Lessig got me thinking.

I fully admit that I entirely lack the wordskill to express exactly how deeply I loathe conferences.

You go there with a dozendozen other people that you don’t work with, have only cursory reasoning to “network” with, and you have to suffer through the pretense of comfort just to get to the breakout sessions, hoping you’ve coffeed up enough to not nod off.

Wow, am I a “glass half full” person, or what.

In spite of that, I went to a conference today, and I had a great time.  Not only was it enjoyable, I think some sincere connections were made; person-to-person, in many examples.  That doesn’t happen with your average conference, at least, it just doesn’t work out for me.

Beyond that, I learned things that can’t be taught;  the learning of experience.  You can plan and prep all you want, and you can watch and observe from any angle, but unless you DO it, you’ll never have a clue.

But this time it did, and I think it has alot to do with the fact that people are finding a new way to tribe.

At least in my bubble of context and limited understanding, I don’t live in a world of people that gather from the passion of intent, with the goal of accomplishing things.  We do group, and we group often, and we do that for many reasons, but typically, we don’t group in the long-term, in the broad-term;  we don’t tribe.

We have to hope that “normal” life will satisfy the urge to tribe;  in school, in church, at work, at bars.. sometimes we do these things from obligation, sometimes we do these things from want, but rarely do we do these things from passion… like our lives depended on it.

Oddly enough, our technology is defusing the need for tribing.  We don’t NEED to gather wood as a group, and huddle around a fire, and tell stories, and make musical instruments to sing with.  We don’t NEED to tell stories to remember our elders and learn how to work our skills to help our tribe survive, like finding food tonight.  So, we drift apart and send email, or text, or make blogs and wikis and hope for comments…. or we go out and contribute elsewhere.

But then you get into the unavoidable mitosis of whatever system;  in this case, we split into content creators and content consumers, and we find blends to settle into, and we try it out.

In this one specific case, I fell accidentally into a group of scattered people as it was doing pretty much the same things I was doing;  experimenting with technology, noticing how it affects us, thinking up ways to use it to share knowledge.  Some by need, some by want, but a good fat percentage out of passion.

Among many others, one very specific tool (a “useless” tool, some maintain;  even some AT the gathering), was key in making that happen; Twitter.

And it felt like a tribe.  An odd tribe of people without baggage, but with alot of excitement, and alot of clever thinking.

And that was good.

Is it going to change my life?  Probably not.  I’m stubborn, and I’m entrenched, and I have my habits and my “ways”.  But at the same time, it was important.  It was not average.  It was critical.  And it wasn’t just another conference that I may or may not remember tomorrow.

It wasn’t powerpoint, and it wasn’t posters and handouts.

It was communication and exchange and understanding and cupcakes and texting and tribing.

So, thanks TLT, and thanks everyone that helped get that firewood gathered and started.

I enjoyed it more than thoroughly.