furore over the last post. I don’t know all the answers. This ain’t the be-all end-all definitive guide on how to make everything right for science fiction. This is one dood’s guess. If you have other ideas, please feel free to share!

Ready? Take a deep breath.

5. Define your messages. In marketing, we start establishing a brand by defining key messages. These are things that only you can say, and are most likely to interest someone. Science fiction publishers and organizations, by and large, have done a poor job with this– especially when seen from the eyes of a newb.

Let’s put ourselves in the position of, say, a kid who has a taste for Star Wars and The Matrix and other sci-fi films, and starts looking for other science fiction online. Assuming he finds a publisher or magazine at all (see #4), what’s going to keep him at the site?

One thing: Instant, clear communication as to why he wants to be there.

Content alone won’t do it, because (a) if whatever you’re highlighting at the moment ain’t in his taste spectrum, you’re toast, and (b) it takes a long, long time to stroll thru the archives. And this assumes that content is there in the first place.

But if he saw things like:

“Read ideas that are a decade in advance of what you see in movies.”

“Love new technology and ideas? Find out what the world will be like in a few years–or a thousand.”

“What if we had invented computing technology in the Victorian era? If cheap technology meant everyone was a mind-reader? If advances in biology meant you could grow your house? Explore what-ifs right here, right now.”

“Discover why scientists, internet visionaries, technology leaders, and other people who are changing the world read science fiction.”

“Join a group of people not just looking forward, but leading us forward.”

Not all of these at once, of course . . . but you get the idea.

Now, someone might say, “Well, hell, coming up with these key messages doesn’t seem so hard.” Now, sit in a room with 12 people and see if you can get them to agree. Then remember that you really should test multiple key messages with random display on your home page tied to analytics to determine which are the most effective. And then you need to be able to accept, really accept, that your favorite message may not be the best one for your organization. It ain’t easy.

4. Get visible–on all levels. SFWA appears in the first page of Google search results, but beyond that, it’s a wash. No publications or publishers show up until page 5. Where’s the SEO? How about PPC? How about doing your own page in Wikipedia? If people are looking for science fiction, we need to get in front of them.

But visibility can go well beyond keywords. Where are the science fiction widgets that announce new titles? Where are the widgets you could, say, share to unlock content? Hell, where are the wallpapers and ringtones? Where is the share-around media campaign raising awareness about the movers and shakers who read science fiction? With 6 of the top 10 global websites being social sites, we need to have an integrated social media strategy and presence that goes beyond our own captive social network (yes, there is a place for both).

Or how about defining your own social media liaisons–people who are available to talk about your authors’ works, but who do not push themselves on anyone?

And, just when you’ve thought I’ve gone way off the deep end, consider this wacky “visibility” idea. Why don’t we have an industry liaison to Hollywood, delivering our key messages like, “Hey guys, remember where you get your ideas–want to see some new ones?” Visibility can go as far as budgets allow.

And yes, visibility takes investment. But there are large publishers out there. Once they lose the stranglehold of their big ad agency (and the trap of their Comscore metrics box), there’s money to invest. And, beyond that, I’d suspect that there are more than a few closet science fiction fans in the Google/Facebook/Web 2.0 universe who might be interested in helping out. Remember, Google is sponsoring a Moon prize.

3. Create fans–and benefits. Remember that I called for a science fiction social network? Here’s why: it’s a path to real engagement. It may even be a path to monetization, if you provide relevant services. Here’s what you do:

Define fan levels. Let’s say, just for instance, we have a Silver Fan, a Gold Fan, and a Diamond Fan (choose your own fan levels, but don’t start with something embarrassing like “basic.”) These people are giving you their time and information. This is worth a lot.

Define some real benefits for your Silver fan. Even at the base level, remember: people are giving you their time and information. Make it worth their while. For publishers, maybe you give them a free ebook every year. Or, if you’re already giving out free ebooks, let them join a network where they get a free book for every 10 friends they invite. If you’re an organization, let them share in some of the info reserved for published authors.

