Last year, Variety reported that Twitter signed a deal with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment to develop an unscripted TV series. Later Twitter’s Biz Stone said it wouldn’t be an official Twitter show. Twitter is allowing production companies to work on TV projects based on Twitter without endorsing one over another.

I have two ideas for turning what happens on Twitter into compelling TV. I shared one of the ideas on Twitter this morning:

I got two types of responses. Social media folks understood why it could be a good show because they see examples of peoples lives being positively changed or at least inspired every day. Other folks weren’t certain anyone could squeeze more than a single episode out of the idea.

Last year Amanda Rose organized an event called Twestival to raise money to provide clean and safe drinking water to over 17,000 people in developing countries. The event raised over $250,000. Since then Twestival has raised nearly half a million dollars. An episode about Amanda Rose and Twestival would start with a tweet and end with people filling bottles with clean water in a village somewhere.

May 20, 2009 Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Drew has a sense of humor about the cancer and started blaming everything from losing his keys to Twitter being slow on his cancer. He asked other people to blame things on his cancer too using the hashtag #blamedrewscancer. Drew’s goal is to raise $1 for every tweet blaming something on his cancer. Another episode would tell Drew’s story.

When Nashville flooded a couple of weeks ago, Pete Wilson tweeted a request for volunteers, hammers, trash bags and brooms to help with cleanup. Hundreds of people showed up to help. There are stories to be told about that.

Those are three examples that made the news. Other amazing stories of people connecting and helping each other in very special ways happen every day on Twitter. To me nothing is more interesting that hearing people’s stories about going through pain and coming out the other side stronger and with more depth.

I’m throwing my pitch out to everyone because I don’t mind if someone other than me makes it happen. I’d love to work on a project like this, but I’d also like it if someone else wants to make it happen.

The quick pitch is Extreme Makeover Home Edition meets Twitter meets On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

Do you have an amazing Twitter story to share? Leave a comment!

In life we try to have empathy for people when they go through hard times. In my life, if I heard about someone loosing a loved one to cancer, I felt bad for them. I hated it for them, but ultimately I feel like I cannot begin to even get close to understanding what they were going through.

In the last year, two men in new media announced their marriages were ending. I’ve admired the work of both men and the marriages of both men. When they each announced their divorces, I was deeply saddened for days. I didn’t understand the sadness. I know them both a little bit on a professional level, but not very well on a personal level so the depth of my sadness was unusual. Looking back, I think I probably had a sense that my marriage wasn’t making it either.

There is no way I could have ever guessed how painful the divorce process is. Friends help in amazing ways, but unless they’ve experienced the emotional trauma of divorce they can only help so much. They try their hardest and you’ll appreciate the effort, but I’ve found it really helpful to find people going through the same thing.

At first, I attended something called RE|ENGAGE at Watermark Church in Dallas. It’s a dynamic, ongoing Wednesday night ministry designed to strengthen and heal marriages. One of the most unique things about RE|ENGAGE is its group sessions. There are couples groups, like you’d expect, but there are also groups for spouses who are there to work on their marriage without their partner. There are men’s groups and women’s groups. There is something powerful about hearing a person you don’t know, express in words the exact feelings you’re experiencing. The realization that you’re not alone in feeling the way you do is the beginning of healing. At least it has been for me.

I still believe God wants to heal marriages, but I’ve lost faith that He’ll heal mine before divorce is final. I’m switching from RE|ENGAGE to another support system called DivorceCare. DivorceCare is something that takes place in churches all over America. It’s a support group kind of thing where you walk through the pain with other people who are experiencing it too.

I’m not really in a position to hand out advice to anyone, so this is really just about what’s working for me. Friends have been amazing. Friends have also been frustrating when they haven’t understood, but mostly they’ve been amazing. Ultimately though, it’s been very important to talk to people who personally know from experience what this is like. That’s what I encourage anyone going through this to do.

It turns out we’re never quite as unique as we think we are and that’s a very beautiful thing.

My favorite people are, and have always been, animal people … people who deeply care about animals. The day I met my wife at church, I also met her mom and sisters. They told me about all their dogs, cats a rabbit and a pot belly pig. They had me at dogs.

Last night I was flipping through channels and landed on a biopic about a woman named Temple Grandin. Claire Danes played the leading role. I’ve loved Claire Danes since My So Called Life so I started watching even though the movie was already half over. Now I can’t wait to go back and see the whole thing.

From my perspective, movies hardly get any better than when they tell a real life story about a person who struggled through life to make a difference. Temple Grandin is now a Doctor of Animal Science and professor at Colorado State University. She also has autism.

