Triberr is Toastmasters for Bloggers

November 14, 2012 — 2 Comments

The blog sharing, syndicating, and supporting system known as Triberr is the blogging parralell to Toastmasters for public speaking. i was invited to a tribe about a year ago with my not so regularly published Tumblr blog. I met cool people, read their blogs regularly and tweeted them to my mini following. We do bond as a tribe, and some are founded around specific areas of interest. The personality of each tribe is vastly different as are the styles of each chief. Everyone is a chief if the initiative is taken to grow and lead a tribe of one’s own. I enjoyed my first tribal experience, and noticed that the tribe existed even after our chief quit blogging and abandoned the tribe entirely. This indicated the power of the structure, the system, the potential of  place we do all of this syndication…Triberr. The obvious limitations of being in a tribe with no cheif, and having only one person in my own tribe,(who really had not fully registered or blogged) lead me to a fabulous decision. I made up my mind to meet my only tribal member in New York City for the first TribeupNYC event to check the vibe in person. I am pleased with my decision to go for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that I enjoyed lower Manhattan in a pre Sandy state of bliss and perfection. There was no sign of impending doom.

I had risen before dawn for many years to attend Toastmasters meetings at a hospital to fine tune my public speaking skills. Our diverse and dedicated group proved to me how many different reasons there can be for wanting to speak in public. I already was a total ham, and won every week the extemporaneous table topic event. I covered my office with blue ribbons from table talk. Conspicuously absent from the ribbon display were ribbons for prepared speeches. I maybe got one 3rd place…or none. This is easily explained by my fellow Toastmasters’ diligent hard work. Like ants they attended conferences and competitions, put hours of prep into the speeches done in the meetings. I was the grasshopper who did little homework because the table topic ribbons looked good enough to me, and I knew I would win another one every week.  Resting on my improvisational laurels yet again, I learned a lot.  I thought the critique and evaluations skills were of the utmost importance.  The supportive structure resembles the blogging tribe in the simplicity of the mission.  Both Toastmasters and Triberr are designed to improve by practice and critique.

Triberr is a modern-day literary soiree with bloggers tribing up to read and share each others’ work.  It has the same individuality that each Toastmasters chapter offers, and many participants are in more than one tribe, just like active Toastmasters who speak daily at different  meetings.  It has the same few stalwarts who keep it going, and the same number of flakes who come and go without much impact.  Toastmasters is modestly priced, as is Triberr Prime, the paid version of the system.  I am working my way up to Priming it.  I have grown my own tribe since the conference on the equinox, and been invited to join some others.  I love the way it exposes us to each other and to an unknown set of others based on our own cultivation of a news stream.  There is no doubt in my mind that this power is working well for me, and even has the potential of moving me out of the table topic section of the creative world.  I do really appreciate the thorough work and preparation dedicated to the blogs I am reading from my tribe mates.  Perhaps I will try it.

In the meantime, I have dedicated my Tumblr blog to a new tribe I formed around the Three Book Diet cult I have joined as a superfan of the ever brilliant Brother Brogan.  The ability to have a book club about an intense interaction with the material rather than a cursory and meaningless consumption of words is something brand new.  It is the opposite of the high volume book club…..no review and abandon…not this year..we will live our books, live our yoga, live our true Epicurean literary lives.  I do remember that at the end of Trust Agents there was mention of using what you have just read rather than hurrying away to more reading.  Chris and Julian are teachers, not so much authors, even though they have written these great books.  Business Design is the new community management.  By styling his own business as interactive with ease it is my opinion that Chris has figuratively reopened the ancient Greek schools of philosophy that required direct transmission from the master.  Socrates did not believe in the written word, thought it would ruin education.  I am sure he would freak right out if he saw PowerPoint.  I think that Triberr and the book dieting cult can combine very nicely.  Ironically diet books that tell you how to eat  are always best sellers, but nobody I have seen has chosen a diet book for the book diet.