History


Early Monday morning on December 1, a whole bunch of IE, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome browsers, and a slew of RSS Readers found a post from Seth Godin explaining that he was offering an Apprenticeship.  Later that day  the perfect opportunity was discussed throughout the blogosphere excited by the possibility of real change. You see Seth was offering us the opportunity to talk about ideas and books for 1 hour a day, work for Seth on his project for 4 hours a day, and then work on our own ideas for 3 hours a day.  All this, and it was Free

Over the next week or so a huge group of us worked on an application.  We would constantly cajole each other into getting our applications turned in early, so that we could increase our chances at being picked for the position.  Once we had them in, we were dreaming of heading to New York and teaming up together on a daily basis with Seth and some >other Rock Stars  to work on some cool stuff.  We knew that there would be tons of other great people applying as spontaneous groups emerged all over the internet, there was a Ning group started by Matt Cheneya Squidoo group stared by NJ Thompson, a Linked In group started by DavidMarquardt, and even a couple of Facebook groups started by Rob Schmidt and Susan Villas Lewis).  At the very least we knew that our ideas would get read by Seth, and that alone would be worth a great deal to us personally.  

This is when something unexpected happened to those of us who applied, We started asking friends and colleagues to recommend us in the comments section of our applications.  We got this incredible outpouring of support from our friends and colleagues, we got words that brought us to tears on more than one occasion.  We also got more laughs than tears which is indicative of how lucky we are to have such great friends and colleagues.  That’s when we knew that the application process alone had changed my life.

So dream we did of New York, and when the announcements came from Seth, we were very excited.  Some got their announcements first, and were invited to New York for the personal interview session.  The rest of us got a very gracious thank you for applying.  For all of us this was a big moment, we were so excited for the poeple who were selected, and disappointed as heck if we didn't get selected, and even a little jealous of those that did.  

This sparked in Paul Pettengill an idea for an Alt-MBA program for those incredible people who like him were unable to get into Seth’s program.  Paul created this original Squidoo page on December 14th, the day he found out he wasn't selected, and posted about the Squidoo page on Matt Cheney's Ning site about starting our own Alt-MBA program.  While Paul was getting enthusiastic responses from many of the other applicants, those selected to interview busy prepping for his trip to New York.  Those who were brought to New York, like Megan Elizabeth Morris, recounted what they could of the trip and their experience while under an NDA with Seth. 

The next day, December 15th, all of the people who had applied to Seth's Alt-MBA program were admitted into Triiibes, Seth Godin's Ning group full of leaders from all walks of life that appreciate his work.  Seth also wrote this book entitled Triiibes: We Need You to Lead Us.  Hours after receiving the invite to Triiibes, Mark Horoszowski, unaware that Paul Pettengill had started a similar group, started an Alternative to Seth's Alternative MBA group on Triiibes (must be a member of Triiibes to access link).  Later that evening, Mark posted on Matt Cheney's Ning site about the new group.  That's when Paul and Matt got together to start this project.  

The movement had already attracted nearly 30 followers on Squidoo, Triiibes and elsewhere when Paul and Matt started to talk about how best to structure the tribe.  They had a conference call on Monday December 22, where they were joined by Cassie Pruett and Roxy Allen and began to map out some of the first steps.   Next, Cassie released the wiki you're reading now.  Paul with the guidance coming out of the Dec.22 meeting launched a Ning group at http://altmba.ning.com (email Paul at prpetten@gmail.com for an invitation).