ChangeThis: Manifesto Thought

Seth Godin you know, the Really Bad PowerPoint guy, the Bootstrapper's Bible guy, has a new idea that I'm pretty attracted to: a sort of internet pamphleteering, a way of disseminating ideas.

ChangeThis is building a platform for the launch of important new ideas. Ideas that will spread far and alter the tone of our conversations. Ideas that will change minds.

When Lawrence Lessig wrote Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, he changed our understanding of intellectual property and the Internet. When Seth Godin released Unleashing the Ideavirus, he did the same for the spread of ideas. Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar gave voice to open-source software development, and the largest companies in the world joined the fight. The authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto laid out their rules for the new economy, and millions of individuals arrived at their doorstep to sign their assent.

Each of these authors reached millions of people and changed the course of an entire field. Each began with an idea, wrote a manifesto, and released it on the Internet. Readers did the rest.

This summer, ChangeThis is taking the magic that helped spread these manifestos and creating a new medium for spreading thoughtful, innovative, and important ideas. We believe we’ve found a way to change things for the better. Come August, we’ll prove it.

Catherine Hickey, Phoebe Lastname, Amit Gupta Michelle Sriwongtong, Noah Weiss are the brilliant summer interns.