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Tara Hunt quit her job, bought a beaten-down RV and is roadtripping across America with “Whuffaoke or Bust.”
It’s a 13-city karaoke tour from San Francisco to Montreal. And it will make a stop in Omaha tonight at 7 at 22 Floors, near 13th and Webster Streets.
Spoken like a true hippie, Hunt’s goal is “to bring music, whuffie and conversation on how to change the world.”
Hunt, 36, coerced four friends and a pug named Ridley to ride along and karaoke with her. The group tweets, blogs, uploads photos and live streams the event at whuffaoke.com.
We caught up with Hunt, a marketing consultant and author of “The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business,” last week to ask about her divine plan.
Hunt is a pioneer in online marketing and one of the most respected authorities on online communities — how they are evolving, how they are changing culture and business, and how businesses must behave to succeed in the participatory Web economy.
She spoke with us via a staticky cell phone in Las Vegas:
Q. What is whuffie?
A. It’s a term I adapted from Cory Doctorow’s science fiction novel “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” a book that describes a post-scarcity economy. In the future, he says, there will be no currency, just whuffie. People will receive scores on their whuffie; the more someone can trust you, the higher your whuffie score.
I thought that’s basically how we interact on online communities; what we value online and how companies want to drive volume. Instead of thinking about how many hits their site gets, they should work on how to raise their whuffie as a brand. Community marketing is not about pushing messages or creating strong brands, but building relationships and engaging communities.
Q. So, how does that translate to “Whuffaoke or Bust”?
A. Whuffaoke started with Tony (Bacigalupo) and Alex (Hillman), who are on this trip with me. We were sitting in this karaoke RV that’s at South by Southwest every year. And at one point in the night, sometime around 3 a.m., I told the guys that I was going to quit my job and karaoke across America. It was like this joke, but four months later, we were planning it. The more we started thinking about it, it became this big “Why not?” I needed a change in my life, something exciting.
Q. Why Montreal?
A. I’m relocating there. So many people and local communities started getting excited about this concept. We thought it would be a great way to connect with people. We started organizing these points and stops and trying to infuse the idea of reconnecting locally, nationally and globally. What better way to do it than with music?
Q. Where are you now?
A. Las Vegas. We’re pretty tired. We’ve been traveling at night lately. We have a good little machine, but it doesn’t like heat or hills.
Q. What kind of RV?
A. It’s a 1990 Winnebago. We love Winnie. That’s what we call her. She’s an amazing RV.
Q. How’s the trip so far?
A. It’s been a learning experience. We’re still working out the kinks.
Q. What kind of kinks?
A. Well, even though it can go 65 mph, you shouldn’t go 65 mph, because it’s a strain on the engine. We hit a heat wave and had to adjust to night driving. We’ve also had to put a little more padding on the travel time. We’ve also a had a few kinks with our karaoke setup. We had to hire a KJ (karaoke disc jockey) our first night in San Francisco because we didn’t have our music set up. The second stop, we had to buy a hard drive of CDs and find the program to play it. It was originally set up for plug and play for iPhones, but that didn’t work out.
Q. So how have the tweets, blogs and daily live streams been working out?
A. Wifi has been problematic. We have two Verizon cards we’re using. But traveling down the highway, it’s been so unreliable. Technology isn’t totally there to live stream and broadcast. The crew I’m traveling with are smart and great problem-solvers so we’ve been getting around it. We’re tweeting it out. At some point, we hope to upload a bunch of stuff we shot. We’re posting photos along the way.
Q. It’s such an insane setup.
A. This really is a production. It’s like we’re a band touring.
Q. How does it work? Do you lecture, then karaoke?
A. It’s a little bit of everything. We really want to karaoke on the side of the road, but haven’t found the time to do that yet. At each city, we get a huge group of karaoke enthusiasts who come out. Man, people are passionate about karaoke. It’s, like, “Wow, I had no idea there are so many of you people.” So there’s a lot of support there that’s showing up. And then people that follow my work on Twitter or have read my book come out as well.
Q. How do people react when they see Winnie on the road?
A. I’m sure they think we’re this crazy crew of people. It’s funny, because you can see it coming down the road. It’s this big blue RV with “Whuffaoke or Bust” written along the side. We also have a number where people can text us if they see us going down the road. We’ve received a pretty constant stream of text messages. We get a lot of honks and “whoo-hoos” from people.
It looks like something that came out of an episode of “Pimp My Ride.” It has flat screens, projectors and a complete karaoke lounge. We’ve had great sponsorship to get it ready and can’t wait to show it off in Omaha.
Contact the writer:
444-1075, j.loza@owh.com
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