I am listening to Seth Godin’s Tribes right now, and considering the number of tribes that I belong to:

• WKUK fans
• web designers
• Christian entrepreneurs
• social media enthusiasts / TWEEPLE
• font nerds
• electronic music producers / DJ’s / listeners

How many tribes do you belong to?

Picking one of these, I remember the feeling of community that I experienced upon my stumbling into the world of freelancing.  I would go to freelancing sites when I first started, and bid on as many jobs as possible.  I met other designers, developers, and artists.  There was a feeling of competition, yes, but there was also a lot of mutual respect.

I became friends with several buyers.  And several service providers.  Many times providers would also be buyers, too. I started helping others find projects, when I had a surplus of work.  If I didn’t have time to take on a project, I would recommend a friend in the industry.  The group of people I worked with started to refer clients to each other.  We would focus on our strengths, and enlist the help of others when needed.  It was a crew of guys and girls from all over the world. We started to become a tight-knit group, with different skills.

We were like the Marvel universe only with design geeks instead of superheros: There was Jolme, the Illustrator; Felipe, the Wordpress Wizard; David, the Hosting Hero; Andy, the Project Manager; Melissa, the Copywriter; Ashok, the PHP/MySQL guru; Duncan, the eCommerce Expert; Kartik, the Joomla guy, and me.  I was usually the CSS Polisher, logo maker, or odd-jobs man.  I was also the communicator.  I was the hub, the others were the spokes.  If someone needed something done, I could always introduce them to the right person, and eventually the whole team had worked with each other in some way.

As time has gone by, each of us has grown busier, and we don’t connect as often as we used to.  Such is life.  But each of us would not be where we are at today, if it were not for our little circle of friends, the ‘web’ of superheroes. It was another form of a tribe.

Do you have a tribe?  Do you have a superpower and a network of other superheroes?  It may not be as cool as shooting spikes out of your knuckles, but when someone says thank you, it’s just as rewarding.