I think it is supposed to be 15 minutes of fame, according to Andy Warhol, but you take what you can get, right? A couple of months ago I was contacted by a producer for the History Channel show called Modern Marvels. They were doing a piece on the Segway (a cousin of the iBot wheelchair that I own) and wanted to license some of my iBot footage. Of course I agreed. Any publicity for the iBot is welcome. I’m working with a group of people to try and save the iBot from extinction (click here). I made my case with the producer that the iBot technology and the iBot story were much more compelling than the Segway technology or the Segway story. I didn’t get anywhere though. So the piece recently went live. Click here to view it. The Segway story (which is good, just not as good as the iBot story would have been), begins at time 11:35. My brief appearance (if you look quickly you’ll see Kim too) begins around 14:20. So it was cool to be on the History Channel, but I want more. I want the iBot technology and the iBot human interest story to be told on Nightline, or 60 Minutes, or made into a full length documentary. The world needs to hear the story of how disabled people were given an incredible gift, only to have it unceremoniously ripped away from them. Who do I call? How do we get this story told?
5 Replies to “The iBot’s, and Mitch’s, 15 Seconds of Fame”
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Congratulations on your new-found fame! Did your name appear in the credits also? That's neat!
Peace,
Muff
I'll have to wait until I get home to watch the video clip but the History Channel is fantastic.
I have no idea how you pitch your info to TV stations but someone must know. Don't forget your northern neighbour. Canada's CTV airs a lot of special interest stories.
Can I have your autograph?
Charlie
Hmmm, who to tell? Your local public radio station's science/technology editor; same with local TV news stations and human interest shows; local and national newspapers and magazines (gosh, they are a dying breed); How about the Huffington Post? Publish the manufacturer's address/contact information for us all to see.
Just a few ideas off the top of my head. I think you'd look great on Evening Magazine, by the way. (That's a local Seattle KING TV5 show.)
My husband and I just watched the very entertaining and informative Segway segment on The History Channel. I came online, looking for a link to this segment, so I could share it with my son and daughter-in-law. When they took an enjoyable segway tour of downtown Raleigh (North Carolina) about 6 months ago, I went with them, to "hang out" their 2 daughters (my granddaughters, ages 6 and 4). I was disappointed to discover that this video is no longer available on history.com and apparently nowhere else on the web either. Google led me to your very interesting and inspiring blog post here. I'll share its link with them. And for everyone here, here's a link to results I got when I searched hulu.com for 'segway': http://www.hulu.com/search?query=segway&st=0&fs=
Thanks and Enjoy!