Make at least two of the levels paid. Oh, here’s where the howling starts. But, with the right incentive, you can make the paid levels pay off–both for the fans and for you. Let’s say that, at the Gold level, there’s a standard quantified discount on every book you buy, you get a free book every year, and you get and you’ll get invited to events in your local area. And let’s say the Diamond level gets you into private meet-and-greets with the authors? Or, for organizations, why can’t the Gold or Diamond levels have access to events or functions, or even (gasp) be allowed to vote on a people’s choice award? No matter how many fans you invite in, there will still be a distinction between a published author and a fan.

Again, this ain’t the universal prescription. The details may be very different. But defining a loyalty program with some real teeth would pay off, big time, for publishers and organizations.

2. Create your own worlds. And yes, this is one I’ve yammered on about before, as well. But there’s no reason why science fiction should not own the alternate reality game (ARG).

An ARG is a way to let people keep coming back to your authors’ worlds, time and time again, to build interest in future releases. It’s a way to impress fiction on the real world. It could lead to additional sales of everything from picture books to t-shirts to comic books to short video and music. Really, it’s an art form in and of itself, and it is firmly grounded in the science fiction sphere.

And yes, building an ARG (or merely an alternate reality continuum, where we simply treat the places and people of our worlds as real) is not an inconsiderable amount of work. But what if developing and curating a tiny piece of the ARG was what bought your fan his Diamond status? Or a level above Diamond? ARGs do not have to be built by a single individual or organization. They can be crowdsourced.

Skeptical? Yeah, that’s cool. Just know that new variants of the ARG are emerging. Pretty soon, we will have people interacting with worlds and stories that never existed in real life as they surf the web (PMOG), or even as they walk around in the real world (MARG).

There is no reason science fiction should not own this space–and if we let it slip by, we have only ourselves to blame.

1. Fund a big idea or two. Did you know that Google is sponsoring a $30MM prize for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon? Did you know that Progressive Insurance is sponsoring a $10MM prize to inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles? Did you know that Archon is funding a $10MM prize for the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days? All of these are part of the X-Prize Foundation, an organization designed to spur innovation through, well, big fat cash prizes. You may remember them from the original X-Prize, which was won by Scaled Composites.

“Ohhh-kay, now we know Stoddard has gone off track, because, first, there ain’t nobody out there with a pile of cash like that, and, well, what the heck would we apply this to?” you may be asking.

Well, first, the pile of cash may be a lot smaller than you think. X-Prizes are funded by insurance companies. As in, the insurance companies bet against anyone winning the prize in a stated amount of time. This is what allows your local Lions club to have a $1MM hole-in-one competition–the chance of anyone winning the prize is relatively low. Your Lions probably paid $2000 to have that $1MM prize. So the investment is really a lot lower that you expect.

(And yes, I know–this sounds like something out of Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon. But, I assure you, this is real. We have run insurance-backed contests at my day job.)

Second, I can think of several things to apply this kind of prize to. Here are a couple.

Monetization. On a subject near and dear to every publisher’s heart, how about monetization? What is a working model for profitable monetization in a market where content can be distributed nearly free? Or, to take it up a notch, how do we ensure people receive a fair return on their intellectual property? (Note: “fair” may be well below what organizations like the RIAA and MPAA believe “fair” to be.) Heck, maybe do this in conjunction with the EFF. Throw a million-plus dollars at this challenge, and you’re going to have a lot of people devoting a lot of time to testing and proving real, workable solutions.

The current crisis. Worried about climate change or energy independence or another current crisis? Then let’s pick one and sponsor a prize for helping to figure out this problem. This will raise science fiction’s profile tremendously–and it may result in some real answers. Of course, this may be something so big that we tackle with other organizations, in order to provide a prize of the magnitude needed to spur real research and testing. But even if it’s done in conjunction with other entities, it sends a powerful message: we’re not just forward-looking, we’re actively trying to do something about it.

And, of course, there may be other prizes. And other things we can do. Like I said, this ain’t the definitive guide. This is speculation. Your results may vary. Not intended to be used as a personal grooming device. And all those other disclaimers.

But if it points a few people in the right direction, then I’m happy. And I’ll do what I can to help!

Of course, we’ll be following this with 5 big ideas. Hence this countdown starting at 10. But those are for another post.

