Julien Smith at Third Tuesday Vancouver

Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents with Chris Brogan, spoke at Third Tuesday Vancouver this week about the nature of social capital and building tribes.

While I was expecting a bland presentation on the importance of building community within social networks, I was pleasantly surprised. The talk was less on why online communities are important and more about how now is the time to take control, get over our own fears and become leaders of our own social channels. All in all, it was an inspiring talk.

These were Julien’s main points (thanks to Hummingbird604 for live blogging the event):

Touch the burner.
When we’re children we do things that are dangerous (like touching the burner, playing with the electrical socket, etc.). We do this to make sense of the world around us and, once you touch the burner and understand it, your world gets a little bigger. It hurts to touch the burner so we eventually stop, but when we stop, the world stops getting bigger.

We need to continue to explore the world around us—even if it hurts—in order for our world to grow.

Connections matter.
There’s a study that shows that once we get to a certain level of financial gain—$50,000 a year—we are no longer made happier by the next $1,000 or even $10,000 a year. What makes us happy is the amount of connections we have and how central we are to the network.

Building tribes, bringing people together and facilitating the exchange of social capital is one of the best things you can do either personally or for your business.

If you can build the church (the place that people gather by default), you get to be in charge of the channel and the connections that are made there.

Break the pattern.
Breaking the pattern of interaction challenges people to really engage. Never let anybody turn themselves off. Great interviewers, like Larry King, excel at this.

Become the lead goose.
The lead goose reduces the wind resistance for all of the other geese. If you become an experimenter, if you try new things and break the pattern, you’re making it easier for everybody else in your network to break the pattern and develop meaningful connections. Once you establish yourself as a leader, you become invaluable to your tribe.

We will never need more advertising.
We will never need more advertising but we will always need more community and tighter links between those we care about. Learning to build tribes and understanding social capital has never been more valuable.