EBD, or ‘emergent by design,’ was the phrase I chose when naming this blog to describe what I was seeing around me in the most inspiring and passionate people and organizations making positive change in themselves and the world around them. To me, that means not being a passive bystander to life and letting it happen to you, but really grabbing life by the short and curlies and manifesting greatness in this epic adventure!I’ve been on Twitter now for about 2 years, and love finding people doing amazing things. It gives me hope & energizes my spirit. I shared my technique for Twitter a while back – with “How to Use Twitter to Build Intelligence.” Let this be the 2011 curated update.

Here are some people I’d recommend following for their passion, creativity, wisdom, empathy, intelligence, and love. Some I’ve met in real life, many I simply admire from a far. I would be so curious to see what would happen if we got all them together in the same room. (how bout at Contact?) 😉

Who’s on your list of awesome? Let us know in the comments below. And here we are, in no particular order:

Visualizers

These are the folks I’ve met who bring ideas to life through their work in visual design.

Erica Glasier @EricaGlasier http://ericaglasier.com/Erica is an interactive designer and illustrator, who’s created imagery for posts I’ve written for Core77, Forbes, and CNN.
Rick Martin @rickdrawsthings http://rickdrawsthings.com/Rick is a graphic designer and illustrator, who has helped me with imagery on blog posts and other creative projects.
Lisa Sonora Beam @LisaSonoraBeam http://www.thecreativeentrepreneur.biz/main_page.htmlLisa is the author of The Creative Entrepreneur. I attended a workshop of hers and she has an amazing ability in helping others unlock their creativity.
Patrizia Kommerell @pkommerell http://patriziakommerell.com/Patrizia is a communication designer, who collaborated with me on The Future of Money Project.
Gabriel Shalom @gabrielshalom http://www.gabrielshalom.com/Gabriel is a videomusician and narrative producer, and collaborated with me on The Future of Money Project.
Ishan Shapiro @notthisbody http://cargo.notthisbody.com/Ishan is a filmmaker, digital cartographer and knowmad, and collaborated with me on the Junto Project.
Gavin Keech @gavinkeech http://cargocollective.com/gavinkeechGavin is a UI designer and creative director, and has collaborated with me on the Junto Project, Future of Facebook Project, and has created illustrations for a number of my blog posts.

Future of Local Economy & Resilient Communities

These are folks innovating currency, both non-monetary and otherwise, and building strong and resilient local communities.

Alan Rosenblith @AlanRosenblith http://www.themoneyfix.org/Alan is a social entrepreneur for open currency systems and a filmmaker, currently working on Symbionomics.
Gregory Rader @GregoryJRader http://onthespiral.com/Gregory is researching how emerging technologies are dramatically reshaping the structure of economic and social relationships.
Amy Kirschner @amykirscher, http://marketplace.vbsr.org/Amy is a monetary theorist, and affiliated with the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR), whose mission is “to foster a business ethic in Vermont that recognizes the opportunity and responsibility of the business community to set a high standard for protecting the natural, human, and economic environments of our citizens.”
Caroline Woolard @carolinewoolardhttp://ourgoods.org/Caroline started OurGoods , a barter network for the creativty community, and Trade School, a network of barter-for-education communities. http://tradeschool.ourgoods.org/
Sean Park @parkparadigm http://www.parkparadigm.com/Sean is the founder of Anthemis Group, whose goal is “to work with passionate and talented entrepreneurs to build – from the ground up – a “digitally-native” diversified financial services group, naturally adapted to the society and technology of the 21st century.”
Dan Robles @ingenesist http://www.ingenesist.com/Dan is Director of the Ingenesist Project, which is dedicated to the development of an alternate economy built on a platform of social media.

Guillaume Lebleu @giyom http://lebleu.org/blog/

Guillaume is a banking innovator, now launching Bernal Bucks, a rewards card to keep money local.

Mark Frazier – @openworld – http://www.openworld.com/

Mark is founder of Openworld, an initiative focused on economic reform, sustainability, and resilient communities.

John Robb @johnrobb http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

John is an author, writing about resilient communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.

Alpha Lo @alphalo http://opencollaboration.wordpress.com/

Alpha writes about and facilitates participatory, non-hierarchical, open, gift culture systems.

