Episode Notes

This past week celebrated the third annual “Community Manager Appreciation Day“.  As I saw the tweets roll by, I realized I have become increasingly frustrated and worried that the roll of Community Manager is not yet defined as strategic and is often viewed through a singular marketing/support lens.   I worry that if we don’t elevate the conversation, the role of Community Manager is endangered of going the way of the Webmaster in the 90′s – relegated to a support position.  The Webmasters of yesterday are the innovators and digital thinkers of today.  These uniquely talented folks that are community managers posses many of  the skills of the Tummler.  When Kevin, Heather and I started Tummelvision, we specifically chose a new word because we strongly believe this is not a role but a way of thriving in a networked age.  It requires design, tech and human skills and can live anywhere in an organization.  Tummlers and tummeling embody the future.  In a world that is no longer command and control – everyone needs to understand “the tummel”.  As we see things, the role of the CEO is that of a “community manager”!

With this is mind, we invited Amy Muller (@amygsfn) to be this week’s Tummelvision guest.  Amy is what we call a natural Tummler. Connecting people and companies is pretty much akin to breathing for her.  In her current incarnation, Amy is co-founder of Get Satisfaction where she helps to lead the charge of building relationships with customers through Community. She also trains and educates those same customers on how to effectively grow and manage their own customer communities. She has been in the trenches and understands that ‘designing for community” is not just about launching a facebook page or twitter account – it’s an attitude.  Just take a look at the groundbreaking Company Customer Pact and you know that thriving in a networked world is territory she understands.

We specifically send a shout out to the world of hardworking folks known as community managers so we can start building some conversational bridges that broaden and deepen the discussion around catalyzing and connecting people in a networked world.

Episode Notes

The guest this week is Juliette Powell, media strategist, author of 33 Million People in the Room and co-founder of The Gathering Think Tank.  Juliette is a natural-born Tummler who catalyzes  ideas and people across business, media and culture.

Juliette and the gang offered some practical tummelling tips, discussed collaboration across disciplines, leaderless revolution, and the social dynamics Dutch schoolchildren (really).

Check out Juliette’s recent  discussion on the impact of the social web on the Middle-East revolution[s] with Internet skeptic Evgeny Morozov on BBC’s WHYS blog. Bonus: She is a fellow Canadian along with Heather.

Episode Notes

This week on Tummelvision Umair Haque talks with us about his book The New Capitalist Manifesto, the imbalanced state of the union, Silicon Valley’s disruption deficit disorder, and much, much more.

Umair is an old pal of the tummel-crew. Four years ago when I first met Umair  we both had a meeting of the minds on the fundamental shifts impacting business and culture in a networked world.  Our major rant at the time was that this is much bigger than new technology and a new distribution channel.  People were missing the point that social software and the social web are changing the rules – they are empowering individuals and groups and slicing into old economic models. This still holds true today.  Most businesses are still trying to slam the proverbial square peg in a worn out old round hole while missing the fact that the hole is not round anymore and the peg – well it is now comprised of lots of little pegs [ok -done beating a dead metaphor].

Umair  has been shaking things up with his great blog over at HBR and has just published his new book The New Capitalist Manifesto where he lays out many of these fundamental changes. We are proud that Tummeling fits right into the midst of it all.   Please join us this Thursday for our live chat and podcast where we discuss Tummeling Capitalism – two words that many people might think are at odds with each other when in reality they go together like peanut butter and chocolate!

Part of our passion surrounding Tummelvision is stems from our desire to explore and highlight the dynamics of what is needed to create engaged  social spaces online.  Kevin and Deb led a session at the recent O’reilly Open Web Foo Camp where we intro’ed the concept to our beloved geek community.  We had a great discussion with a number of  folks including Dale Dougherty [who runs the world of Make], Sarah Novotny [program chair of OSCON] and others.  As Tummlers themselves – they commented on the need for better tools for curators,  creators and catalysts to help them connect with their community and for their community to connect with each other.

The intersection of our human selves and tech were popping up in many conversations and many sessions throughout the weekend.  We are definitely at a unique moment – where the once binary web is just starting to recognize the need to evolve into a more organic entity that better reflects who we are and how we behave – a more reflective  representation of our offline selves.  Let’s face it, we take ourselves with us wherever we are.  In one of the sessions led by Brady Forrest we discussed the need for Social Bots – sounds scary – but really it could potentially be about making us smarter about ourselves and our interactions – these bots could help us maintain our social relationships across many groups, sites, and tribes.  They could even be a personal data stream to report back to me analytics about my life in meaningful ways.  But therein lies the rub – as soon as we start heading down the “manage my life” track – it starts getting complex very quickly.  We  need to ensure that in our effort to create a more open web we provide for the likelihood of ever changing connections and the ability to set permissions and identity as we choose.

As both Elizabeth Churchill [Ep 7 Guest] and Shelly Farnham pointed out, not all of us want 100% transparency all the time.  This leads us into many complex and complicated issues of privacy, identity, control, permissions etc.  We are seeing them played out daily – everywhere – and though computers can do a better job of helping us filter and manage some of these complexities it will ultimately be up to us – the humans and the Tummlers to make it all work seamlessly and organically.  The human brain and heart – are still the best at managing the nuances of our social selves.