10. Divorce yourself from bad design. Why do so many science fiction sites look like they were created in 1995? Sorry, guys, but if we’re going to be the leading edge, we can’t make people laugh uproariously at the first click. This is not an example of a forward-looking site. This is better. And, before you drag out the, “I ain’t got no money” excuse, download Wordpress for free, then take a click over to 99Designs and run a design contest for a template, pay a freelancer for some Flash work, and you’ll soon have yourself a site that would have cost $1MM or more to make during the web 1.0 revolution for less than 4 figures.

9. Bring us together. So how come no science fiction organization or publisher hasn’t clicked on the “create social network” button at Ning? Or any similar site? In a few minutes, they could have their own social network, complete with all the friending/group creation/user management tools of Facebook. Free. Wait. Let me repeat that. Free. As in FREE. Are you reading me? A social network for science fiction writers, pubs, and fans would be infinitely better than the forums and whatnot they have now. And infinitely better than waiting for some half-baked, committee-ized, overthought, too-late, internally-created system.

8. Stop devaluing yourself. If I see one more author or publication wring their hands over the possibility of success, I’m going to scream. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make money. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make *lots* of money. No other profession does. If we want to bring this field forward, we need to be able to make a living as writers and publishers. A good living. And yes, I know we’re still figuring out the new models for monetization. I just want us to shoot for a model that provides more than break-even accounting.

7. Embrace reality. Sorry, but if SF is the most popular movie genre in the world, then it’s time to go there. Especially since the trend appears to be accelerating to cover the entire entertainment space. How many science fiction- or fantasy-based shows are there right now? Yes, most of them are light entertainment. Yes, most of them are filled with rubber science. That’s fine. Use them as a gateway drug to lure people to real science. Or offer your own alternatives. A few months back, I was amazed to find an anime series that depicts a mature augmented reality environment, and fully explores SF tropes as sophisticated as those in Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”–and it is aimed at a tween/teen audience!

6. Lose the negativity. Yeah, I’ve harped on this before, but it bears repeating. If we want to lead, we need to be the people with answers. We need to have vision. We need to look beyond the current crisis of the world (and the world has been in a current crisis, since, say, Sumerian times) and imagine positive futures. And no, this does not mean happy-sappy tales where everyone goes skipping through a field of flowers. I’m talking work that embraces the full scope of human aspiration, anger, benevolence, greed, kindness, sadness. I’m talking about work that may be disturbing, and that may come out in a place where things are profoundly different–but it does come out, and we are still human, and still moving forward, in the end.

Stay tuned for the big things.

In light of the emergence of the i09 blog, I decided to rerun the Alexa stats this year and see where we are. i09 occupies a space similar to BoingBoing–a space I call “popular metascience.” For the old farts here, think Omni for the 00s, minus the fiction. i09 has a more specific focus on science fiction, which for them translates to more scifi movie reporting, more scifi ephemera, and more general scifi links than BoingBoing.

The results are interesting. First off, let’s take a look at the chart. Yeah, popular metascience still kills science fiction. But again, the related sites make it interesting. Consider the related sites for each of these presences:

BoingBoing

• English 309k - Cyberpunk Fiction–www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~tonya/cyberpunk
• Sf Eye & Eyeball Books–www.empathy.com/eyeball
• Erik Davis–levity.com/figment
• Hotwired–hotwired.lycos.com
• Cognitive Dissidents–gibson.hypermart.net/books.html
• Cybpunk: Project Jericho Redirect Page–students.uww.edu/klessigjm17
• World.std.com–world.std.com/~emg/blogger.html
• Gothic.Net Webzine–gothic.net
• Blueblood–blueblood.net
• Wired News–www.wired.com
• Robotwisdom.com–www.robotwisdom.com

i09

• Error–www.puqq.net
• Host Or–www.hostor.net
• www.hornycontent.com–www.hornycontent.com
• Erofi–www.erofi.net
• Symit–symit.com
• Racknet Dynamic Webpages–racknet.com
• Canadian Online Pharmacy–floxx.ca
• Crobo–crobo.ca
• Consumer Home Services–www.sapguru.com
• File Post–www.filepost.net

