Social Media as a Social Experiment

Ken Sheetz

I am a Hollywood filmmaker on social media hiatus. When the recession hit and film money went scarce I started BuzzBroz - The Art of Social Media services.  So named as I thought my real-life brother Fred would come to work with me in LA and leave his factory job in Wisconsin.  Fred was not up for transplanting himself, but the name stuck.

Unlike my past incarnations in business as an interior corporate architect turned real estate developer, this time around I did not want to focus on large corporate work.  I'd done that gig, as a driven man doing a billion in biz, creating the headquarters for Target Stores, Allied Mills, Chase Bank Chicago (Then Manny Hanny), huge law firms like Bell Boyd & LLoyd and the topper, Oprah's Harpo Studios.

Working at a smaller relaxed more human scale however proved challenging.  Convincing people of the value of social media's power wasn't the only hard part.  People are flat out tight on cash with the banks sitting on all we taxpayers gave them to horde.  Don't get me started on politics!  I love poking fun at politicians on my hit Kids Talk Politics channel, cruising for 2 million views by year end.

But I prevailed in the "jobless recovery" (talk about political BS) by cutting my lifestyle to Spartan.  I traded in my luxury wheels for a bike, and lost 30 pounds in the bargain.  I gave up my apartment, after finding a home for my little chihuahua, and began bartering for rooms in return for social media. And the social experiment of barter for social media was born.

The barter experiment has proven a huge challenge at times. Not everyone gets the value of clicks for a room.  At times I've worked so hard earning the roof over my head I don't create the time to earn money for basics like food and medicine.

That's my fault not the barter system.  I love happy clients, but I need to worry about a happy Ken going forward.  I've started a new YouTube channel today called The Zen of Ken.  I hope you'll check it out.  I can vlog there more freely than on my Imagitv, DiscoverMe, BuzzBroz, KidsTalk Politics, and DreamShield2012 channels with over 3 million views in combination.

Happily, I've settled into my best barter for living space yet at BushWillows. It's an amazing place I have here with a private balcony overlooking the Shadow Hills, north of LA.  Here's a comedic video I shot on the amazing property.

Deluxe!  Yes, the experiment is working.  After 11.11.11 I will begin traveling to other countries in this fashion staying at resorts, joined by my DreamShield partner, a master of scared ceremony, Laura De Leon.
To give you an overview of how this social media work all took an amazing turn for the spiritual I'd not foreseen, my first featured video on The Zen of Ken is from a speech I gave last year.  The 10.10.10 DreamShield event that grew out of a vision while on social media assignment I had in Italy of angels, very special ET angels, who set me on a mission of fostering social media to help reduce 2012 fears spawned by mainstream media.

I don't know where this life changing vision came from or the dozens of others visiosn I've had since and which I blog about at DreamShield on WordPress.  Could it be angels or my Overactive imagination (name of my film company), UFOs, cell phones scrambling our brains or simply too much coffee causing the visions?

Who cares?  I've learned over the last year it doesn't really matter.  People are comforted by the vision I had in Italy of a gentle 2012 and want to play with us, meditate with us on a better tomorrow.  This world needs to change, and social media, and how it connects us as a world, is, more than ever, a part of that change.

Namaste