That’s the title of a recent Paul F. Tompkins blog entry. Is he planning to form a group of warriors to follow him into battle against Persian “God-King” Xerxes?

No, not at all!

“300” just happens to be the number of people Tompkins will go out of his way to perform for.

Tompkins explains:

I’ve become fed up with the comedy club system for reasons that would cause you to self-murder should I elaborate. I don’t want that to happen. I have long thought, There’s got to be a better way than this. But I had no idea what that way could be until my experience in Toronto.

So here it is: you provide the audience, I’ll provide the show.

There follows rather detailed directions on how Tompkns enlists the manpower of rabid and resourceful fans to produce himself into a show through their use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media (and maybe even cellphones… maybe even landlines!).

The proposition is simple: If you can get 300 people in your city to commit to see Paul F. Tompkins at a small theater or nightclub, he’ll fly in and do a show.

It’s “DIY,” with a dollop of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” if you absolutely insist on having things explained to you using titles from Peter Gabriel songs and Beatles songs.

As with most brilliant ideas, this one is simple and elegant. And Tompkins, via the blog post, tells everyone how to do it!

The genesis of the Tompkins 300 Method was a booking at Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Lounge. Tompkins had great plans for the gig, including videotaping all the shows at the intimate, 74-seat room for the purposes of a television special. One problem: Ticket sales were nearly non-existent!  Panic city?  No!

Tompkins tweeted about his predicament (and requested that the tweet be re-tweeted) and, before long, he had the requisite number of people attending his shows. So far, it’s just a rather ordinary, “Ain’t-social-media-great?” story, but it gets better when a fan from Toronto, a comedian named Bob Kerr, contacts Tompkins, asking him if he’s going to perform in Toronto any time soon.

And the method was born.

He spells it out in some detail.

His update says that he’s booked six more shows using the method.

Is “PFT300” for everyone? No. It is only realistic for someone who is at least somewhat of a draw. It’s not for the mid-level headliner who hasn’t any recent television credits. Those comics can, by tapping into their modest Facebook or Twitter followings, augment the turnout already generated by a comedy club’s own marketing effort– should there actually be one!– but it takes a bit of drawing power to work Tompkins’ Twitter magic.

But the implications are awesome.  You can read dozens of inspiring articles in Wired or on Boing Boing or CNET or Gizmodo on the splendor and the wonder of social media.  But those articles never seem to turn the corner from theory into real, tangible, anecdotal illustrations of just how the Brave New World works in practice.  Sometimes it takes a story like this one– that takes place not just in the real world, but in the real standup world that we’re intimately familiar with– to finally drive home the practicality of the newfangled media.

There were dozens of stories of how Dane Cook tapped his legions of Facebook friends to pack arenas, but the numbers always seemed so… overwhelming.  This is different… the scale is manageable and realistic.

In a previous post, we lamented the fact that so few comedy club websites offered clear contact info and instructions on what materials to provide and how to provide them.  And we’re dismayed that so few comedy club websites fail to take advantage of something as simple as posting a YouTube clip of “This Week’s Headliner” and “Next Week’s Headliner.”*

So we’re not optimistic that the venues will be adopting social media in any meaningful way any time soon.

So it falls to the talent to implement the new technology.  And it’s schemes like Tompkins’ that fire the imagination and lead the way.
_ _ _ _ _ _

* Part of the blame for this falls to the comedians for not offering a decent clip– a brief, well-framed video with clear audio.  It has become far more important than the  headshot… or will become so soon enough.  But, again, technology is making such things as clear video with good audio practical and affordable.  Flip cams, inexpensive editing software, cheap, compact digital stereo recorders put the video well within reach of most comics. And, with quality printers and inexpensive inks, color headshots– cranked out on an as-needed basis, or offered via the websie in a PDF format (for downloading and printing on the comedy club end)– there’s no excuse not to offer a color headshot.