Table Of ContentTHE TRIBES
CASEBOOK
Tribes:
e Case Studies
Written and compiled by the tribe at triiibes.com
is compilation is yours to share, but not to profit from.
Feel free to post or email.
The Tribes Casebook was written (or cheered on) by more than 3,000 people. Each case had a lead author, and the community at www.triiibes.com contributed advice,
examples and encouragement. The site is by invitation only and currently closed, but the content is yours to play with.
Click on an author’s name to find out more. Feel free to email this or post this or print it. But please don’t sell it or change it.
ABOUT THE COVER: These hard-working firefighters are taking a well-deserved break from a training session. The house behind them was abandoned and is part of
an exercise. The tribe of firemen (volunteer and professional) is essential to the well-being of our communities, and if it weren’t for tribal behavior, there’s just no way
we’d have enough firemen. See details here: http://flickr.com/photos/oldonliner/1485881035/
The Tribes Casebook
A companion to
TRIBES
Click for more info
Foreword
Seth Godin
ere’s a lot here. Big ideas, small ideas. Useful case studies, irrelevant asides. Links to fascinating information and black holes
and time wasters. Of course, different people will have different judgments about what’s what, so we left it all here. You decide.
is book was written by a group, and edited by them as well. It contains the hard work of dozens of people, assisted by
hundreds of volunteers and watched by thousands. Feel free to dig in and visit the links and explore.
If you want to know more about what this is all about, consider:
An overview of Tribes, the book and the idea.
58 books you might want to check out.
e triiibe’s list of tactics.
anks for reading. Have fun.
Seth
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Tribes You Don’t Want to Belong to
Jon Morrow
Sometimes, you don’t get to choose the tribes that you belong to. ey choose you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I’m a member of one of those tribes. It’s called the Tribe of the Disabled.
Some of us were born into the tribe. Others were brought into it by an accident or mistake. But regardless of how we arrived,
no one wants to be a member.
Some people take it hard. ey feel like they’ve been kidnapped from another tribe, the Tribe of Normal People. ey feel like
everything they were and everything they knew was taken away.
Eventually though, most of us realize that the Tribe of Normal People doesn’t actually exist. ere’s no bond between the non-
disabled. ere are no leaders among them. ere are no rules. It doesn’t exist.
But the Tribe of the Disabled does exist. It’s a common link between all of us, and we know it, even without saying anything.
We have rules, like, “Don’t stare” or “Be encouraging.” It’s strange, but we also tend to stay away from each other, as if being
around one another could remind us that we are a member of the tribe. We prefer to forget.
Still, we have common leaders, people that inspire us. Christopher Reeve was one of those leaders. He inspired us with his
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audacity, his activism, and his compassion. We were so sad when he left us, but that’s the way this tribe is. Our leaders don’t last
long.
It’s an unusual tribe, I know. For the longest time, I didn’t want to be a part of it. I believed that accepting my membership
would weaken me, like I would be accepting my own death. So many of us die, after all. It’s the most common way out of the
tribe.
But you know what? I was wrong.
is tribe isn’t about death. It’s about courage.
It takes courage to look at yourself and accept your imperfections. It takes courage to love yourself anyway. It takes courage to
go beyond merely trying to survive your life and start trying to actually enjoy it.
How could you complain about being in a tribe like that? It’s wonderful.
Would I still like to be cured of my disease? Would I trade a healthy body for my membership in the Tribe? Sure I would.
But do I regret being a part of it? No way!
When you learn to accept yourself, you also learn to accept the tribes you belong to. ey don’t have to be rich or clever or even
desirable. e fact is, it’s your tribe.
And sometimes, that’s all that matters.
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Tribes: As Essential as Breathing
Posted by Ellen Di Resta
Tribes are the social equivalent to breathing. eir existence is like an involuntary process that creates social order. Where we
live, what we do for work, and our hobbies are defined by association with Tribes that represent certain activities and attitudes.
Our value is determined by how we compare to others in the tribe, or by how large a tribe we can create.
When asked to name the essential elements for survival, people usually mention things that they actively seek out like food,
water, and shelter. But the involuntary processes, like breathing are actually more important, as anyone who has almost drowned
could tell you. at’s probably why they evolved to be involuntary processes.
What’s interesting is that even though breathing is an involuntary process, it can be consciously controlled. Focusing on your
breath is a fundamental element in many yoga and meditation practices that ultimately enhance physical and mental wellbeing.
Many people are trying to define the elements of a tribe. I think this is a lot like trying to define breathing. is is a difficult
task because the value of the elements that make up a tribe will change based on the real and perceived situations the members
encounter.
My observation is that successful people have learned to define their own place in the social order. Like controlling their breath,
they have learned to transcend this involuntary process and utilize the tribe to create their desired experience within it.
But how do they do that? What is the first step? After posing that question to the larger group, it seems that there is usually a
trigger event. A success or tragedy that causes people to stop and focus on what is truly important to them. But this can’t be the
only answer, as some people emerge from a traumatic event better off than before it, and others do not. And how does this
affect our interaction with our tribes? e closest I’ve seen to an answer lies in a case study I read about connecting to your own
personal tribe; the one that lives inside of you.
