Truemors
SXSW 2008: Keynote Address by Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret
Frank Warren just concluded a wonderfuly positive and touching keynote address discussing his PostSecret project and the impact of both keeping and sharing secrets. Fascinating stuff.
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3:00pm -- Warren's closing remark: "Free your secrets and become who you are." Standing ovation; the whole room stands and applauds.
2:57pm -- Warren: "I see the project and the telling of secrets as an incredibly liberating experience. There's a paradox about secrets: when we keep one in our heart it makes us feel alone, but when we see a community of shared secrets, that pool can allow you to see that that secret is something that's actually connecting you to many others, rather than isolating you from them."
2:52pm -- Question: You get a lot of anonymous questions. How many do you think are true?
Warren: I think of the postcards as works of art. There aren't ever, really, any made up secrets. The secrets come from somewhere. More than once I've received emails from people who wrote secrets thinking they're were just making them up but, in the process, they realized that they were actually sharing something that was a part of them.
2:50pm -- Audience member: Have you ever received a secret that admitted to a significant crime?
Warren: I don't really receive that kind of secret. I post secrets that I receive every week on the blog and it shows what the community is about, so I think people respond in kind.
What really affects me is the response from young people who share secrets, such as: "When my friends complain about their moms and how mean they're being, I pretend to empathize but I think, I would give my right arm just to still have my alive".
2:47pm -- Audience member: You are an example of what people are calling an "authenticity" or "intimacy" revolution. We are learning how to share more of ourselves. Do
you have any secrets from the virtual world?
Warren: these tools are allowing us to come up with new things are not commerce. We are finally able to build relationships that foster intimacy and I think that's a wonderful road to go down.
2:44pm -- Let's have an open discussion about secrets, stories, blogging.
Q: What was your original inspiration to do this project?
A: I was an only child until seven years old, all my life I've believed that other people have a rich interior life and that they need a safe space to express those ideas, fears, and emotions.
I'd also struggled with my own secret from when I was in elementary school and then I received a postcard from a stranger that expressed a similar story and it helped me open up and let go of my own secret.
2:40pm -- Courage is contagious, sharing your secrets is a liberating thing. Question to the audience: is there anyone who wants to share a secret?
A: I have a personal question: Natalie will you marry me?
Woman walks to the front of the room, as everyone applauds...she said Yes!
2:39pm -- There's an artist born in all of us and sometimes courage can be just as important as artistic training. Now there is a real shift in what we appreciate as art, and who we sees as artists being capable of that work.
2:30pm -- Most gratifying moment for Warren was when he got an email from a friend who founded the "1-800-Suicide" Hotline. The friend said that the hotline was in trouble and needed money. Warren couldn't assist financially, but he posted the story on his blog and, within a week, more than $30,000 was raised by the community -- money that saved the hotline and the organization.
2:27pm -- Warren shares some of the secrets that didn't make it into the book. Some people mail in secrets to search for a greater sense of authenticity, to achieve a sense of grace and, perhaps, to feel a greater sense of control over their own lives.
2:25pm -- Blog became really popular. Started to receive offers to use content from the blog for commercial purposes, which Warren declined. However, he did allow some of the PostSecret content to be used in a music video, after the production company agreed to donate money to a suicide prevention organization.
After that, contacted by HarperCollins to put the secrets in a book form. Blog carries present secrets in real time, but I also wanted to share the secrets as an archive; to arrang and knit together stories about all of our lives through secrets.
2:23pm -- PostSecret started 3 yrs ago in Washington, D.C. Printed 3,000 postcards with directions on 1 side and blank on either side. Invited people to shared their secrets. Warren distributed postcards to strangers in the city. They slowly started to find their way back to him. Physically posted them on the walls of his exhibit/gallery space. Exhibit closed and Warren stopped passing them out. Thought that was the end of the project. Secrets continued to arrive in his mailbox. Somehow the idea had spread virally and homemade cards started arriving from all over the U.S. and around the world. So Warren created the blog as a way of continuing the project, because the project demanded it.
2:20pm -- Warren's favourite secret: an email received from a woman in Texas who wrote: "Dear Frank, I visited the PostSecret website and I was inspired. I bought a postcard and wrote down my secret, thought I was going to feel better about myself. But I felt horrible. And I tore it up and in that moment decided i would no longer be the person who kept that secret."
This example explores a recurring theme in the project: that sometimes when we think that we're keeping a secret, sometimes it's the secret that is keeping us.
When we face that part of the world that we're hiding from, we have the potential in a courageous moment to change our life and to let go of that secret part of our life.
2:17pm -- Warren: I don't get to see all the secrets. My daughter's friend asked, "could I tell you a secret?"
2:16pm -- "I have a SXSW crush, but I'm married" "My company, a large one, sent me to SXSW in order to steal ideas from other companies...I'm pretending to be a freelancer."
2:15pm -- Knowledge to be extracted from these soulful, honest confessions.
2:14pm -- Warren shares some secrets sent in: one sent in on a sonogram that reads "I know she's not mine. I love her anyways."
2:13pm -- Every year I receive 200,000 postcards in the mail. I receive postcards made out of every imaginable items: wedding announcements, naked polaroid pictures, rubix cubes, starbucks cup, parking tickets.
2:12pm -- We all have secrets. Imagine keeping them in a box. Every day we have the choice to take that box and bury it or to find it and bring it out in to the light and share our secrets like gifts.
2:10pm -- Frank Warren: "Everyone here knows more about blogging and technology than I do, but I know more about secrets!"
2:00pm -- Introductory Video to PostSecret project
2:13pm
-- Every year I receive 200,000 postcards in the mail. I receive
postcards made out of every imaginable items: wedding announcements,
naked polaroid pictures, rubix cubes, starbucks cup, parking tickets.
2:12pm
-- We all have secrets. Imagine keeping them in a box. Every day we
have the choice to take that box and bury it or to find it and bring it
out in to the light and share our secrets like gifts.
2:10pm -- Frank Warren: "Everyone here knows more about blogging and technology than I do, but I know more about secrets!"
2:00pm -- Introductory Video to PostSecret project
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