You know, I think my jiu jitsu school meets a lot of these criteria. I've also (anecdotally) seen a lot of serendipitous encounters, and benefited from those interactions over the years.
Seriously. Reading the David Spink´s Newsletter is having a blast while at the same time generating enough wisdom to improve what´s needed. Great read as always my friend! Eager to be part of the community =)
For my community (a live music/DJ event series) - I make a particular point if I meet people IRL (serendipitously?) that seem to align with our values/interests...to personally invite them to future events. Then, once we're at the actual event, when I MC - I sprinkle in moments throughout to "introduce yourself to someone you don't know", "we're all in this space together", etc. As you said, people sometimes do struggle with "people'ing", and you need to guide them a bit.
At our most recent event, it was cool to see so many of these people who individually showed up, in active, lively, and engaged conversations with each other...little did they know I "engineered" who was there - with the goal of those 'serendipitous' interactions being of a high caliber.
I'm still struggling with the "in-between" events window of maintaining that same kind of energy, and wonder if there's a point I can get to where it feels less manual. But I'm always reminded that it's worth it - numerous people have gone on to creatively collaborate, forge friendships, relationships and more. Tracing it back for many of them - the community was a catalyst in making those types of things happen.
Thanks for this post - hits on a lot of stuff I'm constantly thinking about.
Would buy the shirt:).
You know, I think my jiu jitsu school meets a lot of these criteria. I've also (anecdotally) seen a lot of serendipitous encounters, and benefited from those interactions over the years.
Seriously. Reading the David Spink´s Newsletter is having a blast while at the same time generating enough wisdom to improve what´s needed. Great read as always my friend! Eager to be part of the community =)
For my community (a live music/DJ event series) - I make a particular point if I meet people IRL (serendipitously?) that seem to align with our values/interests...to personally invite them to future events. Then, once we're at the actual event, when I MC - I sprinkle in moments throughout to "introduce yourself to someone you don't know", "we're all in this space together", etc. As you said, people sometimes do struggle with "people'ing", and you need to guide them a bit.
At our most recent event, it was cool to see so many of these people who individually showed up, in active, lively, and engaged conversations with each other...little did they know I "engineered" who was there - with the goal of those 'serendipitous' interactions being of a high caliber.
I'm still struggling with the "in-between" events window of maintaining that same kind of energy, and wonder if there's a point I can get to where it feels less manual. But I'm always reminded that it's worth it - numerous people have gone on to creatively collaborate, forge friendships, relationships and more. Tracing it back for many of them - the community was a catalyst in making those types of things happen.
Thanks for this post - hits on a lot of stuff I'm constantly thinking about.