Analog

• Asimov’s Science Fiction–www.asimovs.com
• Albedo One–homepage.eircom.net/~goudriaan
• Scifi–www.scifi.com
• Andromeda Spaceways–www.andromedaspaceways.com
• Astounding Science Fiction–www.andrew-may.com/asf
• Alienskin Magazine–www.alienskinmag.com
• Ansible–www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Ansible
• Concatenation–www.concatenation.org
• British Fanzine Bibliography: 1931-1990–www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/biblio
• Diverse Books: Review A Book Today–www.diversebooks.com

Strange Horizons

• Tangentonline–www.tangentonline.com
• The Sf Site–www.sfsite.com
• Sci Fiction–www.scifi.com/scifiction
• Realms Of Fantasy Magazine–www.rofmagazine.com
• Ralan’s Webstravaganza–www.ralan.com
• Quantum Muse–www.quantummuse.com
• Locus Online–www.locusmag.com
• The Infinite Matrix–www.infinitematrix.net
• Emerald City–www.emcit.com
• Asimov’s Science Fiction–www.asimovs.com

Once again, there’s no overlap. What’s interesting, to me, are two things.

One: I wonder who the visitors to i09 really are. Or if they are. They certainly don’t show much interest in science fiction, nor do they show much interest in other Gawker blogs. The numbers may look very impressive (they started up officially in January 08), but the related sites are truly a grab-bag of unrelated stuff.

Edit: Charlie Jane Anders explains io9’s bizarre results in comments. Apparently the domain was a linkfarm for many years. It’ll be interesting to see what the traffic looks like in a few months.

Two: From the amount of related magazines, online pubs, review sites, and market sites like Ralans, it is increasingly evident who the primary audience for short SF is today: other writers. This is true for both Analog and Strange Horizons.

So why did I do this, you ask? Well, it’s partially just native curiosity. I find sites like BoingBoing and i09 interesting–and I am also a science fiction reader and writer. So I want to know what popular sites are doing, and how that can be applied to science fiction in general.

It’s also partially because I really want to help. I’d like to see the science fiction magazines succeed. I’d like to see science fiction become more relevant. I’d like to see it come back to genre that is actively leading us forward, instead of telling us “there’s no use, we’re all going to die anyway.” Unfortunately, there’s little I can do to help the publications directly, so maybe this, in some small manner, will help point the way.

After all, BoingBoing grew organically. It didn’t take millions of dollars in advertising or the combined might of a television network to launch. It occupies a space where science fiction could be.

i09 is different, being part of the massive Gawker blog network. But, as such, it sends its own powerful message: these new media conglomerates are eying our space with intellects “vast and cool and dispassionate,” to paraphrase. And they’re moving in. What does that mean for the future?

This is about one who tried to be helpful. He brought by a whole mess of vintage science fiction magazines and anthologies he’d found in his favorite thrift store. We’re talking obscure stuff here, from Other Worlds of the 50s to Galaxy of the 70s, together with collections from Fantasy and Science Fiction (in hardback, no less) from the 60s.

“Cool!” I thought, flipping through the age-yellowed magazines. I figured I’d skim through them later, and see what massive talents had been lost in the march of time.

But it didn’t work out like that.

As other guests arrived for my little get-together, they immediately gravitated towards the brightly-colored covers of the old magazines. They’d pick them up, turn them over, leaf through a few pages, and put them down. Or they’d comment.

“Hey man, did your 6-year-old paint this cover?” someone asked.

I explained that these magazines came from a different era, when they literally had to jump off the shelf. But, you know, some of the art was pretty amateurish. I wondered how big of an art budget they had, even in the “golden age.” Probably not very large.

And then they started reading. That’s where the fun truly began. “Ha, he just put a tape in his stereo,” one guest said. “And the story is set in 2010!”

“Yeah, and this one has a computer the size of a 150-story building–underground!”

“And we’re still fighting the commies in 2080 here.”

“That’s all right, we had a nuclear war in this one.”

“Wow, what’s a teletype?” (This in a story set in 1996.)

“That computer has tubes? Tubes?!!”

I pointed them at the Fantasy and Science Fiction anthologies, telling them that this was a more serious magazine, and those collections were supposed to represent their best work.

