Alex Steffen in Seattle writes to me today by email:

Dear Dan --  In 1967, Stanley Milgram conducted a unique experiment with amazing results. He gave test subjects letters addressed to people they didn’t know in distant cities. Milgram asked them to pass them on to someone they thought might know the addressee, and have them do the same, until the letters arrived at their destination. He found that the average number of passings was 6, which is one of the reasons we now talk about 6 degrees of separation. We have a letter like that for you. Here's the twist: we don't know who it's going to; we think you do. See, as you know, this September (the 20th, 21st & 22nd) I’m performing a “live documentary,” The Heroic Future. We need to find our audience. We know that most of you don't live in the Bay Area, but we suspect that you know some cool people who do. We'd like to ask you to send them a note asking them to consider joining us for these live events. We’re putting together a great show. Three nights with a live audience to film a three-part documentary series—an incredible experience mixing spoken word narration, film, photography, music, sound and lights to take you on an epic adventure into the future, looking for stories that can help us answer three huge questions: When are we? What can we do? Who do we choose to become? In short, when I take the stage, I will give you the best of what 25 years of travels, research, and hard thinking have shown me about our world and its future. This is the best work I’ve ever done. But to present that work, we need your help. We have 13 days to fund this project. Above all, we need to find our audience. The audience makes the show, of course. As Walt Whitman said, “Great audiences make great poets.” I’m no great poet, but I’ve taken the stage over 500 times now, and I know that whatever I say is at most only half of what happens in the room. That’s where you play a critical role. You probably know someone great in the Bay Area—someone who’s are looking to grow larger; someone who’s are looking to create some cultural magic; someone struggling themselves with the challenge of how to be in a time of planetary crisis. Will you to invite that person to share this fantastic experience? To join for any or all of the three nights, all your friends have to do is back the Heroic Future on Kickstarter at any level of $100 or more. For about the price of dinner for two at a good restaurant in the Bay Area, your friends and colleagues could be part of an innovative, worldchanging, once-in-a-lifetime experience. We’re also offering a group discount, 10 tickets as a reward for backing us at the $850 level. Backing us at that level would be an enormous help. We’re a small team working hard to tell a big story. If we can fill the theater, we can make this series. If we can make this series, we can distribute it globally, reaching millions. Since humanity can’t build what we can’t imagine, millions of people imagining a thriving, prosperous, sustainable world is a powerful step towards our children actually living in that world. We can’t do it without you. Though 280 people have backed us, we still have more than $50,000 to raise on Kickstarter, and just 13 days to do it. A full theater is the difference between sharing new stories of the human future… and silence. Our campaign ends Thursday, March 17th at 11pm PST. Please back the project now, then invite your friends. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1910818917/the-heroic-future - Alex PS: If you want to read more about why I believe heroic futurism is so important, I wrote an essay explaining our mission here: https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/heroic-7556bf2c19f9#.lpopj9v04 PPS: We've also made a Facebook event page for The Heroic Future. Please join and invite your friends here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1536248316669517

-=-=- Alex Steffen · United States This email was sent to danbloom@gmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here. You can also keep up with Alex Steffen on Twitter.