Some helpful confusion arose yesterday that showed me where I was getting a bit uncomfortable.  In talking about getting support for the trip, we've naturally focussed on the tangible outputs that we'll create.  It sounds so cool that we'll be making a documentary movie of our trip to show to people when we get back, that I think I'd temporarily lost sight of what we're actually best at, why we're doing the trip and therefore why we think people might be interested in helping make it a reality.

I'm a blogger.  I can't help it.  I write on the internet.  I can't stop.  Over the years I think I've become quite good at it and I know that people enjoy reading what I write and connecting with me through the various things I do online.  I've also been playing with creating works in other media ever since they worked out how to put enclosures into RSS.

And what that's done for me is that it's help me connect with people all over the world, build relationships, working arrangements, friendships and yes a little bit of flirting, romance and downright naughtiness.

So when I started Tuttle, it was above all to explore this concept of building of rich relationships through the emerging social web and experiencing them face-to-face as well as online.  I wrote and talked a lot at the time about the importance of bootstrapping relationships through meatspace interaction as well as through the net.  The way that successful meetups complement online social networks and they feed each other. 

The Tuttle Club and the many social media cafes it's spawned is a powerful example of this - that's why I steer us away from too much structure and direction - I want it to have that flavour of the web but with people whose eyes you can look into. 

The fundamental tool that we're learning to use is conversation, real conversation - not "conversational marketing" conversations, not "big conversation" conversations and not the transactional chit-chat of the traditional networking event. 

Real conversations between ordinary people who are doing stuff and are interested in stuff and like talking about it and finding out about it from others.  These conversations have become the staple at Tuttle and are the killer app in our consulting practice.  They are hugely powerful forums for changing individuals, groups and organisations, one thought at a time.

And so that is what this trip is about.  Yes, we'll have a movie at the end of it, hashed together from all the video we have.  Heather is also taking the opportunity to make a broadcast-quality documentary about cultures which neatly complements what else we're doing - she's a filmmaker, that's what she does.  Yes we'll run some extremely interesting and valuable workshops afterwards on what we've learned, and who knows what other things we'll think of.  All these things are great and I'm really looking forward to helping make all of them.

But none of those are the real purpose of the trip.

The real purpose of the trip is to make connections and build relationships through conversation.  That's what Tuttle is really good at.  That's why we're travelling slowly across America in such a crazy, old-fashioned, inefficient way.  I want to meet old friends with whom I've only ever tweeted.  I also want to meet new people and get to know them and think about who we are and what we have in common and how we're all trying to make sense of this world that has been turned upside-down in our lifetimes.

If we do all that, then the trip is a success and I'll have done what I set out to do.  And then, if we're lucky, after some reflection, we all might have some stories to tell.