But the howlers continued. Tapes, records, shortwave, teletype, building-sized computers with tubes, commies, nuclear war–they were all there.

Or, in other words, the things top of mind became top of story. By and large, what we saw before us, we wrote. Oh, yeah, we made things smaller and sleeker and faster, but we didn’t invent wholly new things. I haven’t gone through all the stories in all the magazines yet, but the gist is clear: there ain’t a whole lot of visionary going on here!

And I have to wonder if it isn’t the same today. Will we look back on the vast majority of stories today as quaint and small-minded and not very visionary? Probably. Because it’s always easiest to take a single trend and extrapolate it. It’s simplest to write about what is top of mind, right now. It’s really, really hard to weave multiple trends together into a believable whole. Or imagine a wholly new technology that changes everything.

Maybe this is why the current mode of science fiction is dark. We hear about terrible things happening in the world, and we write about them. We see our place on the world stage being supplanted, and our anxiety about this ends up on the page. Wrap it up in a more-advanced, pervasive internet, and we have a modern, sellable story.

But this isn’t the future we’ll be living in.

It’s called Eternal Franchise, and (at least I think) it’s a fun romp. It’s also probably the last thing I really want to write in the Winfinity universe, since modern times are catching up with the world, sending us veering down another timeline entirely.

So: should I release this one for free, like I did with Winning Mars last year?

Your call. Let me know via comment.

Future historians will look back on March 6, 2008 and say, “This is the day the PC really, officially died,” and “this is the day we began make technology part of ourselves.”

I’m talking, of course, about the opening of the iPhone platform to developers, with the accompanying application marketing channel and venture fund behind it.

Let’s start with this new platform, fully 3d-game-capable and full of more accelerometers and sensors than you can shake a Wiimote at. We’re playing with the SDK already, and it’s stunningly easy to use. Combine this with a distribution channel (iTunes) and a competitor to keep things rolling (Android), and you now have a whole new way to reach 10MM leading-edge, fashion-conscious, free-spending users. Do you think marketers are gonna be stampeding in? Well, like, duh.

But it’s a lot bigger than that. In fact, it changes everything.

Think of how you use your computer today. You sit down, shake the mouse, open the web browser and go to YouTube. Or, if you have a laptop, you drag it out of your messenger bag, plug it into the wall, open the lid and wait for it to find the wireless connection, then do your YouTube/Facebook/Office/Final Cut/Flash/whatever. But, in either case, you separate yourself from the computer when you’re done.

In a mobile-centric world, your computer is in your pocket, it’s always a half-second away from being turned on, and it has many different ways to alert you to its presence. The computer becomes part of you. And when you add highly capable apps for productivity and games, as well as higher-speed data, you now have a constantly-connected, intelligent, extremely high-functioning link to, well, damn near anything in the world.

It’s now trivial to look up information on Google, play games with friends, communicate with voice and photos and video, add metainformation to the growing geographic and regional databases, respond to email, create new spreadsheets–half a million things are now seamlessly integrated with your life, rather than being a car trip or a laptop-startup away.

Let’s extrapolate this out. iPhone-esque technology becomes smaller, faster, ubiquitous. At the same time, future display technology allows us to project data into our eyes, creating overlays on the real world. And, at this point, the distinctions between our own capabilities and those of the network begin to blur. We’re constantly connected. There’s no reason not to use your Google Ambient account. And, in fact, unless you turn it off, it’ll probably work constantly and helpfully in the background, instantly recognizing objects and classes of objects (like cars, faces, friends, and more) to let you know what’s going on with them.

“Wow, that’s a lot of information,” the dinosaurs here say. “And I can see the potential for spam and abuse.”

Yeah, and welcome to the early 21st century. Yes, assimilating augmented reality overlays may represent an order of magnitude increase in the amount of information we have to process. But that’s what today’s millennials have been training themselves for. Watching TV while doing homework, listening to music, and talking to 3 friends via IM is a great start on managing information overload. They’ll treat these augmented realities as part of themselves in very short order.