Because of the way she was rased, she pushed through limited expectations to do something that changed the way we treat the animals we eat. Autism gave Grandin the gift of thinking different. As a grad student, she had to visit a stockyard where cows were being prepared for slaughter. She reacted to the stress the cows were going through and went to work figuring out how to alleviate the stress. She says, “I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we’ve got to do it right. We’ve got to give those animals a decent life and we’ve got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.” She designed a system that not only got cows from stockyards to slaughter peacefully, it also saved money.

In addition to her work with animals, Temple Grandin is also an advocate for autistic children. She’s been able to explain to worried and confused parents of autistic kids what the kids are experiencing when they spin in circles, put their hands over their ears or rock back and forth.

I’ve never heard of Temple Grandin before last night so I figure I’m not alone. The movie I watched is in rotation on HBO, but if you care about animals, you might want to order it from Amazon. She wrote a book called, Thinking in Pictures, one called, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s and another one called, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. I can’t wait to learn more.

Here is a video of Temple Grandin speaking at TED. Tech people need to see this!

It took me a long time to grok Facebook. Cali and I looked at from an entirely different perspective than a regular facebooker. We have so much love and appreciation for thousands of people who watch GeekBrief.TV that we added them as friends on Facebook when they asked us to. I stopped adding people after about a hundred because I found the flood of information about people’s personal lives to be overwhelming. Now I’m back to adding friends of our show, but Facebook is really about not letting go of those real connections we make in our lives.

A few weeks ago, I connected with my favorite cousin from growing up. She and I spent as much time as we could together singing, watching Cinemax and eating Doritos. Around college time, I pulled away from friends and family for a stupid reason. I had a nickname that everyone, including teachers in school called me. I HATED it made me feel small and avoid social situations because I hated being called that name. It’s an Arkansas thing, I guess. I have a great aunt who seems to have no qualms about being called “Mutt” her whole life.

When I left for college, I used my real name and started life fresh. Lots of good came from the fresh start approach, but I regret so deeply that I lost touch with all those people who meant so much to me growing up. I should’ve just told everyone to stop calling me that stupid name!

This morning, I checked in with Facebook and had a friend request from one of my best friends during the high school and early college years. I approved the request and started browsing her friends and saw so many names of people I care about and miss having in my life. Clicking around led me to a memorial page for one of my best guy friends from childhood. He was killed in Afganistan December 30, 2009. He was one of the best kids I knew growing up. His dad is a doctor. They were wealthy. He didn’t have to serve the country by going to war. He had to have done it because he wanted to do it. I never would have known he was gone if it wasn’t for Facebook.

An earlier generation told us about the hardship of walking to school uphill both ways. I think my generation will tell our kids about how we used to loose touch with the people we loved when we moved to a different city. That doesn’t have to happen anymore and it is a beautiful thing.

I’m going to spend some time this weekend connecting with people I miss in memory of my old friend, Jeremy Wise (1975-2009).

When you start a business you love, you may be tempted to put 100% of your time and energy during waking hours into making it a success. Cali and I have done that with GeekBrief.TV. Even when we took time off from the show, we used the time to work on parts of the business you don’t see. We took that quote, “Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” to heart.

The problem is, people aren’t designed to only work. We need rest, and we need play.

Yesterday morning I was listening to the audio version of My Life in France by Julia Child and I got a life lesson. She wrote,

In 1963 I was shooting four episodes of The French Chef a week while also writing a weekly food column for the Boston Globe. In the Fall, we were scheduled to take a break from TV work and had planned to visit Simca and John at their rambling farm house in Provence, but as November hove into view, we began to regret it. The quicksand of my cookery work, Paul’s painting and photography projects and all the mini bits of upkeep and improvement that 103 Irving Street required were sucking at our feet.

‘I just don’t know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,’ I sighed.

Paul nodded, but then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days,

‘Remember! No one’s more important than people.’

In other words, friendship is the most important thing–not career or housework or one’s fatigue–and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went, and thank heaven we did!

Throughout the last five years we’ve produced Geek Brief, we had similar opportunities and intentions to travel, but we always made the other choice. We prudently decided we should use that time to work on the business. Sure it would be great to go to Italy. I want so bad to go to Scotland. Hey, we should go to Japan and see all the crazy gadgets and have real Ramen! Instead, we opted for the more prudent choice. We stayed home and worked on our business.

Rest and play are the other side of the work coin. You can’t just breath in. You also have to breath out. Lot’s of people look at our story and think it is inspirational, but I hope people will learn from what we got right AND from our mistakes.

Take real breaks. Leave the Mac at home or at least in the hotel room. Enjoy life with friends and enjoy the beauty in the world. Otherwise you’ll just wear yourself out and burn yourself up.