Category Archives: tuttle club

SE1 here I come #backtowork

June 15, 2016 Lloyd Davis 1 Comment

From Monday 20th, all being well, I’ll be starting to work from the Concrete Basement in Lower Marsh (home of Anthony Epes and some new friends) – I know I’ve been down in the basement there before sometime, perhaps one of you can own up to also being there, to help me with my failing memory…

Lower Marsh is a great little street that’s feels like it’s been on the edge of gentrification for as long as I’ve been hanging out in London. That feeling might be accelerating a bit at the moment (key indicator: new, funky coffee shops) but isn’t that everywhere? And it’s been remarkably resilient given that it’s slap bang next to Waterloo Station. The other plus for me is that there are three major theatres and the Southbank Centre all in walking distance.

Anyway, that’s where I’m going to be hanging out for the time being. I shall kick off with some self-appointed Social Artist in Residence stuff, for the space and for the street, but I shall also be focusing on getting Tuttle consulting going again and hoping to use local venues for Open Spaces looking at the human experience of work, technology, economy ‘n’that. Other ideas for collaborative projects always welcome.

Please come and see me, bring exotic teas, stories of “one time, I was in Lower Marsh and…” and perhaps something small but inspiring to put on the wall or sit on my desk.

tuttle club, words

The Airbnb of Brains #tuttle

March 4, 2016 Lloyd Davis 7 Comments

Consulting around technological change is a very large market indeed, dominated by accounting and strategy consulting firms – if you were going to build a firm from scratch to compete with the big four/five/six professional service firms, you’d need to spend a lot of money over a long period of time, wouldn’t you?

When Tuttle started, eight years ago, I called it a prototype but I wasn’t quite sure that I knew what it was a prototype for. At the time it felt like we were making a new kind of space for work, and that looked like the emerging co-working model, of which, at the time, there were no real examples here in the UK. So yeah, we were probably going to be a co-working space. But then we carried on meeting and it turned out that even when there were co-working spaces, there was still something to be done, there was still much life in the marketplace for people and ideas that is two hours between 10 and midday every Friday, somewhere in London.

We created together a consulting offer, which we took out with some success, but most of the economic, commercial and energetic work happened in small autonomous groups, peer-to-peer.

I’ve been thinking again recently about how we can open up aggregated knowledge and skills, sliced in interesting ways to help businesses and large organisations deal with technological change.

Silicon Valley may be bubbling right now, but it’s unlikely to ever stop lobbing over these little bombs of change and disruption in the form of new hardware and software and ideas for organising the world more effectively. When I’ve spoken to people recently about VR, Blockchain, IoT and Artificial Intelligence, they’ve expressed weariness in the face of yet another wave of tech. Most people my age say “We lived through the introduction of PCs to the workplace, then we had to deal with e-mail and the web and now you’re saying it’s all going to be turned upside down again?” Well yes and the biggest mistake we can make is to think this is the last round.

Silicon Valley is an engine for ongoing disruption and if we can accept that, stop fighting it and instead accept that we need people who can map out what’s really going on; distinguish between hype and those things that look crazy but are true; and help you make good decisions about what to do next.

Tuttle can do this. We have many people in our near and extended network who have immersed themselves in watching how technological change happens and coming up with new processes for dealing with it.

I’ve been thinking about how to unlock the capacity that we have in the network. And so I’ve been looking at co-operative business models, blockchain-based methods for recompensing creative work, internal currencies etc.

And then on Tuesday night I met Robin Chase and finally looked properly at the ideas in her book Peers Inc. There, in the introduction, was a sentence that echoed what I was thinking and helped me make sense of our network in a different way.

We are definitely a group of diverse peers – one of the sticking points for many people hearing about us for the first time is “If these people don’t all have something specific in common, then what do they talk about, and how can it be of any value?”

