TribeCon is about the community I love, the tech community in New Orleans. Two things have inspired TribeCon for me more than anything else: First, the emergence of the grass-roots New Orleans tech community that picked itself up by its bootstraps on the heels of Katrina and realized that we had the both the opportunity and responsibility to shape this City’s future. This inspiration led to Net2NO, Launch Pad, the SXSW pilgrimage, GNO Code, and so many other groups. Second, after the death of my father, I examined everything I was doing, and decided it was time to follow the old entrepreneurs’ adage – do work you are passionate about.

Driven by these two things, in the back of the bus on the way back from SXSW in 2009 Adele, Tiffany and I had the spark of the idea to do a conference with the Voodoo Experience. We had no idea what we were getting into, but we pitched it to the community and pitched it to Voodoo and six months later were producing our first conference. It’s been such a great run to work with the amazing people involved in this event. Peter, Matt, Megan, Katy, Tiffany, Adele, Molly, Andrew, Melissa and many more people have given their time and energy to make this such a special event. Thank you guys, you are my Tribe!

I felt compeled to share my personal feelings here, if you have other questions, check out the interview on Silicon Bayou News.

We have been hard at work for the last month getting things fired up for TribeCon 2010.  Thank you to all of you who made last year such a success, and we can’t wait to have you back to New Orleans again for this year’s edition of the conference.

We’ve started to get things fired up for this year, and want to engage you to help us shape the conference and the programming.  It’s a community-powered conference and we really appreciate your engagement.

THE BASICS

• What: Tribecon 2010
• When: Oct 28-29, 2010
• Where: New Orleans, LA – City Park as part of the Voodoo Experience
• Web: http://tribecon.com

SPEAKERS

Interested in speaking, or know someone who would be great, we want to know about it.

• Why you should consider speaking: http://hu.la/9k2sym
• Submit a speaking proposal here: http://hu.la/speakattc2010
• Add to our hit list for speakers here: http://hu.la/tcspeakerhitlist

We really appreciate any ideas you have, help us create the content you want to see.

SPONSORS

We are looking for sponsors for this years conference.  Please contact Chris Schultz at chris@voodooventures.com to receive a sponsorship proposal.

ENGAGE

Last year this Google Group (our Tribal Council) truly shaped the conference.  It was a huge help to Tiffany and me, and we deeply appreciate your support in pulling this together.  We hope that you’ll once again share ideas, feedback, brainstorms with us right here.  We truly value our community.

• Join the Tribal Council
• Get our newsletter
• Follow us on Twitter

What would make TribeCon an amazing experience for you this year?

Taylor Davidson walked into Launch Pad yesterday, and I knew TribeCon had arrived. I don’t quite know why, but after all the work that has gone into this, having Taylor walk in was a powerful and emotional trigger for me. Not that seeing Nathan Heleine and Michael Karnjanaprakorn was too shabby, having them show up yesterday was great too.

But something about seeing Taylor. Probably because of our shared experience at SXSW and the fact that he has traveled the world since he was last here.

Anyway, TribeCon has arrived, and I am soooo ready for it.

I can’t wait until the other speakers and friends start rolling into town over the next two days. I can’t wait to toast the first NOLA Brew Houpitoulas on Wednesday night here at the Launch Pad and kick off the weekend with our Tribe. I can’t wait until everyone strolls into the Bingo tent on Thursday morning to see what an amazing atmosphere we’ve created for this conference. I can’t wait til you see the t-shirts, stickers, and all the beautiful collateral that Justin Shiels designed. I can’t wait to hear so many of the wonderful speakers take the stage and share their inspiring stories and messages about community building. I can’t wait to break bread (well, actually Jambalaya) with everyone at lunch, sitting at a 200 person picnic table under the oaks in City Park. And I can’t wait to hang with everyone in the TribeCon Lounge all weekend, our very own oasis in the center of Voodoo.

If you are still on the fence, take it from Champ Superstar, (and trust me) TribeCon is going to be an amazing experience. You will learn, share, connect, and be inspired. If you are committed to this community, to our community, to New Orleans, I’m asking you to join us for TribeCon. We’ve worked so hard, come so far as a community. Come share this experience with us. It’s very personal to me, but this is about all of us. If you haven’t yet, I am asking you, please buy a ticket right now and Join the Tribe. If you have, thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard to make this a reality. Thank you to all the groups that have supported us along the way. And most of all, thank you for being there with us on Thursday.

I’m excited to share more details about TribeCon, a conference about communities – both online and offline.  Tiffany Starnes and I have been working for the last six months to put it together along with a lot of help from our Tribal Council and a lot of friends from Net2NO.

We’re producing the conference in partnership with the Voodoo Experience.  TribeCon will be the official interactive component of the Voodoo Experience.  This is a tremendous opportunity for TribeCon. The Voodoo Experience has grown into a huge annual music festival, and together we can build TribeCon into a integral part of the experience and a major interactive conference.

So let’s get to the details:

• What: TribeCon is a conference about building communities, online and offline.
• When: October 29-30, 2009
• Where: Voodoo Experience – City Park, New Orleans, LA
• How much: $169 for TribeCon includes single day Voodoo Experience ticket. $269 for TribeCon includes three day Voodoo Experience Ticket.
• Who: The speakers are all people passionate about building communities.
• Why: Building a community around your brand, cause, or mission is the most powerful way to grow.  Today’s social networking tools make it possible to reach your audience in powerful new ways to build a movement.  At TribeCon you’ll learn how to build community online to effect action offline.

