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It’s always interesting that people assume this about famous CEOs etc. A quick twitter search suggests that around 10 people have ever asked (on twitter). I would guess that less than 1,000 have asked in total, and that less that 50 have done their homework enough to say yes to https://t.co/gp1Ouumwfk
most people who ask are asking from a place of scarcity and wishful thinking. this pretty much guarantees a non-response because you’re giving them work to do. If you’re really serious about finding a way to work with someone you should figure out how to take work off their plate
a good way to start approaching this project is to make a list of all of the people that Famous Busy Person interacts with, and impress *them*. You can actually do this entirely on twitter if you’re patient and observant
But tbh it doesn’t even really make sense to try. sufficiently high status people have professional executive assistants with years of experience, so even asking at all marks you as “earnest but clueless and uninformed”. you’re better off working in an early-ish stage startup
@visakanv There’s an unhelpful cultural norm of internships being a favor that can be awarded if one pleases the teacher rather than a consulting engagement with a deliverable and a bit of consideration/leeway given to the consultant for their emerging project management skills.
@visakanv “Give me an example of a properly scoped internship project, Patrick.” At the risk of sounding bitingly cynical, I think “Design a process which could administer 500 coronavirus vaccines in a day.” is a reasonably scoped project for an intern working two weeks.
@visakanv And your day one output would be: “Here’s a list of who I called, what I read, and what I learned. Vaccine must be administered by X/Y/Z per state regs. Dispatch services exist; budget for one day $3k. One page of questions need to be asked. All are yes/no. RN evaluates.”