I’m really looking forward to presenting at TribeCon in New Orleans this week. If you’re unfamiliar with TribeCon, it’s billed as “The Community Conference.”

TribeCon is a conference packed full of inspiring and educational presentations by world-renowned panelists – all focused around building communities online and igniting them to accomplish amazing things in the real world.

Amazing things indeed! Somehow, I’m listed as a featured speaker alongside Ben Huh from icanhazcheezburger and Baratunde Thurston from The Onion. With that type of company, I certainly feel the pressure to be entertaining. I can do that. I’m not sure I can be funny like those two but I will do my best to be entertaining. And if you’re interested in sharing, I can promise that you will learn something.

The title of my talk is “The Technology of Sharing: Past, Present and Future.” Through examples and scientific research, I will show that sharing and cooperation is in our nature as a social species. Our history of sharing and working together to gain access to things we need is much richer than our recent history as a consumer-driven society. The hyper-consumption that has dominated our economy and culture in recent decades is the anomaly in human history and it’s burning itself out by its very reliance on unsustainable growth. In its place we are turning back to a more collaborative, communal economic model where we are re-learning how to share resources and skills. We are re-learning what it means to be part of a community. And we are re-learning what it means to live happy and fulfilling lives without the constant pressure to buy more crap. If you can’t make it to New Orleans, stay tuned here and I’ll be sure to post my talk sometime next week. Shareable.net has been a great resource for me so I’ll definitely share it here.

You can check out the full schedule for TribeCon and buy tickets here.