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I've been involved in several tech startups in my career so far. Most of them no longer exist, which either says I know when to get out, or that I killed them. I'm not sure which. Only one of them, though, has been memorialized by zombies.
I had the great pleasure of working with Podcaster and Writer extrodinare Mur Lafferty (murverse.com) at one of my most recent startup gigs. If you've not listened to or read anything by Mur Lafferty, The Takeover is a fantastic introduction (as is her recent novel Playing for Keeps). The Takeover (www.zombinc.net) is the episodic story of a small company acquired by a larger one - and the larger company just happens to be run by and employ primarily Zombies.
The premise itself is a pretty good hook. The story details the lives of the human employees as they fight to keep their jobs - along with their sanity and humanity - after the buyout. It has everything - inter-office romances, inter-species (is a zombie a species??) romance, layoffs, mad scientists, promotions, and brain flavored coffee.
As if that wasn't enough, for some of us - those of us that worked at a little RTP startup called lulu.tv - it's seeing one of our last ideas rise from the ashes and live. Or shamble out of the grave and demand brain flavored coffee, as it were.
The original premise of the Takeover was that the people that worked at lulu.tv - all 15 or so of us - were going to star in a series of short videos for the story. When lulu.tv disolved, The Takeover was one of those ideas that was lost in the maelstrom.
Fortunately for us, Mur didn't let The Takeover die with the company. A little re-tooling for audio versus video, a fresh cast, and it has come to (un)life in an entertaining set of episodes. The cast does an admirable job - from the enthusiasm of the intern down to John Cmar's portrayal of our former boss - of capturing the feel of working at a small company suddenly taken over by a larger, more malevolent, one.
All in all, as Halloween approaches, The Takeover is a nice alternative to the usual zombie experience. And with only seven episodes so far, it's very easy to get caught up. Of course, if you're like me, you'll also be waiting to see where things are going to end up - since we never got to produce it at lulu.tv, I'm just as curious as you will be.
The Takeover, Episodes 1-7, is available for listening at www.zombinc.net or on iTunes.
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ABOUT KEVIN SONNEY | |
Kevin Sonney - who, contrary to popular opinion was NOT raised by wolves - grew up in central North Carolina. He fell into the technology field by accident in 1991, when he gave up the wild and crazy lifestyle of an on-air AM radio DJ to become a mundane technical support monkey. The technology industry has never really recovered from this. Kevin currently works as in independent IT contractor. In his spare time he rescues stray animals and plays video games with his two sons. His girlfriend, we're sad to say, helps him get past the really hard bits. Kevin is still not very mundane, he just got better at hiding it.
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