Listen Here ~> Pro-Ject Mix Phase 1

This is the first in many collaboration mix tapes to come between Pro-Ject and music curators. This also reflects some of the sounds that inspire and motivate us. There will be more mix tapes in the future with different sounds and moods.

This first mix tape was curated by delaChapelle of The Music Trust ~>

The #Influence of Han Solo ~>

Jon Levy (left) chats with The Wire actor

We are fans of Influencer Based Events ~> 

Via Forbes

The scene: A sprawling, museum-like Upper West Side apartment. Massive. The rare Manhattan residence that you sincerely could get lost in. The winding halls are filled with fantastic wall-spanning works of cubist and modernist and other -ist art, broken up by more than a few giant bronze sculptures.

The players: Nine dinner guests and host Jon Levy, who spends his days as director of digital strategy at Rodale Grow, the publishing company’s in-house content marketing agency. None of the guests know each other. Few even know their host. Each of the guests had arrived after receiving a rather cryptic email inviting them to…

The event: “The Influencers Dinner,” it’s called. A dinner party with one rule: For the first hour, nobody is allowed to talk about who they are or what they do for a living. At least one person jokes that we’re in a horror movie or Agatha Christie novel, and that it’s only a matter of minutes before the lights go out and somebody drops dead due to Murder Most Foul.

Removed from the “what-do-you-do?” script of typical networking events and dinner parties, the crowd becomes fast friends. We make guacamole together, transform a box of brownie mix into the evening’s dessert, and set tables with some guy named Andre… wait a second. Is that…? Am I really setting a dinner table with the guy who played the heroin-addicted snitch Bubbles on The Wire? (My second-favorite character on my second-favorite show, I might add).

The food is ready. We sit down. Other than possibly a few first names (and the odd too-recognizable-to-ignore celebrity), we still don’t know who the folks next to us are.

The reveals come through a parlor game of sorts: One at a time, guests go around the table and guess their dinner companions’ secret identities while munching on just-made tacos.

The crowd comes to light. Eyes widen, along with the realization that we were mashing avocados with some pretty darn interesting folks. Masters of industry and finance, media tycoons, tech titans. Past guests have included MTV legend Matt Pinfield, poker champion Andy Frankenberger, famed angel investor Esther Dyson, and MakeLoveNotPorn founder and TED presenter Cindy Gallop.

“I did the dishes with Cameron Winklevoss,” Rob Barnett, founder and CEO of Internet video site My Damn Channel, tells me.

**

Jon Levy—who I would be remiss if I didn’t mention once worked as an infomercial “Before and After” model—hosted his first dinner party almost four years ago. It had a very New York problem.

“Everyone was too accomplished,” he says. “The moment people started talking about their careers, they felt overly important. Everyone had fun, but it lacked the experience, community and bonding I was hoping for.”

So Levy instituted the rule that would come to define his events. “As a result, everyone had to learn how to connect without giving his or her perfectly rehearsed self-description,” he says.

“The whole premise was really captivating: Prepare a meal with a group of strangers, barred from talking about your job,” says Sarah Forbes, curator of New York’s Museum of Sex. “This is particularly difficult for a group of people whose job is so deeply interwoven with their identity. It was one of the most unique social experiments I’ve ever been a part of.”

Before long, the events began to evolve, and occur with greater frequency (Levy currently hosts dinners one to two times per month). Post-dinner performances became common: Broadway actor Kyle Post (star of Kinky Boots) recently holy-cowed guests with an impromptu performance fromRent, and comic magician Josh Beckerman somehow guessed the serial numbers of my ten dollar bill without touching it.

Levy now frequently follows his dinners with a slightly more open-door cocktail party, where past guests and their friends are free to meet and mingle. Sometimes there’s dancing. Sometimes a well-known musician jumps behind the piano. **

MTV personality Matt Pinfield (right) chops tomatoes with Lauren Stakias, director of exhibition and program funding at the Museum of Modern Art

Is there a word that’s been as tortured in its journey through the cliche cotton gin as “influencers”?

Blame the Klout-obsessed social media marketing agencies that have wildflowered up in the past couple of years. Blame the Malcom Gladwell books and their acolytes. What’s for sure: Even by New York standards, calling your event an “Influencers Dinner” takes an alarming level of audacity.

But from what I can tell, guests come away smiling—and even inspired.

“At the very least, it’s a pleasant dinner with some very interesting people. At best, it’s deeply transformative,” says James Ford, Emmy Award-winning on-air reporter at New York’s PIX11 news.

Tech parties tend to have tech people. Finance parties; finance people. Fashion parties; fashion people. Levy’s guest lists seem to be curated with an eye towards forcing serendipity; both personally and professionally. An excuse for remarkable people who might otherwise never meet to meet.

Levy claims the connections made at his events have led to romantic relationships, startups being funded, and, as he puts it, “I think a TV show is in production.”

In the future, it may be even more than a dinner. Levy says he hopes to use his network of past dinner guests in order to launch a private social network of sorts, designed to encourage dinner veterans to use their own platforms and networks to help each other.