Why does TribeCon need New Orleans?

One of the things I’m most excited about is bringing the conversation about authentic online communities to New Orleans.  Having the Voodoo Experience has a partner enables us to make this truly a world-class conference.  TribeCon connects with New Orleans because we have such a deep sense of community here.  From the Mardi Gras indian tribes to front porch neighbors, New Orleans culture is rooted in community.  Andrew Larimer, Tim Soslow and Matt Tritico will be curating a special panel presentation that will be a celebration and exploration of community in New Orleans.

Inspired by SXSW, and now TribeCon is just six weeks away.

The idea for TribeCon was inspired on the Y@ Pack trip to SXSW organized by the Net2NO community.  We had such an amazing experience together, and it was truly amazing what a motivated community can accomplish.  On the bus ride back from SXSW in March, we hatched the idea for TribeCon.  We pitched it at the GNO Inc Digital Media Alliance meeting in May, and though I regrettably made a couple of miscues in my pitch (ugh), we started to line up support and Robbie Vitrano helped us line up meetings with Rehage Entertainment.

So after a long summer of laying the ground work, here we are, just six weeks away from the inaugural TribeCon, with a supportive partner in the Voodoo Experience and a tremendous slate of speakers. Tiffany and I are both getting much less sleep these days, but we’re doing it, and really excited about producing TribeCon.

TribeCon is important to the tech community, and important to New Orleans.

So, you’re interested in getting involved?

Fantastic.  We need your help to make this a success.

• We’re bouncing a lot of ideas off our friends and supporters in the Tribal Council.  Everyone on it has been tremendously helpful and it has really shaped what this conference is, in addition to helping us make decisions on branding, marketing, content and more.  Membership is open to all, so join the Tribal Council.
  
• We will be looking for volunteers to coordinate a number of things for TribeCon.  If you’re interested getting to TribeCon for free, please contact us.
  
• We’re also looking for sponsors to support TribeCon and connect with an audience of community activist and online influencers.  We have a sponsorship package that we can send you, please let us know if your interested, or know someone for us to reach out to.
• Stay updated with all of the latest, follow @tribecon on Twitter.
  
• Ready to sign up? Great, head on over and buy a ticket to the conference.

Thanks to everyone for all your support.  We’re excited to present TribeCon and connect with the community.

Have more questions? Hit me up in the comments! Thanks.

We’re back from SXSW and I was invited to present a review of the Net2NO Y@ Pack’s efforts at the Digital Media Alliance (DMA) yesterday. It is great to see the DMA gaining steam and taking an active leadership role in the New Orleans tech community.

While I was tapped to present the results from the SXSW road trip, I have to say that it was a total team collaborative effort. The leadership of Damien Lamanna, Jessica Rohloff, Adele Tiblier, Tiffany Starnes & Andrew Larimer was what made this trip possible. And of course the support from GNO, DDD, City of NO, and all our sponsors. We’ll be posting a case study that is being put together very shortly with success metrics, but I wanted to convey how impactful the support of the trip was in terms of raising awareness about the New Orleans tech scene.

On the way home from SXSW, Tiffany Starnes, Adele Tiblier & I spent eight hours brainstorming on a bus about what we wanted to do next, how we were going to capture and build on this momentum. We kept coming back to community. We got home and tore through Seth Godin’s Tribes, and started bouncing the idea off people we respected, forming a Tribal Council. Today, we’re pleased to present our conference idea that heretofore has been under wraps.

What is happening in New Orleans right now is just a microcosm of what is happening all over the world. Traditional organizations with top down power structures are giving way to grass roots community-driven movements. Let’s call them tribes. These tribes self organize and galvanize to action. Let’s put a conference on to explore this phenomenon:

The Tribe Conference is a conference for people passionate about building communities. Over the last several years there has been an explosion of grass roots organizations that have been built through connecting people online with the mission of spurring action offline. These communities have developed organically and have consolidated national and international presence through websites, wikis, and branding. The communities are very grass roots and inherently local. As these communities evolve, there is a further need to facilitate a sharing of ideas, best practices, and development of a national community for the growth of all of these movements. The Voodoo Tribe conference mission will be to educate and connect communities, with a focus on the exchange of ideas about common ties of community-building, rather than a focus on what the communities do.

When we look at the ideal time for a conference like this in New Orleans, it fits well with the Voodoo Music Fest which is a great music festival around Halloween each year. The ethos of the music fest fits well with the idea for this conference too. I’d be interested in feedback on whether that timing is a draw or a drawback. We believe people like to come to New Orleans around great events like that to get some of the New Orleans cultural experience in addition to the conference.

The communities we would be interested in reaching out to are the ones that share these common threads:

• unconferences / unorganizations / movements / tribes
• web-based self organization through twitter, facebook, wikis, meetup.com, google groups, etc
• grass-roots but part of a larger national & international movement that people have simply picked up and run with
• Examples: Net Squared, BarCamps, WordCamps, Co-working, Ignite, Social Media Club

Want to learn more? Contact me, Tiffany or Adele. Want to be a part of the movement? Join our Tribal Council. Let’s make this happen together.