You have probably seen the video of Collin Wynter at the Sasquatch Music Festival back in 2009. If you somehow missed it, you absolutely need to watch it right now. It is a complete masterclass in how to build a movement.
The video shows Collin dancing entirely alone on a grassy hill. He gives it everything he has, just throwing his arms around and stomping his feet while hundreds of people sit on the grass around him. For a few solid minutes, he is entirely isolated. Most people would get super embarrassed, pack it up, and sit down. But Collin just keeps pushing.
Then, something amazing happens. Another guy runs up and joins the dance. That first follower changes everything. A few seconds later, three more people jump in. Then the floodgates open. You see a massive wave of people rushing up the hill. What started as one guy looking ridiculous turns into a huge, chaotic dance party with dozens of people running to get involved.
That clip went totally viral almost twenty years ago and racked up millions of views. People even studied it in famous leadership talks to explain the power of the first follower. But the real lesson for you here is about the guts it takes to be the guy who starts the whole damn thing.
A lot of people think about cool ideas and complain when things are broken. Take Substack. People rightly complain about actual problems: they host nazi content and trap you in a walled garden. Not many people decide to do something about it.
Why people don't lead? What stops people from moving first?
I recently got asked how I was able to envision the future like I did with AsyncAPI. My response was that I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing. I was never trying to build an EDA standard. At least not in the first couple of years. It was just a tool for me that I open sourced for fun and talked about in conferences so I could practice public speaking. Everything became crazy over time but, at the time, it all went in very small steps that you could barely notice.
In a conversation with a good friend of mine this week, it became clear. He said he was afraid of looking dumb in public. Start something, fail, and then everyone would have seen him fail. Just like everyone at the Sasquatch Music festival. Except Collin. He wasn’t afraid of what people would say about him. Or at least he didn’t care enough to stop. I know, he was probably on drugs, but I think the lesson still applies.
Why people lead? What moves us to do the first step and keep pushing even when nobody seems to be caring?
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