We have a platform for participation – it’s every Friday morning at 10am for a couple of hours, it’s a marketplace where ideas and opportunities are traded. It’s a very very limited form, compared to what it could be but because we’ve practiced it for many years now, some of us understand it very well. I’m starting to think about what a web platform for this might look like.

And we have excess capacity, as I wrote yesterday – lots of people with underused or misused brains.

What if we could leverage these things together in the service of large organisations?

Which is why I just tweeted:

The #Tuttle platform: it's the @airbnb of brains

— Lloyd Davis (@LloydDavis) March 4, 2016

That’s what we’re going to make next.

Join me, comment, argue, nod vigorously, come and help, whatever works for you – but if you need help with thinking about how you can ride the waves of technological change instead of being swamped by them, my friends and I are the ones you should be talking to.

tuttle club, words

Capacity

March 3, 2016 Lloyd Davis 3 Comments

We get all sorts at Tuttle, but over the years there’s been a consistent pattern within the whirl of on the one hand, freelancers, artists, startup founders, pet geeks and others all of whom hustle their way from gig to gig and on the other hand people with jobs who manage to escape the desk-shackles for a couple of hours of thinking differently. In between are the people who are “resting”, between jobs, on gardening leave, or have had a few bits of freelance or interim work.

Most of these people have been in full-time employment in large organisations for many years. They’re not lacking in skills (except perhaps hustling) but they’re loath to jump straight back into another corporate role (they’re likely in their late-forties or early-fifties) to take them through to retirement. They also haven’t made enough money to live on that long even though they’ve enough from a redundancy package or savings or a small inheritance to keep them going for now. They’d like to work and they’d like to have an income but none of the things on offer look tasty enough and the thought of starting a new business from scratch is too much.

The question is, how can a network like Tuttle help people like this (more accurately, how does the network help itself)? We do it week by week in informal ways, lots of opportunities arise, good conversations and connections are made, projects get kicked off and people disappear to do them, but it feels like time again to have a go at something a little more formal, enough structure to make something happen (and hopefully not much more) – come and talk about this tomorrow and any Friday, but also let’s talk openly (here in the comments or on your own blog) about how to organize for making the most of this excess capacity because I have a feeling we’re only going to have more of it.

tuttle club, What I'm doing, words

Help me reboot #tuttle

July 3, 2014 Lloyd Davis 4 Comments

The most frequently asked question about #tuttle is: “Is it still going?” To which the answer is “Yes, still Fridays, still 10am-noon, still no agenda, currently on Level 5 at RFH”

And. We operate on a much smaller pool of people, which means the possibility of more intimate conversation (I’ve had some doozies!), but also the risk of stagnation that lack of diversity brings.

I am often reassured that “it’s not about you, Lloyd, it’s about me: I have work to do; I don’t manage my time well enough; I’d love to come but it’s just too far if I haven’t anything else in town; I’m always thinking about coming, it’s just that…”

I’m also reminded regularly that people do still long for space to be themselves, where no-one tells them what to do and they can talk about what they want to talk about without an expected outcome/output/powerpoint/post-its on the wall. A thing that’s not about the thing but about the relationships and potential for things to happen that builds over time.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but talking to Jon Hickman for his article on Social Capital has helped me remember what a good thing this can be and how I don’t believe the time for it has passed. Stories about online social networks spying on us and manipulating our streams to study our emotional responses as well as the constant drip, drip of acquisitions that lead either to sunsetting or unscrupulous use of personal data – these are the things we’ve talked about and organised against in places like #tuttle but my experience of the current crop of events is that these conversations are still squeezed into the breaks and space after the main speaker rather than the focus of getting together in the first place.

So how can you help?

Firstly, you can just come along. No need to register or submit your details anywhere, just turn up at the Royal Festival Hall sometime between 10 and noon and chat (and bring someone with you if you want).