Vinay Gupta @leashless http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/about

Vinay is inventor of the Hexayurt Project and writes about collaboration, risk management, and resilience of the human species.

Marcin Jacubowski @OSEcology http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/

Marcin is founder of Open Source Ecology, an open hardware toolset for building resilient communities.

Arthur Brock @artbrock http://artbrock.com/

Art is founder of the Metacurrency Project and ‘targeted currencies geek building infrastructure of the open source economy.’

Nathan Solomon @thesuperfluid http://www.thesuperfluid.com/

Nathan is the founder of superfluid, a project-based collaboration platform that uses Quids, the internal virtual social currency as payment for services.

Paul B Hartzog @PaulBHartzog http://paulbhartzog.org/

Paul is a futurist and writes about panarchy and 21st century wealth-generating ecologies.

Facilitation, Collective Intelligence, Organizational Change

These people are focused on evolving human consciousness, building a global commons of collective intelligence, and assisting organizations in transitioning to a new economy.

George Por @technoshaman http://www.community-intelligence.com/

George is founder of Community Intelligence, whose mission is ‘to amplify collective intelligence and wisdom in organisations and social systems.

Jean-François Noubel @jfnoubel http://noubel.com/

Jean-François is a researcher in collective intelligence, wisdom and consciousness, and creator of TheTransitioner, “a non-profit R&D organization that gathers pioneers who have embarked towards the next humanity.”

Fernanda Ibarra @fer_ananda http://people.thetransitioner.org/

Fernanda is a facilitator for collective intelligence, wisdom and consciousness.

John Seely Brown @jseelybrown  http://www.johnseelybrown.com/

John is the co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge and a visiting scholar at USC. His most recent book is A New Culture of Learning.

Dave Snowden @snowded http://www.cognitive-edge.com/

Dave is the founder of Cognitive Edge and developer of the Cynefin framework for describing problems, situations and systems.

Christine Egger @CDEgger http://cdegger.com/

Christine is a facilitator, network weaver and co-director of Social Actions.

Curtis Faith @inflector http://www.worldhouse.org/

Curtis is a “Revolutionary. Building a new status quo. Weaving the weavers. Connecting the connectors.”

John Hagel @jhagel http://www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com/

John is co-chairman at Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and co-author of The Power of Pull.

Ken Homer @ken_homer http://www.collaborativeconversations.com/

Ken is founder of Collaborative Conversations and facilitates conversations and organizational learning.

Jerry Michalski @jerrymichalski http://therexpedition.com/

Jerry is a facilitator and writer about the emerging Relationship Economy.

Scott Harrison @scottharrison http://www.charitywater.org/

Scott is the founder of charity:water, a nonprofit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

Sam Rose @SamRose http://futureforwardinstitute.com/

Sam is a futurist and co-founder of Future Forward Institute, whose focus is to assist organizations in collaboration and workflow.

Michel Bauwens @mbauwens http://p2pfoundation.net/

Michel is the founder of the P2P Foundation.

Jay Cousins @jaycousins http://jaycousins.wordpress.com/

Jay is a facilitator and founder of Open Design City, a hacker space / fab lab in Berlin.

Michelle James @CreatvEmergence http://www.creativeemergence.com/

Michelle is a facilitator and creativity coach, cultivating emergence and thrivability in businesses and organizations.

Nova Spivack @novaspivack http://www.novaspivack.com/

Nova is a technology entrepreneur and writes about collective consciousness and the semantic web.

Evonne Heyning @amoration http://amoration.wordpress.com/

Evonne is a facilitator, providing production expertise for live events, social media, interactive gameplay and transmedia integration of stories and campaigns.

Kaliya Hamlin @IdentityWoman http://www.identitywoman.net/

Kaliya is a facilitator and founder of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium.

JP Rangaswami @jobsworth http://confusedofcalcutta.com/

JP is Chief Scientist for salesforce.com, and writes about emerging and disruptive technologies to improve information sharing, education and collaboration.

Scott Lewis @jazzmann91 http://g-a-i-a.org/

Scott is founder of G-A-I-A, which aims to be an “emotional based debate website to promote peace and freedom.”

Alex Bogusky @bogusky http://www.common.is/

Alex is founder of COMMON, a creative community for rapidly prototyping social ventures.