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To paraphrase and add my own interpretation, the idea is that in your own heart and head you are the leader, and you must
look to yourself to lead. Once you can do that, interactions with other tribes will take care of themselves. is is just like
voluntarily taking control of your breathing. Ideally we won’t need a traumatic event to trigger this action, and we can use this
energy to achieve goals far greater than if we left the leadership to someone else.
Community tools do not create communities.
Tamara Adlin
I talk to a lot of folks who want to improve their websites. I’ve decided that if I hear one more person say “we need to create a
online community!” I may barf. Of course, barfing on clients isn’t always a good idea. So instead, I’ve been looking for good
examples, or at least clever quips, to support my argument. And my argument is:
Online community features can support a community, they can’t create a community out of thin air.
So, here are some examples:
1. ere are some truly pathetic ‘online community’ features at several bank sites. Because people LOVE to hang out and chat
with other people at their banks, right? But the banks simply had to add the newest fancy shiny web stuff to their sites.
2. ere is an amazing community called BunSpace.com. It’s for people who own bunny rabbits as pets. ere are over 6,500
bunnies and their people on there...even pages for bunnies who have already died. I recently donated money to a bunny owner
who I’ve never met and never will who owns a rescued bunny that needs surgery the owner can’t afford. BunSpace is bunny
porn for bunny owners (and by the way, bunnies are incredibly funny, trainable, great pets, just fyi.)
3. Triiibes may seem like an exception, but I don’t think it is. I think all of us were hungry for something, but maybe we weren’t
sure what it was. e point is, Seth didn’t create the hunger. He created the space.
Saying ‘we need community features!’ is like looking at a building and saying ‘it needs more concrete!’ Community features,
AJAX, streaming media (remember the fuss over streaming media?) are all just fancy new pieces of the infrastructure. ey are
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not magical new ways to create something out of nothing.
The Tribal Instincts of Hookers and Flankers
Posted by: Bill Gemmell
is tribe can hurt but bears no grudge. ey beat the living daylights out of their opponents then share and support over free
flowing beer at the bar. is tribe is the followers of the Code of Fifteen – Rugby Union.
ey are, to use the theme of the International Rugby Board, a world in union. Played across the globe, with no distinction on
creed, race or religion, the game has become part of life for its tribe: a tribe made up of men and women, old and young.
e tribes have three key characteristics: Solidarity – they share a common interest, a common language, a common ethos; they
have a Fraternity – witness the post match social aspects; and they have Energy – there are no “drains” in this tribe only
“radiators”, stimulating the senses and spirit of those among them.
Who leads these tribes? e lynchpin is often the smallest man on the field – the scrum half – marshalling his forward pack to
drive against the opposition and releasing the ball at the proper time to the flamboyant, responsive and dynamic backs. He may
be small in stature, but the human terrier has an ambition and arrogance beyond his stature.
Every tribe needs its scrum half: to encourage greater effort, to coordinate different parts of the organisation, to pass when
appropriate and to take control when necessary.
Rugby has its origins in the past when William Webb Ellis “picked up the ball and ran”. ere is value to us to do the same in
leading our tribes and follow the Tribal Code of Fifteen.
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When Technology Fails: A Language gets Born in an Online Tribe
Saleh AlShebil
When the internet came along and began exponentially spreading in the Arab world, chatting also grew with it, like in the rest
of the world. Whilst many Arabs began using chat and instant messaging, they faced a technological dilemma. Many of the
instant messengers available, like the well known MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, lacked the capability of writing in
the Arabic language at the time. While the online tribe still used the famous internet chat acronyms and used English, they still
wanted to write Arabic somehow, but how? ey created a simple language of their own.
e Arabic language alphabet is comprised of 28 letters. Some of these letters do not have an equivalent “sound” in English. So
what did our online tribe do? ey began looking for numbers and other keystrokes that can somehow resemble what the real
Arabic letter “looks” like. Let me explain…
For instance, the Arabic letter “ﻉ”is pronounced as A’aa when used in a word and it got replaced with the number “3” since “3”
looks like an inverted “ﻉ”. So the word Arabic which is written “Araby” (in Arabic sounding English) and begins with “ﻉ” was
then written as “3raby.” Another example is the letter “ﺡ” , pronounced as ha’aa, which got replaced with the number “7” (closest
it could get to). So a word like “marhaba” (hi or welcome in Arabic) would be spelled out as “mar7aba.” is may not sound like
a big deal, but watch what happened.
is new form of tribal net lingo began to spread like wildfire. It would probably be a safe assumption to say that any Arab who
is online today (especially the youth) is pretty familiar with it. Using it was not limited to chat and instant messaging but has
also swelled to include any form of writing in online communities and even in mobile text messaging (sms). e Arabic net
lingo virus caught on to Arabic websites that even wanted their domain names to sound or “look” Arabic. It became a
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