Secondly you can help me develop a sustainable model for me keeping this thing going and making it better over time. The main issue has always been that while others have built working relationships and created opportunities, I’ve had a massive injection of Social Capital which is hard to pay the rent with. I also don’t really want to take money from outside the community while understanding that some people in the community don’t have a lot of money to give.

I’m looking at Patreon as a micro-patronage platform for subscriptions toward developing and rebooting the event. Some of you have kindly “micro-patronised” me before – the difference this time is that I’d want to tie levels of support to some pretty specific goals and to allow for much lower donations per person. Patreon offers both these functions.

In connection with that, you can help me by suggesting what those goals might be. So far I’ve got:

Working with new venue(s);
Creating an online presence more worthy of 2014 than 2007;
Reviving Tuttle Consulting;
Setting up a marketplace for #tuttlers to sell their wares;
Doing other themed events for the community.

But I need to know what else? What did you always wish would happen either at or between #tuttles if only somebody could take the time to?

So let me know what you think about any of that: Yes? No? Yes. but do it another way? No, but have you ever thought of?

Thankyou!

events, london, tuttle, tuttle club

My five-year old: #tuttle

February 15, 2013 Lloyd Davis 5 Comments

Yes, on 15th February five years ago, the London Social Media Cafe which was soon to become better known as The Tuttle Club held the first regular meetup at the Coach & Horses in Greek Street and we’ve done the same thing (more or less) somewhere or other every week (give or take) since then.

A bunch of lovely folk turned up this morning to do the same lovely thing as ever: talk, drink coffee, laugh, talk, meet new people, have a moan, whatever it is that you all do, I don’t know, I just wander around grinning inanely.

First thing this morning, Rob O’Callaghan showed his appreciation for #tuttle (which inspired his Tunbridge Wells group: (#twuttle and its various spin-offs) by treating me to breakfast at the top of the Gherkin in the City. Because it was something he could do. It was great. I’ve never been up in any of these super-tall structures before and the 40th floor with it’s 360-degree view is amazing. Thanks to Rob and Phil Macleod who hosted us.

Back down at the RFH #tuttle buzzed its way through three hours (at least). I was asked, by people who’d been around for a while and new people too, what I got out of doing it. It’s a question that obsessed me at the beginning, but the answers aren’t what I expected back then.

It hasn’t made me rich or particularly famous. I’m skint most of the time and I have been for five years, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been and anyone who wants to tell me that it’s all a failure because it doesn’t make money is missing the point of life, in my opinion.

About six months in, I decided that I would commit to just showing up and welcoming new people and I knew then that I wasn’t ever going to make money directly from #tuttle and that it wouldn’t thrive for long if I made it all about me and used it as a vehicle to get well-known and cash-in from there. And I wanted it to thrive for a long time. I still do.

But I’d already learned this from blogging – that you get your rewards *because* of the things you do, not *for* the things you do. So what are the things I got?

Well doing this thing changed the whole way I see my life and work and it changed how I am perceived by others. I no longer think of myself as any kind of consultant,(though I will still happily take consulting fees!) I’m an artist, I make beautiful things, and #tuttle is one of them. The biggest thrill I got today was being told by a newcomer that “it was beautiful”.

I’ve been able to do things that I didn’t think possible. I’ve traveled and written and photographed my way coast-to-coast (and friend-to-friend) across the USA twice and then hobo-ed around the UK for a whole year living and working with people I’d met on the internet who’d got to know and trust me because I did #tuttle.

I got to call myself Social Artist in Residence at the Centre for Creative Collaboration and then spend a couple of years really thinking about what the hell that meant.

I got to work with a group of the simultaneously nicest *and* smartest people I’ve ever met on creating a new approach to business consulting, a process that resulted in some fabulous open data and the creation of at least one company.

My recent work on #ourdigitalplanet and #wewillgather (I’m considering amending my bio to say just “I work on hashtags”) has been successful because of this weekly deep experience of organising without an organisation.

