Tummelvision

We’re sorry to say that TummelVision is on temporary hiatus to deal with family priorities. There will be no show Feb 23rd and we’ll keep you updated here. Interim assignment: Buy a drink for someone you don’t know and get back to us about how it went.

Episode Notes

David Weinberger really is the perfect TummelVision guest. He’s an Internet philosopher who focuses on the big picture of how we learn and what the Net is reflecting and doing to our culture. His current book is Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge now that the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts are Everywhere and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room.

It’s a subtitle almost as big as the Internet itself but it reflects how little concise vocabulary we have (“tummel” anyone?) to reflect the changing reality of the way we’re operating in a more networked world. Often David’s work is explaining things that are realities that any person who is “of the web” or really lives with this midset and trust level knows intrinsically.

On some level the Net itself may be doing the same thing for a reality that was always there: everything connected and flowing… all the intelligence you could ever need just right there outside you, but something we weren’t as aware of in the left-brain rational era and culture until we built something that made us *think* about this as we made it.

David has all kinds of impressive formal affiliations and qualifications, like being a Senior Researcher at the Harvard Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, a Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and being a guy who got a PhD in philosophy and who wrote jokes for a Woody Allen comic strip.  But what’s more impressive to me is that he doesn’t just noodle around abstractly about how life is meaningful, but lives in the moment as an affable guy who cares about connecting and does just that.David’s first book The Cluetrain Manifesto was written with a few other savvy cohorts in 2000 (inc. TummelVision 42 guest Doc Searls) and put into clear language and awareness outside the smallish world of dedicated netizens the way that sharing and conversations work and the way the Net made these things the new picks and shovels of business and any functioning institutional infrastructure.

Links discussed in this episode:

• Too Big to Know
• How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet – Douglas Adams in 1999
• It’s Not Whether Google’s Threatened. It’s Asking Ourselves: What Commons Do We Wish For? – John Battelle’s Search Blog
• SOPA Boycotts and the False Ideals of the Web – Jaron Lanier at NYTimes.com
• If Google predicts your future, will it be a cliché? – Kevin Marks

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

I first met Willo O’Brien (@willotoons) because, well, it’s hard not to meet Willo O’Brien in the San Francisco geek world. She loves people, knows what’s up and loves to make connections. Willo is an illustrator who built a successful design business called Willotoons with t-shirts,cards, websites and all the cuteness you could want to buy. In the classic early web 2.0 era way, she mixed her own expression and connecting with early adoption of blogging and most of the new mediums. She shared a lot, speaking and meeting in life and online, about how she was doing what she was doing with other creative entrepreneurs. This path brought her together with the other co-founders of Stitch Labs where Willo is the VP of Marketing. Stitch provides infrastructure and savvy for entrepreneurial creatives who sell on Etsy and online. You can find Willo everywhere online, as willotoons.

If you’re trying to understand how to work in a more fluid economy, how your life and work integrate healthily and how the economy itself will shift as growth comes more and more from creativity, Willo O’Brien is a woman worth listening to. Oh, and if you want to get the fluid process of living with social media without all the slimy sensation that comes from self-professed gurus, please listen.

Episode Notes

Yoz Grahame (@yoz) talks about online games, real emotion, Douglas Adams, Second Life, Ning, and all manner of online communities.