And that’s something to think about. People tend to guard their personal environment with much greater care than, say, a web page. Google AdSense ads won’t be tolerated when they’re in your field of vision, or even if they’re flittering around the corner of your eye. 3D overlays of fantasy-lands to explore in real space (a la Vinge and Stross) may be a better marketing venue.

But no matter how you look at it, we have turned a corner. As of March 6th, we’ve taken the first step to making computing part of ourselves.

And that changes everything.

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction’s Finest Voices.

Edited by Ellen Datlow. Del Rey, $16 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-49632-4

Declaring that short stories are the “heart and soul of fantastical fiction,” prolific and venerable editor Datlow collects 16 impressive original stories in this unthemed anthology. Standout selections include Margo Lanagan ’s deeply disturbing “The Goosle,” which eloquently corrupts the Hansel and Gretel fable with bubonic plague, sexual slavery and mass murder; Jason Stoddard ’s “The Elephant Ironclads,” which describes an emergent 20th-century Navajo nation struggling to become a world power while staying true to its culture; Elizabeth Bear’s “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,” a poignant tale about the life, death and sad legacy of the troubled heavyweight fighter; and Pat Cadigan ’s “Jimmy,” a strange and supernatural coming-of-age story set in the moments just after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The thematic diversity and consistently high quality of narrative throughout make for a solid and enjoyable anthology. (Apr.)

You can make my day and buy it here.

Wired Article: Free is the Future of Business

Let’s get this out in the open: Chris’ argument is not entirely convincing. But it’s a pretty scary summation for industries like software, music, movies, and writing, which rely on revenue multiplication through distribution of low-cost or nearly-free end-products.

And yes, I just said writing.

“But books is expensive!” the dinosaur writer says. “They ain’t no cheap end-product.”

Yes. But books really shouldn’t be looked at as the end-product of writing. If you look at it one way, words are the end-product of writing. And there ain’t nothing cheaper than moving a bunch of words around online. Over a hundred million blogs prove that point plenty-good-fine, thanks.

In this new freeconomy, some bands have adapted by giving away music and making money on concerts. And some software developers give away software (open source) and charge for service and customization.

So here’s the question for authors: what is our concert?

“Huh?” dinosaur writer says. “What do you mean?”

I mean this: what can we, as writers, offer beyond the words? A book? That’s not a mass media play, especially in the age of the $30 hardcover and $20 trade paperback. An ebook? Wake me when the magic free ebook reader that saves the market arrives. Hint: ain’t happening. We’re gonna end up mobile-centric, and if longform text isn’t well-served on that platform, well, there you go. A reading? Oh, that’s funny. By and large, we’re writers, not performance artists. Service and customization? Well, I hope not. I can’t really imagine how that would translate, beyond hokey “I’ll write your kid into a book for $XXX” ploys.

There is, however, one thing we do have beyond words: ideas. Buried in all those words are great characters who people want to meet and stunning new worlds that people want to explore. And, when you look at it, the leading-edge ideas come first through writers. Science fiction films don’t break new ground–they follow the paths led by writers ten, twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years ago. Games aren’t the place you find original, stunningly new concepts, either. They’re typically rehashing tropes of decades past.

And this is what we have. We, as writers, create the ideas. We set the path.

And that means we may be better off than any other creative group. Because we don’t have a single monetizable output–we potentially have many. We can weave our ideas into dozens of different forms, and create entirely new mythologies that are embedded in the world. Writing’s revenue stream doesn’t have to start and end with the printed book. Potentially, we’re looking at residuals, tie-in sales, ad revenue sharing, licensing, and new models we haven’t even imagined yet.

Musicians have concerts. We have worlds.

Let’s go create!

Also must have experience in writing screen and online script derivatives, mobisodes, and promotional spots from the original storyline.

Also requires experience in extending the storyline via alternate reality sites, video, audio or photo tie-ins, or games.

Please provide proof of your ability to work effectively with a content extension team.

High profile on social networks a plus, with demonstrable ability to engage a significant subset of the target audience with relevant tie-in content. Candidates with less than 500 friends or 2,000 daily unique visits on their aggregate web presence will not be considered.

Experience in public speaking or sales also a plus. Please direct us to video where available.

Please contact us via IM, Skype, or email, in that order.