“Guests will be able to make requests of one another and when members provide support they will earn karma,” Levy says. “The members with the most karma will be rewarded with very special perks. As you can imagine with a community like this, the perks are stellar: A private tour of a major museum, going back stage after a taping of a TV show, a cooking lesson from a famous chef.” 

Via Forbes

When I (Corey) was a child, I went through a phase where I would keep two children’s aspirin under my pillow while I slept in my superman jammies. My 4-year-old brain was pretty sure that if a robber snuck into my room in the night to do me harm, those little peach-colored sugar pills would give me the strength to fend him off much like the Underdog super energy pill.  “Have no fear, Underdog is here!”

Like all the kids in my middle-class neighborhood. I was obsessed with the Hulk, Transformers, and Star Wars. Now, as an adult, I am blessed to work with real-life entrepreneurial superheroes everyday. People who are endowed with superpowers born from insurmountable challenges that they then turned into nonprofit and for-profit businesses: childhood cancer, life on the streets, burns on over 80 percent of the body and face, rape and incest, bullying, and learning disabilities that rendered kids invisible.

At our company RTC, we call these entrepreneurs Crusaders, because they’re on a mission to change the world. Using their personal stories as springboards for change, they empower others, especially children, to not wait for tragedy to find purpose in their lives, and to align their passion with the way they earn a living. Below is a list of what we’ve learned from these Crusaders that you can use in your own life to inspire your kids to change the world.

Fight the fights worth fighting. Batman’s cause was born out of the murder of his parents. Iron man’s was birthed from being a prisoner of war. We all have an origin story that defines our beliefs. A Crusader finds the battle they were meant to wage and builds their life around waging it daily. That includes what they study in school, the initial jobs they take in the workforce and the eventual businesses they build around their causes.

Discover your superpower. Your daughter might be the reliable “save the day girl” or the voice that simply will not go unheard. Your son may have a natural compass for justice or an inclination to build things. Every human being has a superpower. It might not be x-ray vision, and you might not be able to read other people’s minds, but we all have gifts that we’ve honed throughout the course of our lives and they should be used as our unique selling proposition.

Live by a code of honor. Superman fought for truth, justice, and the American Way. Spiderman believed that with great power came great responsibility. A Crusader’s code of honor is their compass and helps guide them in making daily decisions, big and small. Define your code. In business we call these core values.

Defend the weak. No matter what fight a crusader is engaged in, there is always someone who desperately needs them. Teach this principle to your children and they will build businesses with natural demand because people are hurting, people are afraid, and people feel alone. A Crusader fights for them, is a voice for them.

Wake up early. Crusaders don’t sleep in. In fact, they often get their best work done before daybreak or late into the evening. They put in long hours because the world needs them. That sense of responsibility is greater than a Crusader’s need for an extra hour in bed.

Invest in yourself. Whether they are billionaire playboys like Tony Stark or totally broke freelance photographers like Spiderman, Crusaders are business owners who invest in their toolkits. But high-tech uniforms, utility belts, and suits powered by arc reactors can get expensive. Crusaders also invest in their brand through hard work, personal development and smart time management.

Believe you can change the world. Crusaders start heart-centered companies that change the lives of the people they touch. Often one at a time, without fanfare, and when the cameras aren’t rolling. They know that changing the world is not always done on a grand scale, but more often through human connection; by being strong for someone in need, there for them, and courageous in the face of fear when they are most vulnerable.

This is post-industrial America, and creativity, agility and passion have replaced, uniformity, top-down hierarchy, and a “do it because I said so” mentality. So, as a parent, perhaps the greatest gift you can offer your children is leadership by example. Show them how to live like a Crusader by doing so yourself.

That might mean following your passion to open your own heart-centered business, or finding a way to be intrapreneurial within your current role at work. Will it be scary? Of course it will. But is it worth it? You know it is. And when you’re afraid, and just plain feel like a 4-year-old in the dark, repeat the following: “The secret compartment of my ring I fill, with an Underdog super energy pill.”

Courtesy of YEC

Courtesy of YEC

Authors Corey Blake and David Cohen are the president and vice president of Round Table Companies (RTC), a storytelling company. Seven of the RTC authors are currently raising funds for a Crusaders comic book to teach kids how to be real life superheroes. To learn more, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rtcompanies/the-crusaders/.

Courtesy of YEC

                                What is a Pro-Ject Influencer?

Person place or thing that inspires, encourages, evokes positive emotion, successful in their industry, large social and or physical following, sense of style, innovation and entrepreneur based.

Via Inc.cm

The Kleiner Perkins general partner lays down her vision of the future. And it's full of drones.

AFP/Getty Images

French Parrot introduces its automatic four rotor flying drones during the opening event at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Mandalay Bay Hotel resort in Las Vegas.

The soothsayer has spoken again: Mary Meeker, the general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, released her official "2013 Internet Trends" report, a whimsical, 117-page slide deck on the future growth of a variety of tech verticals and start-ups. (Key among them, for instance: Snapchat. Its grown to nearly 160 million photos per day--from zero about a year ago.)