Traci Fenton @worldblu http://www.worldblu.com/

Traci is the founder of Worldblu, whose purpose is “to unleash human potential and inspire freedom by championing the growth of democratic organizations worldwide.”

Bre Pettis @bre http://www.brepettis.com/

Bre is founder of Makerbot, a company that produces robots that make things, and founder of NYCResistor, a hacker collective in Brooklyn, NY.

Tiberius Brastaviceanu @TiberiusB http://discoverynetwork-tibi.blogspot.com/

Tiberius is founder of the Multitude Project and building frameworks for open enterprise.

David A Hood @davidahood http://flavors.me/davidahood

David is a facilitator and founder of Doing Something Good and the Social Change Collaboratory, initiatives to grow impactful and resilient networks for social good.

Gideon Rosenblatt @gideonro http://www.alchemyofchange.net/t/

Gideon assists mission-driven organizations in building a better world.

David Hodgson @davidhodgon http://theideahive.com/

David is co-founder of the IdeaHive, a ‘team of Green MBAs offering research, consulting and facilitation services to businesses and organizations.’

Jean Russell @NurtureGirl http://thrivable.net/

Jean is a facilitator and coach, empowering individuals to co-create resilient, creative, and adaptive organizations.

Peter Vander Auwera @petervan http://petervan.wordpress.com/

Peter is the Innovation Leader at SWIFT, Innotribe, and writes about leading by being.

Bjoern Lasse Herrman @bjoernlasse http://www.bjoernlasse.com/Index/Welcome.html

Bjoern is founder of SuperCoolSchool and Cofounder Network, and is on a mission to unleash human potential.

Flemming Funch @ffunch http://ming.tv/

Flemming is founder of the New Civilization Network and evolutionary agent, writing about collaboration and global knowledge sharing.

Bernd Nurnberger @CoCreatr http://cocreatr.typepad.com/

Bernd is a network weaver, connector, technology scout and amplifier of inspiration.

Stephen Downes @downes http://www.downes.ca/

Stephen is a researcher focused on innovation in the use of online media in education and learning.

George Siemens @gsiemens http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/

George is a researcher with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University.

John Tropea @johnt http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/

John is a Communities of Practice Global Coordinator interested in all the c words – collaboration, coordination, cooperation, complexity, community, communication.

Michael Gusek @mgusek555 http://www.syntience.com/

Michael is the founder of Nephoros, an organizational design consultancy and COO at Syntience, a research corporation investigating artificial intelligence.

Tom Atlee @tomatlee http://co-intelligence.org/

Tom is the founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute, a nonprofit promoting awareness of co-intelligence tools and ideas.

Dave Pollard @DavePollard http://howtosavetheworld.ca/

Dave is ‘a writer, innovator, radical environmentalist,  vegan, and imaginer of possibilities.’

Jon Husband @jonhusband http://www.wirearchy.com/

Jon is a faciliitator and organizational design consultant, developing strategies for wired organizations.

Harold Jarche @hjarche http://www.jarche.com/

Harold is a facilitator for organizational evolution, collaboration, and learning.

June Holley @juneholley http://www.networkweaver.com/

June is a network weaver, facilitator and community builder.

Valdis Krebs @valdiskrebs http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/

Valdis is the founder of Orgnet, an organization conducting social and organizational network analysis research.

Doc Searls @dsearls http://searls.com/

Doc is the author of Cluetrain Manifesto, and currently is working on Project VRM with the Berkman Center at Harvard.

Otto Scharmer @ottoscharmer1 http://www.presencing.com/

Otto is an MIT based action researcher, founder of the Presencing Institute, and author of Theory U.

Seb Paquet @sebpaquet – http://emergentcities.sebpaquet.net/

Seb writes about building emergent cities, and the process of collaboration and co-creation with others.

Thinkers, Writers, Academics, Researchers, Authors

These are the thinkers and writers communicating the big ideas of the next global paradigm.

Neal Gorenflo @gorenflo http://shareable.net/about

Neal is the co-founder of the nonprofit online magazine Shareable.

Umair Haque @umairh http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/

Umair is Director of the Havas Media Lab, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto, and ‘advisor to revolutionaries.’

Rachel Botsman @rachelbotsman http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/

Rachel is a social innovator and author of Collaborative Consumption

Daniel Pink @DanielPink http://www.danpink.com/

Daniel is the author of Drive, A Whole New Mind, and several other books about the changing world of work.

