This campaign is now closed - thank you everybody who contributed in any way.
I'm still taking donations - if you head to the blog you'll find a Donate button in the sidebar on the right.
This is partly a performance, partly a writing and film-making project.
For those of you who don't know me already this might sound a bit odd. If you want to find out more about what I do, take a look at this post about my art from my friend Francesca Elston. Also it's definitely *not* about funding a holiday :)
Please
Look After This Englishman will involve me travelling
coast-to-coast across the USA making use of my online social network
to provide practical help as well as deciding which way to go, how to
get there and where to stay along the way.
In
a nutshell I will turn up somewhere on the West Coast on March 1st
and somehow make my way across via the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas
to fly home from the East Coast on March 31st.
This follows on from last year's successful Tuttle2Texas on which I learned that the most exciting and interesting things happened when I gave up the myth of control over the trip and was willing to ask people in my online social network for specific help.
The
trip is designed to test the hypothesis that The true return on
investment in social media is social capital and to explore ways
of measuring the use and accumulation of that capital. As an example
of how I'll be looking at this, consider that I've been actively
building an online social network for many years. If I didn't have
that, then what would it cost me to do a trip like this? And what
opportunities will I get from knowing someone in most towns that I
visit, from being passed on from person to person, instead of making
my own way to a predefined itinerary?
I'm particularly interested in what happens when I give up control of the trip and actively ask for help.
I
will of course be creating a multimedia blog about the experience as
the journey progresses. I will also be using all the usual social
tools, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook to keep making new
connections and giving something back to the people who help me out.
I also expect to publish a book based on the trip and to make a short
film out of the video footage that I'll be routinely shooting.
Why I'm raising money.
The trip is a balancing act between simply paying for everything directly and giving people in my network the opportunity to help out. I'm raising money for contingency, to cover my overhead while I'm away and for kit and some travel (which may be provided as sponsorship in kind rather than cash). At the top end, I'd like to employ someone back in the UK to cover content editorial and promotion for the duration of the trip.
Other Ways You Can Help
There are four other ways you can get involved:
Just watching
gasping with amazement, pointing and laughing, making suggestions for next right steps for now keep an eye on http://t2t2.posterous.com
Spreading the word
if you can do nothing else, *please* just tell some other people about this weird English guy, what he's doing and where they can find me if they want to take part. Follow me on twitter.
Encouraging larger-scale sponsorship & patronage
I don't want to throw money at this, but equally I don't want to freeload the whole way I also have expenses back in the UK to cover while I'm away. If people give me money or other help, I want to provide them with some value in exchange. This might range from me giving you the benefit of my brainpower and facilitation skills, through me entertaining and inspiring your staff with my tales from the road and a spot of ukulele fun, all the way to me wearing your logo on my t-shirt and evangelising your product wherever I go. However, if you'd like to make a donation to make sure that this thing can happen, because you just want more stuff like this in the world, that works for me too.
Lending a hand directly
I will need people to stay with, to drive me long distances, to feed me or at least eat with me, to show me around, to introduce me to interesting people and places, to smile at me and tell me I'm nuts but that's OK and all manner of other things that I can't imagine or am embarrassed (in my adorable, but infuriating, British way) to ask for.
