TribeCon 2009
Posted: October 31st, 2009 | Author: Matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: tech, tribecon | No Comments »
This past Thursday I had an epiphany that applies to business, work, play – or rather life in all of its aspects. It goes like this: learn how to play the game, and then set the rules. This simple concept came from words of human connections specialist Julien Smith, coauthor of the book Trust Agents, as he spoke at the inaugural TribeCon. Although Julien’s speech was the last delivered on Thursday, that message permeated the air (like the humidity) throughout presentations and discussions by this year’s team of speakers and panelists.
TribeCon was born from a roadtrip back from the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. Chris Schultz (@cschultz), Tiffany Starnes (@tiffanystarnes), and company sought a way to bring together people who are interested (and actively working) in building communities, while still bringing attention to the city that is a microcosm of the tribe concept – New Orleans. The inaugural event had its big day of speakers the day before the kickoff of VoodooFest, a music festival held annually at City Park. This year featured a number of big name artists and groups, including Eminem, whose appearance in second annual VoodooFest brought worldwide attention to the festival and help make it the big event that it is today. This year’s festival just happens to also feature “the greatest tech conference ever held in a circus tent” (@austinalroche).
The theme – playing the game with your own rules – began with Micah Baldwin’s (@micah) ironic statement that we shouldn’t be afraid of failure, as the projector displaying his presentation failed and forced Micah to work the crowd without his visuals. His thesis was that failure is a process, leading to success. When applied to communities, leaders should embrace risk and the inevitable failures. Communities are built upon trust for their survival’s sake, so don’t be afraid to talk about those catastrophes. If open dialog about these events takes place, groups become stronger. Micah also reiterated a strong message: a failure is an event, while a loser is a person or group. Our culture respects those who risk and fail. It doesn’t respect those who never try.
Brian Oberkirch (@brianoberkirch) followed up with a mission statement for communities: help people be less lonely. People seek connections, and if your community offers them a place to do such, let them do so. But don’t stop there. Listen to them, take heed of their opinions, and let them self-rule (to an extent, of course). As a leader, you should design experience to be a sandbox where its members to build their own sandcastles, or whatever they wish. The visual metaphor shared by Brian is the college campus quad from a bird’s eye view, where the pre-designed sidewalks are barren in activity compared to the beaten paths of the everyday walkers. Embrace these beaten paths in your community. As Brian said, “Manage the awesomeness. The numbers will work out.”
Next on tap was a trio of panels, with the first discussing the role of communication within the community during times of crisis. This is an all too familiar subject since Katrina devastated the area years ago and left its victims without electricity, internet, or voice communications over cell phone networks for weeks. New Orleans area residents, such as Oberkirch and Ernie Svenson (@ernieattorney), became beacons as their blogs collected and reported information to readers. Communities within the larger Gulf Coast community, such as Robert Fogarty’s (@rxfogarty) evacuteer.org, are helping mediate crisis when it comes.
The second panel of the day taught conference goers how to ‘rawk’ a new community. All four of the panelists – Sloane Berrent (@sloane), Taylor Davidson (@tdavidson), Shannon Lane (@Cajun_Mama), and Carl Nelson (@CarlRNelson) – are no strangers to new communities, as each travel for their various ventures. A whole lot. Their message is to seek out the edges of a community and to create new cores, therefore growing the boundaries even further. And while doing this, be sure to be consistent both online and offline. This was another theme that emerged throughout many of the day’s presentations.
“I want to stand as close to the edge without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” – Kurt Vonnegut
The final panel before lunch – which is a difficult place to be scheduled, having to talk over all of those stomach growls – featured active community leaders, both online and offline. Eric Marcoullier (@bpm140) moderated the panel composed of Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde), Ted Rheingold (@tedr), Ray Nichols (@MrRayNichols), and Blake Haney (@humidhaney). These veterans of community organization spoke that an organizer’s creativity sparks the birth of a community, but once the community begins its successful (and organic) growth, leaders should not be afraid to let go of the driver’s wheel a bit and the direction change. In fact, as Andrew Hyde said, leaders should take the ‘benevolent dictatorship’ approach to running the community. Ted Rheingold saw this firsthand with his website dogster.com, when users wanted to interact with each other and be linked together (remember, this was before the days of Facebook), and most importantly, not have any cats on the site. Rheingold incorporated these desires, created a new community at catster.com, and saw his communities grow stronger.
Dirty Coast founder – and future feretster.com owner – said that communities need to define their culture and not let the culture define them. Differentiation and diversity are good. His recently launched social networking platform, humidbeings.com, allows users to create their own communities and their feedback is constantly brought back to the creators to further evolve the larger community. He, and the other panelists, agreed that the best community growth comes from the slow, yet powerful, friends of friends effect. Members of the community who are having a great time in your sandbox will eventually get their other social connections involved as well. When the time comes and you have a gignormous community, you may want to follow Ray Nichol’s advice and focus on acting as a curator and not as a moderator. Running everything yourself and controlling the vision are big no-nos and will most likely lead to your members jumping ship.
After a delectable lunch on the world’s longest picnic table, Tom Martin (@TomMartin) geared the crowd up on the “me too” media world. Nowadays, content creation and distribution is relatively cheap, so companies and individuals should be working on strengthening and expanding their brand communities.
Martin was followed by a trio of panelists that are making new rules in the game and jumping over the traditional gatekeepers. Perry Chen’s (@perrychen) kickstarter.com allows content creators to show the world what they’re working on; while to world can crowdsource funding to support the content creator. Earl Scioneaux (@mwikkid) used kickstarter.com to not only fund his New-Orleans-music-meets-electronica album, but to generate a community that has buy-in with his content – and thus will be more likely to spread the word about the project. Billy O’Connell (@biosi) also shared thoughts based on his work with the non-profit CASH Music, which helps musicians sustain through a wealth of open-source tools and services.
The last panel of the day featured local community leaders from around the New Orleans area, sponsored by Net2No. John Hoa Nguyen, Edward Buckner, Christian Brown, and another panelist represented the New Orleans East Vietnamese, 7th Ward, Rex Mardi Gras Crewe, and Mid-City communities, where they were asked about the problems that face the city today. The group highlighted that New Orleans has many traditions and groups within, and those should be preserved. Edward Buckner summed it up quite nicely in his words: “That’s New Orleans – that’s the gumbo we mixin’.”
The final presentation of the day was left to Julien Smith. As mentioned before, he is the coauthor of Trust Agents, a book I had picked up a few weeks ago and started reading a few days prior to the conference. This is an amazing coincidence (or what us in New Orleans call serendipity) since I had no idea of Julien’s involvement with TribeCon until I opened my schwag pack and glimpsed at the schedule Thursday morning.
Julien spoke about the truths of the change in our tribes as they age: the incentives to take risk are lost; networks tend to shrink; and those built on hype fizzle (like renting a car – you’ll never own it). What Julien suggested is that you constantly work on your tribe before you need it. How? Facilitate the exchange of social capital. Create stuff that is both indexable and visible. Differentiate. Break patterns by saying something both difference and memorable, and thus elicit emotion. Be a part of every conversation. The metaphor that Julien mentions is quite appropriate: be both the priest and build the church. In today’s world, we’ll never need more advertising. We need more community.
The message of the day shared by Julien and the other presenters was to know the map and how to play the game. Then tweak the rules. Don’t be afraid of failure, the risk is usually worth the reward. When you’re a husky in the Iditarod, be to lead dog. Otherwise you’ll be staring at another dog’s ass.
