The Awesomeness Manifesto – Worthy of the Title?
Short answer: Pretty much.
Umair Haque over at HarvardBusiness.org beat me to the punch with his Manifesto on Awesomeness. Now, on the whole, I like Umair’s writing. He’s crazy. I mean, look at this guy:
- Aaagghhhhh!!!!
Dude looks like he’s got so much rumbling around in his brain, rays of badassness might come flying out of his peepers.
Umair argues that the days of innovation are over. Innovation, in Umair’s estimation, is old hat and not inherently COOL ENOUGH to continue to be that shining beacon in the distance that we should all be striving for. Instead, we should be yearning for AWESOMENESS, which he describes thusly:
Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. [Emphasis mine.]
Putting all the other stuff aside, I want to hone in on the two things I highlighted above: love and insanely great stuff. Umair is right on the money in describing something that is AWESOME as something that has been born of love. It is often someone’s passion that produces anything of remarkable import.
From such love, insanely great stuff can come. I think this needs no further explanation. Plenty of other 21st century troubadour poets have said as much more eloquently than I.
Love + insanely great stuff = AWESOME. I can get behind that.
There is a GREAT conversation happening in the comments section of Umair’s post in which I highly encourage everyone to go participate. While I dig the guts of Umair’s manifesto, I still think he’s missed some things. Furthermore, many commenters – including quite a few bean-counting, butt-headed, bitch-assed defenders of Ye Olde Way Of Doing Things – have attacked him, pointing out his assertions’ naivety and the mere GALL – GALL, I tell you – that Umair would use such a silly word like “awesomeness” to replace the sacred golden cow of Innovation.
Umair, like a true son of the Social Media Masses, responded that The Awesomeness Manifesto is open source. That means, YOU can go edit it. Don’t like the concept? FIX IT. Think of a better pillar of Awesomeness that Umair missed? GET IN THERE.
What would NOT be AWESOME, but in fact be kinda LAME, would be if you just said something stupid about it in the comments (mine or Umair’s) and pretended to care. 
