Liz Danzico

Jason Fried

Melissa Pierce and Biz Stone

One day, Melissa Pierce woke up, got out of bed, and had an realization. There was a revolution going on. Somewhere, everywhere, and right now. People are using cell phones in areas of the world where land lines and telephone poles never existed. We get news at the speed of light but it doesn’t come from reporters working for television or newspapers; it comes from Twitter. Something is happening. And she wanted to document it.

With the advent of the internet, we now have a completely new road map to use while navigating our perspective futures. Life in Perpetual Beta focuses on that intersection between passion and modern technology and the resulting revolution that has spawned from it.

The movie itself is a perfect example of passion meeting technology. A labor of love indeed, the quality of the production itself goes from OK to just plain bad. And Melissa will be the first to tell you this herself as any reader of the LIPB blog knows, she’s completely honest about her lack of skills as a documentary filmmaker.  The resulting interviews nevertheless convey enough relevant information to make it more than just another random motivational video.

For me that adds a lot of charm to the whole thing. Even despite the lo-fi website and varying degrees of success in capturing quality imagery and sound, the words and thoughts themselves are quite valuable. And in case you’re not yet convinced, you should click on any of the above links, or maybe I should drop a few names. I’m basically impressed on both sides of the camera that these brief but valuable interviews exist at all.

Melissa Pierce managed to get footage of Seth Godin, Jason Fried, Liz Danzico, Jeffery Zeldman and Biz Stone just to name a few. Check out the viewing room for a few more examples.

All in all, it’s Melissa’s dedication to the project and the content produced from her labor that interests me. I can fight through all the lo-fi audio and less than standard production. The underlying intent of the project shines through.