The Future of EVERYTHING is Community
Upcoming Events:
Save the Date! October 20 at 11am PT, I’ll be moderating a very informative session with a few amazing community experts around Trust & Safety from the community perspective with the Integrity Institute.
**Connected Community Intensive.** October 27-November 14. My brand new course! Learn how to create meaningful connection in your community.
Hey there.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we connected. How are you feeling?
We all need a break sometimes. I am someone who LOVES contributing, and probably if you’re a community person, you share this tendency. But it can lead to overcommitment very easily.
There are a few things I’ve been doing that help.
First, embodiment practices and point meditation.
Second, connecting with my why- every time I imagine a world where it’s possible to easily find real community with people you feel you know and who know you, who you care about, and have an ongoing interconnected relationship with, I just get excited.
SO EXCITED.
Third, giving myself grace. When I get disconnected, it tells me something I am doing isn’t working. Even though the world around me sometimes seems to demand that I get everything done right now, it’s almost always the case that taking a step back is actually an accelerant on the things that actually matter.
It helps to realize I’m doing things that may seem urgent but don’t have the same impact as important things (like being in connection with you!).
The Future of EVERYTHING is Community
I got an email this week from the knowledge expert Tiago Forte, author or Building a Second Brain, titled “The Future of Education is Community.”
Yes. And the future of everything is community.
Let me explain what I mean.
There’s this idea that seems to be kind of buzzy in the world of tech startups around “Community-led growth.” The basic idea is that it can be a good business move to have a community around what you’re building, to help you build things people want, to increase loyalty, and/or to have a marketing channel with clear engagement.
That’s fine, and is leading people to be able to have paid jobs doing community management, which is cool. But in a way, I think it kind of misses the point.
You see, we’re moving more and more into a pendulum swing towards individualism as a culture, and we’re not at the apex yet. If you look at the increasing levels of migration, working from home, living alone, working gig jobs, and many other societal trends, you can see we’re simply on our own more in a literal sense.
And then we have “solutions” for our isolation that just reinforce the problem. Social media, VR, Slack, and other ways ‘connect’ us without us actually talking to each other in a meaningful way.
There's the counter trend, the incredible rise of the purpose economy, where people are paying for things that are meaningful to them, like coaching, yoga, meditation classes, skills training, and so many other things where community matters.
How many times have you heard someone talk about a class, a conference, or another event and heard them say, “it’s the people I am with, it’s the connections, it’s the community that is valuable?” Without that kind of interaction, you might as well just sit in your apartment and watch YouTube videos all day (and if that’s what you’re doing, try a community!)
We are going to continue to be people and therefore to need people. REAL community is where we learn the skills to make our relationships work, whether it's at home, at work, or in the broader culture at large.
Education for the the future of community
This month, I took a cohort-based class through Maven on creating cohort-based classes so I could bring you an amazing course on building connected communities. If you want to create that magic for people, where they get so much more from the community you’re developing than just a directory, I invite you to sign up.
I will to be able to share with you what I’ve learned in a way that is itself community-building, and I’ll be able to use the fees for the class to keep working on GetWith, so we can level up the technology supporting communities of the future.
My class is called the Connected Community Intensive and I would love to have you join and use all these tools and techniques to develop meaningful relationships in your community. And because it is about community, there are many amazing and deeply experienced community experts who will join us for AMAs. I have no doubt you’ll leave energized and excited to foster more connection.
Class starts in October, but please if you are interested, sign up now so I can start tailoring the content to your needs and goals. And please, please share with your wider network. (here’s the link https://maven.com/belonging/connected-community/)
Thank you!
p.s. just for subscribers & friends, use code BELONGINGBUILDER25 to get 25% off the course fee.
Reads & Resources
Katie Hendricks of The Foundation for Conscious Living runs a free 15-minute Loop of Awareness and Love Scooping (Loops and Scoops) live online session every Monday and it’s a great experience!
Thanks to Angga Kara, my amazing coach, for alerting me to this science around breath - I always love it when events and meetings start with taking a breath and now I know why! But… you might be breathing wrong, according to Patrick McKeon. [video]
I’m an ardent listener of the Art of Accomplishment podcast and they are bringing new people into their community via the Connection Challenge, a week-long practice of the VIEW framework that you can do with someone you already know or be paired with someone new.
Unfinished Live is a conference in NYC on September 22-23 that touches on community, as well as civics and (oh well) web3. 😄 You can attend online for free!