Heather Gold

Tummeling in 5 minutes – at #Gathering11 in Melbourne

My original How to Tummel Google talk, among other things, led David Hood to bring me to Australia where I spoke at this conference. Gathering 11 was a mix of personal growth, social media and thinking about the changing economy. Unfortunately it cuts off all the crowdwork I did at the beginning in which, I killed I tell you. I also implored the room with this nugget: “If someone can’t tell you you’re full of shit, it’s not a conversation” Politely deferring in public doesn’t not a conversation make.

I enjoyed teaching an UnPresenting workshop there and will be doing more in San Francisco soon after I speak at WordCamp SF. 8/15 is sold out to Automattic (makers of WordPress) but there are still slots available on 8/17 and early registration priced tix too!. Buy em now.

My Tools for Tummlers talk at WordCamp Seattle [video]

Here’s my talk on Tools for Tummlers at Seattle WordCamp. We need better ways to have conversations on our blogs and better options than facebook. Here’s a start at why and how. Sadly I can’t embed this on Facebook.

The best SXSW Panel: Collaboration is the way of the Net, w/ Allee WIllis Kenyatta Cheese + Mary Jo Pehl

This was my 13th SXSW and this was the most thought and heart-provoking panel I’ve done yet for me personally. The room was almost completely “old timers” (we’re not actually that old, just on the web) and so we went pretty deep, eventually ending up in a place that made me question whether or not money itself would change. WIl we really need it if we fluidly make together and continue the current vector of open making? How will we make it if not?

The audio podcastof the conversation. I’d embed it if SXSW would make that possible.

Since the web began we’ve been talking about artists having a career without a label and going directly to fans. We finally have examples of this working, so what does it look like? I sat down with successful collaborating indie artists: Allee Willis (September, Boogie Wonderland, The Colour Purple, Theme from Friends over 50 million albums sold), Mary Jo Pehl (actor, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, writer RIfftrax, NPR) and Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme) and the super smart room formerly known as the “audience.”

The Net links almost every form of artistic making, so it makes sense that we’re in an era of increasing collaboration and creation in many forms. We discussed how limitations and openness serve us in an era of “personal brands” and how to deal with rights, friendship and creating the best space in which to collaborate. We dug into their collaborative process in making social experiences, music, video and comedy and find out how they’ve succeeded creatively and in every other way.

Highlights that stuck with me (as I recollect them. Not direct quotes):

•My name is Kenyatta Cheese and I am of the web.

• I don’t feel that I can own anything anymore – Kenyatta

• When AOL and MySpace came along I was so upset. But I learned to get over it. It’s ego. You have to let that go to create. The web keeps encouraging you to let go of ego – early social network creator Allee WIllis

•My focus is on the process – Allee WIllis

•What do you really need money for? Will the culture

•This conversation had a major impact on my personal theme that came out of this SXSW: the difference between celebrity and software culture. Post forthcoming.

How do you know someone is a good collaborator for you? Do you think of “everyone/audience” as collaborators and if so what made that thinking happen for you?

tag: #collab

Mine and Deb Schultz's Tummeling session at SuperNova 2010

We had quite a few requests from people who weren’t able to make the conference.

But does it scale?

When people ask me about how I scale intimacy when I’m speaking about How to Tummel (Design for Conversation) what they’re asking is “how can I make money?”

Although I’m showing how intimacy does scale. I’m interested in this unarticulated, but intended question.

When you ask “how can I make money?” before “how can I bring value?” (or it’s seed: “”what delights both me and you?”) then you are building from fear.

My biggest problem can be seen in a speech I’ve seen Guy Kawasaki give would-be entrepreneurs “How can I take your money and get it into my pocket,” he says.

Then you’re on a habitraille you can’t get off until you change your very first underlying question. The fear breaks down to an assumption that what matters to me doesn’t matter to you. Therefore I must make stuff that “scales” that everyone else will love NOT what makes sense to me. The emotional basis of this is “I can’t be myself and be loved.” That’s what the market is built on…what we create from our assumptions.

It’s just hard to believe that what we love and how we naturally are could be loved by others as well. Solution: day jobs we hate, alcohol and hockey stick graphs on start-up Powerpoints. It either sucks, or it’s a HUGE HIT.

Sustainable, happy living. An honest living (coincidentally the title of my work memoir in progress) is not either or thinking. You can have both. The answer to most either or questions is both. It’s a major mindset shift but once you make it, everything in your life looks different. And social media gives us the opportunity to connect more easily with more people. The barriers to approaching people are much lower. The barriers to being personal and genuine are culturally (and technologically) dissolving. And when you’re authentic, in public the opportunities that come are different. You can be filtered differently and you will filter differently.

You will see others for who they really and and you will be seen and feel seen. You will share what you genuinely care about and you’ll connect with others about the pieces of that that are valued by others too. Social media gives you that opportunity dozens of times a day. That gives you lots of feedback by which to observe the places of genuine intersection.

I want to keep exploring those places. That’s why I involve multiple guests on the Heather Gold Show and involve the whole room. More lines of thought and caring, more possibilities for intersection. Those nodes, they scale in a big way. But they are naturally the creation of many people. That’s how we find them collectively.

I’m not sure what to call them yet, but I’ve got a couple of contenders: truth and love.