I’m sure you’ve heard the term “crowd sourcing” coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, as I am sure you are familiar with the concept of “tribes” put forth by Seth Godin.  The question is, if there is a “tribe” or a “crowd” with a passion that matches yours, what are you doing to find them and help them find each other?

I firmly believe that the key to drawing a crowd is to be screamingly unique and completely unafraid to shout about your passion from any and all platforms.  …and if you can’t find a platform, make your own.

The impetus of this post came from a tweet by @lotay (follow this guy if you are on twitter, he is amazing).  He got me thinking about what really draws a crowd.  Take a look at the video @lotay linked to (you might want to bump your volume down a little):

A beautiful, sunny afternoon, some music, and a guy who is not afraid to be in the moment and do what he does with complete abandon.  You can see it happening, can’t you?  Do you feel yourself being drawn in?  Aren’t you in some way wishing you were there?

The person in the video is not a celebrity, and evidently not a professional dancer.  But he does what he does with such passion that it can’t help but draw others in.  Watch how the “tribe” grows, one or two at first, sharing the joy of the moment.  But suddenly it grabs the crowd, and grows exponentially.  That is the power of a passionate performance, and a core group of like minded individuals.  This is a living example of how your passion can become much bigger than just you and take on a life of its own. It happens when you are willing to throw caution aside, stop worrying about what people will think, and just dance.

We live in a time when the individual voice can become a world-wide phenomenon in a matter of hours.  The ease of communicating a message out to a world audience is incredible.  You can speak to the world, right now, and from the comfort of your own home.  If there is something you are passionate about, something you want to share, you have a capability to do so at a level, and with tools that did not exist one or two generations ago.  Imagine if the U.S. civil rights movement of the 60′s had a web presence.

You can blog.  You can tweet.  You can Facebook.  You can do this, and you can do it now.  Your tribe will grow, and as it does, it will drive what you do to keep it growing and enable it to fulfill the passion that drew the tribe together in the first place (we’ll talk about giving your tribe a voice in a future post).

Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.  Stop looking for a tribe to join, and start looking for a tribe to lead.  Use the tools available to you to tell people about what you believe in and let the dancing begin…

Related Links:

Seth Godin – The Tribes We Lead – on the TED website (this site is a sinkhole of time for me – amazing information)
Jeff Howe – Crowd Sourcing – Jeff talks about the basics of Crowd Sourcing (as it relates to business, but you’ll see the connection)
Mashable.com article – on places to host a (free) blog
Twitter.com – and if you are already on twitter, here’s  my twitter page
FaceBook.com – and you can send me a friend request at my FaceBook page

Do you have a (cost free) place that can help people find and build their tribe? – Post a link in the comments