The report touches on mammoth growth opportunities for entrepreneurs, and highlights the explosion of mobile, video, and photo sharing as cornerstones of Web activity. It also covers the expansion of wearable tech devices, like glasses, that may eventually become a staple of normal, not-insanely-geeky human apparel. 

Of course, take these predictions with a grain of salt. Forecasting trends is a notoriously tricky business (QR codes, anyone?), which few investors ever master. And while the Snapchat growth chart shows some hockey-stick-like now, its longer-term chart may be more bell-shaped.

For the truly diligent, head over to Kleiner Perkins' site, where you can peruse the report free of charge. Here's a condensed version, highlighting five of the most important pieces.

1. Image and video sharing is here to stay, even if it's not in Snapchat form. 

In 2006, maybe a million images were shared on a daily basis. Today, between Flickr, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, there are nearly 550 million. Obviously, that growth has been fueled by a variety of factors, most notably the prevalence of smartphones and social networks. More generally, though, the explosion of connected Web users helps explain the image-sharing revolution. Today, there are 2.4 billion Internet users.  

Video, which Meeker says is "ramping very fast," is poised for a simialr revolution. Particularly, Meeker calls out Vine, the six-second video app, as indicative of the overall video sharing market--it's doubling month-over-month--and doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon. 

2. Get ready for the wearable-device and quantified-self revolution. 

MyFitnessPal, which tracks everything from your caloric intake to the amount of exercise you completed on a daily basis, has seen an absolute explosion in usage: in October 2012, after the company launched, it received fewer than a million API calls--a measure of how often developers use the app. Today, it has more than 50 million API calls per month. 

Of course, the quantified-self movement goes hand-in-hand with the devices that make it possible. Meeker points out the rise of hands-free, always-on, connected devices such as Google Glass make this movement possible. And for those naysayers that say wearable tech is just a fad--Well, Meeker would like to remind you that Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment, once said in 1977 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." 

      3. Drones are not as far off as you might think.

The use of commercially-viable drones has been bandied about the Valley for several years now (sadly Tacocopter turned out to be fake) but Meeker believes we're closer to having drones as part of every day life than you might believe. First there were smartphones. Then tablets. And now, Meeker says, we're entering the drone age.

In agriculture, drones are used to pinpint "potential crop damage early on." In sports, drones can capture unique angles of players on a field or course. And in public safety, drones can supply much-needed supplies to areas hit by natural disaster. 

4. China surpassed the USA in terms of active iOS and Android users

This one is fairly straightforward, but speaks to the magnitude of opportunity inherent in the Chinese market. It's also worth noting that the Chinese, proportionally speaking, spend more time on the Web and mobile than their counterparts in the United States. 

5. You can't ignore the boom in online education. 

                     Via ~> INC

Here are the top three signs I see in leaders who have all the ability needed to produce genuinely outstanding work, but who have instead been conned into joining the ranks of mere 'shippers':

Your intuition tells you so

Well, duh, as the kids say. You'd think that a nagging, persistent voice saying "this is okay, but I could make so much better" would pull most people up short. Unfortunately, experience tells me this isn't so.

Instead, fueled by the "ship early, ship often" mentality, I see leaders constantly sell themselves, their teams and their projects short by tossing stuff out the door that isn't their best work.

As my friend Michael Bungay-Stanier says, there's a world of difference between doing merely good work, and doing great work. If your inner voice is telling you that you're merely doing good work, it's time to slow down and deliver something great.

You're fixated on what's next before you've finished what's now

Any leader worth their salt gets excited when a new project hovers into view. The deciding factor is what they do with that excitement.

Truly great leaders are disciplined. They park their excitement, knowing they can return to it later--but only after ensuring they have delivered real excellence in the project they're currently engaged in.

Less-than-stellar leaders become consumed by the entrancement of the new thing, and are hypnotized into dropping, aborting or prematurely birthing what they're currently working on in order to get their hands on that shiny new project--all, of course, accompanied by an intellectually robust post-rationalization.

If you have a history of losing interest in the final 20% of projects you're responsible for, trading that interest for the thrill of the next new thing, it's time to work on your ability to delay gratification.

You've left behind a trail of failed or near-failed projects

The single most obvious sign that you've become a 'shipper', not a leader, is a tell-tale breadcrumb of failed or good-as-failed projects. These are permanent, visible proof of the lack of discipline required to produce truly great work.

This doesn't just happen at the individual level, by the way. Entire organizations can display this tendency. Compare for example, Google's graveyard of cancelled projectswith Apple's short list of flops (Lisa, Newton) and you see the difference between an 'always be shipping' mentality and true industry leadership.

Do you want to be lauded for your ability to pull the trigger and get stuff out the door? Or because you deliver genuinely inspirational, life-changing world-class product? If the former, keep doing more of what you do, and keep doing it faster.

If it's the latter, slow down. And don't feel guilty about it.

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