Open up your mind and say, ahh...

My friend and colleague Amit Gupta is fighting off leukemia and the twittersphere is lighting up with expressions of support.

But the support he really needs is for you to get a Q-tip, stick it in your cheek and mail it back. The process is free and you can sign up right here.

The extraordinary thing about marketing is that a million people might see something or hear something or be sold something and only a thousand will actually take action. Even if it’s free.

When you look at the long odds on marrow donation, it feels like a bit of a sweepstakes, but backwards. It’s easy to fix if we just get everyone (regardless of ethnicity) to register.

How about if we gamify it? Here’s the deal: if you are a match for Amit and the marrow donation happens, I’ll profile you or the project of your choice on the blog and send you a check for $10,000 for you or the charity of your choice. Winner take all, no purchase necessary, void where prohibited… (Even if you don’t win, if you swab we all win).

If I can be so bold as to suggest a hashtag: #IswabbedforAmit

“What would you have me do instead?”

To the critic who decries a project as a worthless folly, something that didn’t work out, something that challenged the status quo and failed, the artist might ask,

“Is it better to do nothing?”

To the critic who hasn’t shipped, who hasn’t created his art, anything less than better-than-what-I -have-now appears to be a waste. To this critic, progress should only occur in leaps, in which a fully functioning, perfected new device/book/project/process/system appears and instantly and perfectly replaces the current model.

We don’t need your sharp wit or enmity, please. Our culture needs your support instead.

Each step by any (and every) one who ships moves us. It might show us what won’t work, it might advance the state of the art or it might merely encourage others to give it a try as well.

To those who feel that they have no choice but to create, thank you.