Regional Whuffie Building panel at SXSWi
You all know we love a good field trip here at Office Nomads. Well, this time Jacob and I are hopping a plane and heading to Austin for the field trip of all field trips - South By Southwest Interactive in Austin! And what's more? Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Geoff DiMasi (P'unk Ave, Independents Hall), Julie Duryea (Souk Portland), Matthew Wettergreen (Caroline Collective), and I are on a panel called Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to Your City. It should be pretty awesome! If you're going to SXSWi, please come and join us at the panel.
Um, what the heck is Whuffie, you ask? Well, let me quote by Tara Hunt, maven of Whuffiedom. Whuffie is:
- A word coined by Cory Doctorow in his book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as the currency of the future.
- Roughly equivalent to social capital
- Is the culmination of reputation, influence, bridging and bonding capital, access to ideas and talent, access to resources, potential access to further resources, saved up favors, accomplishments and the Whuffie of those you have relationships with.
As a panel, we are tasked with discussing how to inspire a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as what it takes to run successful startup or a successful technology career no matter where you're from. We'll be discussing why regional Whuffie building can help your region, and giving some some success stories resulting from what each of us has been up to in our own cities.
I am incredibly excited to represent Office Nomads as a Seattle coworking space on this panel, and am even more jazzed to be sitting amongst the coworkng rockstars who will be at my side. Speaking of some of them, I'm going to steal a little thought that my co-panelist Matthew Wettergreen sent out to the coworking group earlier this morning...
Since coworking plays such a large role in rallying the troops of any region, we'd like input from all of you about Regional Whuffie Building. If you're able, could you answer some questions?
- What are some of your success stories of regional whuffie building or inspiring a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship?
- How have you embraced the mix of face-to-face interaction and technology?
- What are some individual strategies towards this end goal that you have attempted?
Shout out, and let us know what you're thinking...