Trust Agents: What I Learned at Voluntweetup & Gnomedex 9.0

I have been reflecting on a remarkable “right place at the right time” convergence that manifested itself at Gnomedex 9.0 held on Aug 20-21, 2009. I think that when it is said and done for this phase of the communications rEVOLution that we are currently experiencing under the guise of social media, Gnomedex 9.0 will be hailed as ground zero for a whole new revolutionary wave, much like the Strings 95 Conference with Ed Witten that revolutionized thinking in physics.

What did we birth at Gnomedex 9.0? An emerging zeitgeist hit critical mass as we launched a new way of communicating and doing business with a partnership between commerce and community built upon trust and compassion. I refer to this new wave as Commerce-Cojoining-Compassion or the 3Cs. We are shape-shifting communication and web technologies from a Me ethos to an interrelated Web 2.0 We ethos through adoption and use of social media platforms, and we have Chris Pirillo, Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Shauna Causey, and Frank Eliason to thank for acting as midwives to this remarkable paradigm shift. Voluntweetup kicked off Gnomedex 9.0, launching our emerging We zeitgeist at the national level. Shauna Causey’s brainchild, Voluntweetup, extrapolates from Frank Eliason’s Comcast Cares ground-breaking social media customer relations management program. We taught local Seattle area nonprofit organizations how to adopt, implement, and deploy social media applications and programs for their compassionate-action initiatives, bringing together the commerce and compassion communities for common goals and inspiring businesses to engage in social media for social good.

Gnomedex Founder, Chris Pirillo, has actively supported Voluntweetup from its inception with its launch last April for Common Ground and has actively supported the 3Cs community for sometime. Aside from his CNN Technical Reporter and Lockergnome übergeek roles, Pirillo is a person who cares about the health, well being, and growth of our Seattle technology community and repeatedly demonstrates this through his curatorial skills by the mix of technologists, visionary thinkers, and humanitarians he chooses to include at the Gnomedex Conference. Through his hard work and community-supporting efforts, Gnomedex has emerged as one of the top must-attend technology conferences.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s launch of Trust Agents coincided with Gnomedex 9.0 and provided a synthetic framework for many of this year’s conference ideas. Brogan and Smith have identified six characteristics of Trust Agents that culminate into an army of communicators working cooperatively together through social nets, creating a viral avalanche that hurls us toward a perceptual shift in awareness.  What I love most about Trust Agents is its focus on raising others up as you move along your own unique individual path.  Brogan and Smith borrow from the marketing principles of Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  However, what strikes me about Trust Agents is just how similar Brogan and Smith’s framework is to current thinking in the compassionate-action communities like the Mind & Life Institutes’s upcoming XIX: Educating World Citizens in the 21^st Century conference in October in Washington, DC. Are we on the verge of a cultural tipping point in this social media communications revolution? I think we are.

This year at Gnomedex 9.0, we witnessed Nerd Craft, Building Influence Online, and an amazing film and social media experience surrounding Maisha Magumu, the Tanzanian hip-hop artist’s release of Wakali Wa Downtown. We watched how a Foldit game is fostering molecular biology breakthroughs and how geeks can extend their lives. We saw the best of Ignite, learned the “Art of the Interview” and hacker journalism, and how to make our own custom objects with MakerBot. The most touching experiences for me at Gnomedex were Drew Olanoff and Mike Demers presentation on how they have chosen to make their respective cancer bouts “social” with the launch of Blame Drews Cancer and Mark Horvath’s efforts to raise awareness of homelessness with InvisiblePeople.tv, which highlighted Seattle’s own Nicklesville homeless community. It is these people, these true social media leaders, who are in the trenches doing their very best to heal themselves and their community by engaging the social space and empowering their unique voices and respective communities.

It is the awesomeness of Brogan that destroyed my 14-year-old fountain pen. I have written over 40 200-page journals of tragedy, death, loss, letting go, redemption, and grace with that pen. In other words, I have written the life of a human heart.  Brogan, an educator, teacher, and self-styled marketer whose Covey-Kumbaya-Z-Boys-pirate-DIY-indie-punk ethos I recognize and resonate with, wrote a beautiful, inspiring inscription in my copy of Trust Agents that he signed at Gnomedex. On the way home with the signed copy of Trust Agents in my hand, my beloved 14-year-old fountain pen simply fell apart. It was an apt ending to a week of grief-filled sad and beloved endings and poignant and powerful new beginnings.

I buried my dearly beloved 17-year-old cat Fuzzball Miller who brought me home full circle to the place where I am best. Fuzzy and writing, along with influence from the Dalai Lama, have brought me to a personal renaissance; and Brogan and Smith have opened yet another rEVOLutionary door.  I have shifted to another level of experience for which I am grateful to my own heartfelt Trust Agents. Leading social media’s next generation’s “ones to watch” list, keep your eyes on Kathy Gill, Eric Weaver, Jean-Luc David, Kenji Onozawa, Adnan Mahmud, Guru Dorje, Todd Buckley, and Eric Havir. Each of these Seattle social media thought leaders have unique and provocative perspectives on how social media is evolving.

As I begin to focus on our upcoming  Twestival Seattle on September 12 for YouthCare, October’s Mind and Life’s XIX: Educating World Citizen’s in the 21^st Century, and the Compassionate Action Networks’s Open Space kickoff event, I want to thank my dear friends who really stepped up, stepped forward, and eased the pain of transition from one life stage to another: Melissa Wood and my beloved Aunt Joyce Terry helped me bury Fuzzy.  And my dear, beloved friends, Jennifer Thirsk and Ann Payne, were there when I needed it most. Thank you, I am very grateful. 

 Todd Buckley (@bsb), Guru Dorje (@Ideagiant), and Evonne Benedict of (@gabbycat), and @King5Seattle are some of my core social media friends who really helped me grieve, recover, and move forward through their creative spirit, kind words, thoughtfulness, and support. Many, many of the @SMCSeattle community sent condolences, thank you all.

This blog is dedicated to Fuzzy, who taught me how to love well… It is Fuzz who taught me “life at the speed of cat” and how to become a trust agent.

 ~Jeris JC Miller @dakini_3