You may remember, or even have wondered, where the professional photographs (that I now use on my profile pictures) came from? It was for the feature interview I did on http://blog.indoorboys.com/2011/03/13/martyn-sibley-positively-brilliant/. I mentioned in my article on ‘serendipity’ about how daring to put something out there can lead to randomly cool things. Well, following on from the IndoorBoys piece, I was contacted by blogger and new media expert http://johnnybtruant.com/ who was working on http://thebadassproject.com/. His team were seeking to showcase disabled people, who do amazing things, in turn showing general members of society anything is possible. The project was partly inspired by a fellow SMA guy in the US. They wondered if I was interested in being one of their interviewees.

I had 2 thoughts. One around how not British this whole project was. The other around if I was ‘badass’ enough.

The former took some thinking through. I always check myself on whether a project has the same values as myself, if it makes a large enough impact for disabled people and if the method works. After some deliberation, I felt the above points were all good with the ‘badassproject’ and that the very American tone was different but really cool.

In terms of being ‘badass’ enough. I asked Johnny after our first interview over Skype webcam if he got what he needed, and how I didn’t see why I was a badass. His answer was “if you don’t think you are badass, that makes you one even more”. So I am officially a badass now!

The first interview had some tech problems, and it was around the time I was thinking about leaving Scope. Therefore we did a take 2 with no tech issues, and me knowing my upcoming plans better. I am really happy with the outcome too! It gave me a platform to layout my views in disability, being disabled and most importantly ‘living’ in 2011. Whilst it is helpful to share my personal and business plans, most of all I hope you can all understand my philosophy on disability in more detail, and you are able to relate to my values and beliefs! Positive, can-do, alcoholic, Casanova and crazy 😉

Later in the year there will be a vote for the best ‘badass’. The winner receives a cash prize, and this is matched for a charity of their choice. I will keep you posted. For now please take a look at the video interview, let me know your thoughts and share share share 🙂 http://thebadassproject.com/martyn-sibley/