And I got to meet you all and share in your journeys. I got to see you grow and be encouraged and build your lives and projects and businesses. I got to listen when you were down and depressed and couldn’t see the light just around the corner. I saw hungry young things take flight and soar and become industry stalwarts. I saw a certain entrepreneur meet hardcore users of his product and get real user insights into the thing he’d later sell for millions. And I got to partake in the multitude of fascinating soap-operas of our intersecting lives, laughing and scheming and crying and dreaming and, conversation by conversation, reaching a far better understanding of this social web thing together than we could ever have done on our own.

Thank you all, everyone who’s been along on a Friday morning, even just the one. Thanks to everyone who picked up the idea and started one in their own town (otherwise how would I have ever known to visit Long Beach?!?) Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and guidance on making it better. Thanks to the trolls who spewed and stewed and (thankfully) repeatedly went hungry; please, if they wake up, don’t start feeding them now…

OK, that’s all, go back to what you were doing. See you next week.

tuttle club, What I'm doing, Words

New Year, New #Tuttle

January 1, 2013 Lloyd Davis 5 Comments

It’s back, even though it never really went away! Five years ago, a few of us were pushing around the idea of y’know getting people together on a regular basis who otherwise were hanging out in cyber-social-media-space. There were some experiments in late 2007 & early 2008 but The first regular prototype of the London Social Media Cafe at the Coach & Horses was on February 15th 2008 and before long it was known as the Tuttle Club (#tuttle on teh twitter) and it’s happened every Friday apart from Christmastime shenanigans ever since.

Going to #tuttle has been blamed for anything from hair loss, hair gain, meeting future work colleagues, meeting future partners, meeting future ex-partners, meeting users of your software, meeting heroic developers of software you love, but mostly having an excitable natter about internet’n’media’n’learning’n’stuff during work hours, drinking far too much coffee and tweeting about what a fab time you’re having.

#Tuttle has had many homes in the last five years and now it’s moving again. I’m going to pitch up on the 5th Floor at the Royal Festival Hall, from 10am to midday, this Friday, January 4th 2013 and drink coffee and chat with whomever turns up. As always the rule is that if two or more (yes, including me!) are there, then the event is a success, if any more of you come along, it’ll be just dandy! Just remember that you can get coffee on Level 2 (riverside) before you make the long slog up the stairs or in the lift.

Assuming that it works out (what could possibly go wrong?) we’ll carry on doing it here until we get bored again.

OK? See you Friday.

(photo credit: Josh Russell CC BY-NC-SA)

friends of harry, london, lsmc, social media, social media café, soho, tuttle, tuttle club, Uncategorized

Social Media Café as Platform

January 30, 2008 Lloyd Davis 5 Comments

At our first prototype meeting, I perceived a tension between the people who were interested in making a profitable business and those whose interest was solely in the community possibilities and opportunities for collaboration. I came away unsure of what legal structure would work best – a traditional shareholder-owned limited company or a non-profit company limited by guarantee. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then.

On the same occasion I said something along the lines of: “What I want to create is a platform that enables people to create value for themselves.”

The inspiration for this comes from the tech world – CP/M & MS-DOS, the IBM PC, the Internet, the Web, Amazon Marketplace, Craigslist, Ebay, Facebook – what they all have in common is that no matter how they get paid for or how they’re organised, or whether or not they make money for their inventors, they have also given other people the opportunity to create new relationships, markets and businesses that weren’t possible before (btw, I use big examples so that people will recognise what I’m talking not because I think our little project will be on that scale.)

I want everything we do to in some way support people doing cool stuff on their own. I don’t think we have to own *every*thing and I certainly don’t want to create a walled garden. We’ll get a lot more done by creating the conditions for people to

So turning back to the legal structure, the choice seems to come down to a limited company (or a partnership) which exists to create value for it’s shareholders (or partners) or a company limited by guarantee which exists to… well do whatever we decide it should do – I think it should serve the needs of people interested in Social Media in London – if that’s not too wooly (or too specific) – but I’m open to suggestion. There was broad agreement that limited by guarantee was the right route for us but the aim and purpose does need to be boiled down to something that expresses what we want and allows us (as a group) to do as much good as possible.

