So this week has turned out to be a very exciting week here at MindTouch! We have a film crew in the office and they’re here to document the day-to-day life of a MindTouch employee. Actually, the documentary is going to focus on the MindTouch opensource success story and how MindTouch has accomplished such a large rate of adoption with an extremely limited marketing effort.

For the next four days, we have Randy and Jenny on site, and since they’re going to be interviewing us nonstop, I figured I would reverse the role and put them in the spotlight.

What do you guys do exactly? What is your job?

Randy and Jenny are partners at Foreign American Pictures which is an independent film company. They “work in documentary, animation, graphic design…” Foreign American Pictures is unique because they focus on exposing the true story behind the topic. Simply put, they approach the film with open minds and see what their subjects bring to the table. As they claim, they are “story tellers”. Jenny also added “We don’t want the assignment to control the film” and we “don’t want to squash the unknown.”

What other films have you been working on?

All in all, Randy and Jenny have worked on numerous different projects including commercials, documentaries, music videos, and more. When asked to highlight some films they have worked on, Randy told me about “Agave” which was his student film. I was trying to keep the answers short so Agave, in 10 words or less, was described as “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” later adding in “looking for his family.” Agave was also a fun project because of the character set. One of their interesting characters was Carel Struycken who has been in movies like “Men In Black” and “The Adams Family Values.” They said that he was “a huge man” with huge feet and that he played Jesus in their film.

The second film they told me about is called Apart from that. “Apart from that” has been featured in over 25 film festivals worldwide including SXSW (South By Southwest), Edinburgh and more…

How did you get started doing documentaries?

Before Jenny and Randy were hired to do documentaries they said that they were “already approaching things as documentaries”. They have always valued a certain level of truth and tried to avoid fabricating a story. Unfortunately, they don’t have too many action scenes. I was hoping for some war scenes stories which they haven’t done yet. However, they have produced some WWF scenes which are equally awesome.

Why is MindTouch being documented?

Jenny - “You guys just get it!!”
Me - “Great answer Jenny, thanks, end of interview…jk”

“You guys are extremely successful, forward thinkers and innovative. You understand how to be open-source.” When I asked Jenny what attracted them to our company she said, “We have overcome the enterprise vs open-source riff” and that we embody values such as “community and loyalty.” Randy went on to add that it’s hard to be “mainstream and innovative at the same time” but MindTouch is bridging the gap.

It has been a lot of fun to have them here as we can showcase not only our company but also our beautiful city. We’re really looking forward to seeing our documentary!

Damien Howley
DamienH[at]mindtouch.com

categories: MindTouch