Pierre Lévy @plevy http://www.ieml.org/

Pierre is a French media scholar and collective intelligence researcher.

Ethan Zuckerman @EthanZ http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog/

Ethan is the founder of Global Voices and researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Dave Weinberger @dweinberger http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/

Dave is the author of Cluetrain Manifesto and Everything is Miscellaneous, and writes about the impact of technology on our ideas.

Barry Wellman @barrywellman http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/

Barry is a social network researcher based at the University of Toronto and founder of the International Network for Social Network Analysis.

Stowe Boyd @stoweboyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/

Stowe is a researcher, studying the impact of social tools on business and society.

Howard Rheingold @hrheingold http://www.rheingold.com/university/

Howard is a visiting lecturer at Stanford University, and an author of books about the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media.

Douglas Rushkoff @rushkoff http://rushkoff.com/

Douglas is a media theorist and author of books on new media and popular culture. I took a class from him at the New School. Now I’m helping him organize Contact.

Clay Shirky @cshirky http://www.shirky.com/weblog/

Clay is a teacher in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and author of the books Here Comes Everybody & Cognitive Surplus.

Seth Godin @ThisIsSethsBlog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Seth is the founder of Squidoo, author of Linchpin, Tribes and several other books on permission marketing.

Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu http://pressthink.org/

Jay is an author and press critic, and teaches journalism at NYU

Jeff Jarvis @jeffjarvis http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Jeff is the author of What Would Google Do?, blogger, and j-school professor.

Alex Howard @digiphile http://radar.oreilly.com/alexh/

Alex is the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media.

danah boyd @zephoria http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

danah is a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Kevin Kelly @kevin2kelly http://www.kk.org/kk/

Kevin is the founding editor of Wired magazine and author of several books on the coevolution of humanity and technology, most recently What Technology Wants.

BJ Fogg @bjfogg http://www.bjfogg.com/

BJ is a Stanford innovator and psychologist focused on persuasive technology and behavior change.

Futures Thinking

These are the futurists, making an art of foresight and strategic long-term thinking.

Jarno M Koponen @ilparone http://jarnokoponen.net/

Jarno is a designer and researcher, building frameworks for a personal futures simulation system.

Alvis Brigis @alvisbrigis http://socialnode.blogspot.com/

Alvis is a media strategist and producer writing about accelerating change and the human creativity explosion, and a collaborator on The Future of Facebook Project.

Noah Raford @nraford http://news.noahraford.com/

Noah is a researcher and urban planner, focused on large-scale participatory futures systems.

Frank Spencer @frankspencer http://www.kedgeforward.com/

Frank is a professional futurist focused on transformational development and human emergence.

Scott Smith @changeist http://www.changeist.com/

Scott is the founder of Changeist, a foresight and strategic design lab.

Jane McGonigal @avantgame http://janemcgonigal.com/

Jane is an alternate reality game designer, Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, and author of Reality is Broken.

Jamais Cascio @cascio http://www.openthefuture.com/

Jamais is a futurist and writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation.

Ross Dawson @rossdawson http://rossdawsonblog.com/

Ross is a futurist, entrepreneur, author and strategist.

Chris Arkenberg @chris23 http://www.changeist.com/

Chris is a researcher and futurist focused on complex systems and geopolitics.

Wildcat2030 @Wildcat2030 http://spacecollective.org/projects/Polytopia/

Wildcat is a philosopher and futurist building the Polytopia Project.

Lifestyle Designers, Minimalists

These are the guys who’ll inspire you to quit your day job and live your passion.

Raam Dev @raamdev http://raamdev.com/

Raam is a social entrepreneur, nomadic explorer, and practical minimalist.

Satya Colombo @satyacolombo http://satyacolombo.com/

Satya ‘lives and works for our collective mindful evolution, working with change-makers in consulting, online strategy and development.

Henri Junttila  @henrijunttila http://www.wakeupcloud.com/

Henri writes about how to live a passionate life of self growth while making a living online.

Tim Ferriss @tferriss http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Tim is the author of The Four Hour Workweek, and writes about how to maximize your life.

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And I’m spent.
___

There are more to list, but my fingers are getting tired. 🙂  I’ll update this as time goes by, but thanks to everyone here for inspiring me in some way.