Nerdfighters: Insider View from a YouTube Persona August 28, 2008

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Google Tech Talks
August 8, 2008

ABSTRACT

What do Peeps, Catcher in the Rye and Happy Dances have in common?

On Friday, YT content Hank & John Green (Brotherhood 2.0) are visiting the Chicago office. They are currently ranked #49 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Directors in YT -- just 7 positions behind Oprah and 2 positions behind Google. The Vlog has been featured on BBC radio and the Wall Street Journal and has a dedicated fan base of over 20,000 viewers (called Nerdfighters.)

Check out this sample video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1M5VHF3no&feature=PlayList&p=D11540E6F91A7FAB&index=0&playnext=1

Join us for this Q session on: their subscribers / fans and how they interact with them; how the last 1.5 years of video blogging has been and being part of YT / online video phenomena, etc.

Background:
Hank and John Green, Brothers for over 27 years, decided not to write to each other during all of 2007, and instead make daily video blogs.

Though the project "Brotherhood 2.0" has now ended, they decided to keep updating the YouTube channel at least once a week. Additionally, the community of nerdfighters that they helped create is now stronger than ever, and lives at: http://www.nerdfighters.com

Speaker: John Green
THE LONG BIO FOR BOOK REPORTS, THE INSANELY CURIOUS, AND/OR STALKERS

John Green is a writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana (by way of New York and Chicago) with his outrageously wonderful wife, Sarah. John's first novel, Looking for Alaska, was published in 2005. It won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, and received many other accolades, which are discussed at some length here. The movie rights to Looking for Alaska were acquired by Paramount, and Josh Schwartz (creator of The O. C. and a very nice guy) is currently working on the screenplay. It has also been translated into 13 languages.

John's second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, came out in September 2006. Katherines was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and was also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.

John grew up in Florida before moving to Alabama to attend boarding school--and yes, that school bears some physical resemblance to Alaska's Culver Creek. After graduating from college in 2000, John worked for six months as a student chaplain at a children's hospital. It was there that he started thinking about last words and the book that became Looking for Alaska.

John lived for several years after that in Chicago, where he worked for Booklist Magazine, a fantastic book review journal. While there, he reviewed hundreds of books of all varieties--from picture books about Confucius to romance novels about Confucius (really!). His reviewing specialties included the literary fiction, books about Islam, and books about conjoined twins. John has read 11 books about conjoined twins (there are, it is worth pointing out, more books about conjoined twins currently in print than there are actual conjoined twins currently alive. In this sense, conjoined twins are like serial killers). John's book criticism has also appeared in The New York Times Books Review.

John has also written for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and for Chicago's public radio station, WBEZ. If you want to be inundated with jokes about John's ex-girlfriends, peruse the "On the Radio" archives. Katherines readers will be unsurprised to learn that John often writes about trivial intellectual pursuits for mental floss magazine.

What else? John and his brother Hank created the year-long video blog Brotherhood 2.0. He is a total Dumpee. He likes sushi and country music and Nintendo. (Note: Those words, in that order, have never appeared on the Internet.)

Speaker: Hank Green
http://www.ecogeek.org/

During the entire year of 2007, my brother John and I ceased text-based communication, and instead made daily video blogs. Brotherhood 2.0 videos have now been viewed over 4 million times.

The Vlog has been featured on BBC radio and the Wall Street Journal and has a dedicated fan base of over 20,000 viewers (we call them Nerdfighters.)

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