tuttle2texas


Tuttle2Texas - a (rail)road trip to explore cultural relations.

 

Background

South By SouthWest (SXSW) is the world's premier interactive, music and film festival, held each year in Austin, Texas. Together the conferences and festivals attract more than 20,000 registrants from around the world.  This wiki is our working space where we're organising the trip.  You can read our blog over here.

 

What We're Planning to Do

A small group of members of London's Tuttle Club ( http://tuttleclub.wordpress.com ) will be taking the long way round to this year's SXSW interactive festival (SXSWi) in Austin, TX. We'll be starting off in Boston, MA in the first week in March and then taking the train to NYC, Washington DC, Atlanta and New Orleans before driving with friends from NOLA over to Austin in time for the SXSWi opening on March 12th.

 

In each of the cities we visit, we'll be holding human-scale conversation spaces with local businesses, institutions and many of the interesting and influential people we know from the social web. The focus of these conversations will be to explore the similarities and differences between British, Canadian and US cultures, separated as we are by our common language.

 

We will be writing and creating social media content throughout the trip.  In addition we'll be pulling together a 45-60 minute documentary film to release & show on our return to the UK. At the moment our plan is to continue West from Austin, finishing our trip in Long Beach, CA where there is also a regular Tuttle Club meetup.

 

Deliverables for supporters

We're looking for organisations to support us as "Sponsor of the day" for each of the 18 days we're in the States.  As sponsor of the day you get:

We'd love to talk to you about other more specific things we can do for you in return for support.

 

Timing

The journey begins on March 2nd. We expect to return to the UK on March 21st.  The latest version of the itinerary is here

 

Support required

 

We already have support from Nokia who are providing us with mobile devices and Canon who are giving us some cameras.  Metrotwin have arranged flights for Lloyd and we are discussing with a number of other partners for further support (in cash and in kind) to cover

 

 

but we can always do with more help.

 

We would also appreciate introductions to interesting people in each of the cities and provision of suitable venues for Conversation Spaces.

 

We're confirmed to be visiting

Boston

New York City

Washington DC

Atlanta

New Orleans

Austin

Los Angeles

 

 

Who's going?

 

We are all members of the Tuttle Club which is the UK's most popular and influential gathering of people working on and thinking about the social web.  We each have wide reach and influence within our personal networks which is substantially enhanced when we focus on the same subject together.

 

Lloyd Davis is the founder of the Tuttle Club and Social Artist in Residence at the University of London's Centre for Creative Collaboration.  Lloyd's background is in organisational knowledge management and strategy consulting.  His main interest at the moment is using conversational methods for co-creation and collaborative efforts, making the most of both online and offline interactions.  Lloyd led the work that Tuttle did for Counterpoint last year on developing the British Council's  capabilities in digital engagement. 

 

 

Brian Condon  has 20 years experience as a consultant and business developer in both public and private sectors, with a particular focus of late on co-operative and collaborative models of working.  His great strength as a consultant is his ability to blend structured systems thinking in complex environments with an appreciation for how to make strategy work in human terms. Brian has been a regular Tuttler for the last 18 months and has been actively involved in creating our consulting offer and making strong contributions to the strategic conversation of the group.   Brian brings his talent for social reporting to this project, providing his inimicably incisive live-blogging and audioboo reports as we go.

 

 

Heather Taylor is a widely-published writer, poet and filmmaker.  She wrote the screenplay for ‘The Last Thakur’, which premiered at the London Film Festival 2008 and her short documentary Wild West Dream was an official selection for Atlantic Film Festival and the Edmonton International Film Festival. Heather also produces  social media content for large organisations including PayPal UK.  Heather will be producing broadcast-quality documentary footage of the trip and, as a London-based Canadian, provides an important bridge between British and North American cultures. 

 

 

Al Robertson is a freelance writer and creative consultant helping people understand their brands and using any available media to bring those brands to life. He has worked for creative & design agencies such as Imagination and Corporate Edge and client-side at Birds Eye Walls.  He also writes fiction and performs his own poetry and music.  Al was heavily involved in the creation of the Tuttle “Crowds, Tribes & Teams” consulting model and led the work on exploring the British Council's film archive.  On this trip we expect Al to shine as our one-man encyclopaedia of cultural reference, helping us to put our experiences into a wider and deeper cultural context.