So if that is sorted, my mind then turns to the structure of this business. I’ve always talked about the three bits – café, learning, working. But that might not be all we want to do together – other ideas for services have come up in meetings too. Can we make the Tuttle Club our base platform? With no direct services except to facilitate cool stuff happening. Then the first cool thing it does (quickly) is to set up a Social Media Café or perhaps the café space, a learning space and a workspace could each be individual, but co-located businesses. And then it can do other things too as they arise. Or am I making it too complicated?

Let’s talk about this at the next prototype – but there are many who aren’t able to join us there so let’s do it in the google group as well.

london, social media, social media café, social media tart, soho, tuttle club, Uncategorized, What I'm doing

Keeping the prototyping going

January 26, 2008 Lloyd Davis 1 Comment

Our first little flashmob was quite a success in my view. It certainly showed me that there were people ready to turn up and talk about stuff. It also suggested to me that we need to follow a two-track approach for now.

I’m going to continue to write (as and when I have the space and time) a formal business plan to help communicate more clearly and completely what it is we are doing and to help people understand why they might want to put money into it. I want to get as much feedback and input from others into that as possible so I’ll be blogging about it more regularly from now on as well as organising face to face sessions.

In addition, I think it’s worth trying to keep prototyping and move slowly from the dormobile model towards the travelling circus model. For those who haven’t seen my presentation on this, I characterised the first phase of prototyping as a VW camper van where we just hang out essentially wherever we can find somewhere to park for the afternoon. The travelling circus is a bit more formal – it’s where we would have a venue that remained the same for a period, perhaps up to a month, before we moved on. So how might we do that? From the start people have been suggesting that we should just find somewhere to “squat” but ideas for actual places to do this have been thin on the ground.

Now, though, courtesy of the sterling persistence of Lee Thomas (londonfilmgeek) we’ve got a couple of initial sessions booked in the upstairs dining-room at (Norman’s) Coach and Horses in Greek Street (corner of Romilly St, opposite Kettners). To say the least, the place does have some media history. Far less significantly it was where we had the recent Seesmic Dinner.

We’ll be there from 10.00 to 13.00 on Friday 1st February though the landlord would no doubt welcome you staying on for a later lunch and drinking in the bar for the rest of the afternoon if you really can’t tear yourselves away 🙂

I’ve put a simple page on the wiki for sign-ups – just so that people know who else is coming.

Right, so I’m now on the look out for more places like this and I thought I’d blog the requirements and what’s in it for the venue and see who out there might have have somewhere we can use or at least see whether you can come up with suggestions of places to approach.

What the venue gets – people, punters, customers, you know, dosh-givers – especially at those times that are usually a bit slow. More people drinking coffee and eating cakes, sandwiches and other geek comestibles (erm… I suppose I mean beer here, especially on a Friday lunchtime). Moreover the people it brings in are well-connected and quite influential in their own circles. And we’re generous – if you give us nice things like wifi and electrickery, we will say nice things about you. Don’t forget that when we say nice things, we say them quite loudly on the internet (a global network of interconnected computing devices), where they stick around forever getting clumped together with other nice things and thus bringing you warm fuzzy goodness – the kind of warm fuzzy goodness that encourages cash out of people’s wallets and into your till.

Our requirements – we’d like a space please that we can, however temporarily, call our own. It’s great if it can be demarcated in some way (a separate room, those three tables, etc.) and we need free open wifi (if you don’t have this, we can talk about how we can help you set it up) and access to electricity points. Errr.. that’s about it, really. Anything else, I think we can work around.

Know anywhere like this? Own anywhere like this. Let me know – my contact details are up at the top of this page.