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The Twitter Diaries: 2009-02-22: CO, New Mexico

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The Raging Grannies

^ The Raging Grannies open for John McCutcheon in Las Vegas, NM

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Italian songs

An Italian Song for Valentine’s Day: Per Dirti T’Amo

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Pierangelo Bertoli: To Say “I Love You”

Avrei voluto dedicarti una canzone — I would have liked to dedicate a song to you
con le parole della televisione — with the words of the television
tutti quei fiori e quei discorsi complicati — all those flowers and complicated discourses
che al cine fanno nei locali raffinati. — which in films they do in refined places
Ma mi sembra di commettere un reato — But that seems to me to be committing a crime
perché per dirti che sono innamorato — because, to say that I’m in love with you
perché per dirti cosa penso in fondo al cuore — because, to say what I think in the bottom of my heart
non c’é motivo che mi finga un grande attore. — there’s no reason for me to pretend I’m a great actor

ritornello: — refrain:
Per dirti t’amo, amo te, bastava solo che guardassi intorno a me — To say I love you, it’s you I love, it was enough to look around me
per dirti ti vorrei sposare, é giusto dirlo, dirlo in modo naturale. — To say I’d like to marry you, it’s right to say it, say it naturally

Non voglio chiuderti in nessun mondo fatato — I don’t want to close you in any enchanted world
e non ho voglia di tornare nel passato — and I don’t want to return to the past
io so, potremmo avere il mondo nelle mani — I know, we could have the world in our hands
se siamo forti e fiduciosi nel domani. — if we’re strong and have faith in tomorrow.
Avremo un posto dove andare a lavorare — We’ll have a place to go and work
e avremo figli da allevare e da curare — and we’ll have children to raise and take care of
e tanto amore tanta gente come noi — and much love, and many people like us
e avremo un mondo, un mondo nuovo intorno a noi. — and we’ll have a world, a new world around us.

(refrain)

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what I do

Seth Godin at TED: Tribe and Community

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A very cool perk of working for Sun recently was that we had live streams of TED into the three major US campuses. It has long been a dream of mine to attend TED, though for the moment it’s well out of my price range.

I couldn’t break free of meetings to watch during the day, but I was mesmerized by the evening sessions. The first major speaker Wednesday evening was Seth Godin, whose blog I follow from time to time. Not surprisingly, his talk was based on his new book, Tribes, which I probably don’t need to read now (for the record, I haven’t read any of his other books, either).

I took away some ideas that might be useful for those of us at Sun (and elsewhere) who are doing this mysterious and fashionable thing called community building.

Seth started out by asking: “What do we [TED attendees, presumably] do for a living?”

His answer: “We try to change everything.”

In order to foster change, Godin offers the idea of tribes, which “can align large numbers of people” behind a goal or cause. He recommends this cycle:

tell a story -> connect a tribe -> head a movement -> make change -> repeat

He notes that a product that “tells a story” lets its user/consumer tell the story again and perpetuate it.

Godin says that tribes need leaders, most often self-appointed. Leaders should:

  • Challenge the status quo
  • build Culture
  • have Curiosity
  • Connect people to each other (“people want to know they’ll be missed if they go away”)
  • have Charisma (but you don’t need to be born with it; being a leader automatically endows you with charisma)
  • Commit to the cause/tribe/people

So how does this apply to Sun’s efforts to create community around our open-sourced software? Clearly, we had to be the leaders who started this (but that doesn’t mean we’ll always be the leaders of these communities).

You can’t force a community into existence; people have to want to be part of it. But you can make it fun and easy for them to participate, mostly by making it easy for them to connect with each other.

Important Note: Once they’re connected, you don’t get to control what they say to each other! Oh, you can try, but it’s a bad idea because it always backfires. Even when you’re the leader, you’re still only one member of the tribe, and the tribe insists on functioning as a democracy no matter who’s supplying the facilities.

What we can, should, and do do, however, is act as leaders.

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