5. Building Social Bonds in a Virtual World with Richard Bartlett - Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Ceridwen

Join Shelley Smith Doyle for a captivating conversation with Richard Bartlett, a community builder, whose personal journey has inspired him to help others find connection and solidarity in an increasingly digital world.

Richard shares his experiences of growing up in a close-knit, religious community in New Zealand, his struggle with loneliness after leaving his home, and how his involvement in the Occupy Movement sparked a life-altering interest in cooperative, non-hierarchical connections.

Rich unveils his unique community-building framework, micro solidarity, which he has used to create a network of community organizers and even a Micro Solidarity Summer Camp in Berlin. We tackle a range of topics, from scale sensitivity to power dynamics, exploring how embracing differences can lead to harmonious connections within groups of varying sizes.

As we navigate the world of digital platforms for community building, Richard offers his insights on how tools like Zoom, Discord, Telegram, and Spatial can foster strong connections. We discuss the importance of having an organizer with a solid plan when hosting gatherings and the role of inclusivity versus intentionality in event planning.

Closing the conversation, we examine the impact of social media on community building and how it can be used to create meaningful connections, encouraging listeners to use these platforms as a way to connect in the physical world.

So, are you ready to redefine your understanding of community in a digital world? Tune in for an insightful conversation with Richard Bartlett on personal growth, community building, and the power of connectivity.

Where to find Richard Bartlett:
www.richdecibels.com
https://twitter.com/RichDecibels

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I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your own life!

Subscribe now and let the magic unfold.

Love,
Shelley x

About Your Host

Hi, I'm Shelley Doyle, a Social Wealth Strategist and Connection Coach, helping remote and hybrid leaders who are struggling to retain their high performers, with tools and strategies to reconnect their distributed teams.

I also help people who move or work remotely, to elevate and sustain their social wealth, online/offline - everywhere! Discover More

I am currently working on my MA thesis, combining cutting edge research on social wellbeing and digital health, with two decades in corporate communications, to deliver mind-shifting talks, workshops, and programs around the world.

Find me at TheCommuniverse.com and on LinkedIn.

Global Workshop Tour "Beyond Screens" launches September 2024.

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:00

the dinner party example like if you're at a restaurant or something and there's like five of you sitting around having a conversation and then suddenly two of your friends walk in and you're like, oh, come and join us.

Speaker 2: 0:12

If you have six or seven people in a conversation, either the conversation will split in half or some people will just disengage. And that's not a random thing, that's a property of our cognitive capacity. Like five people can mutually hold shared context, they can all kind of simulate each other's state of mind simultaneously. We can become like a hive mind with five, but with six or seven it's too complicated, you can't kind of keep up with that. And so either, yeah, the conversation splits in twos, either some people like they just tune out and they stop paying attention, or you could, you know, if you're in like a meeting, you might have a facilitator or a whiteboard or some kind of structure that helps us pay attention and kind of like manages people's time. So you can obviously have a useful conversation with more than five people, but you need a bunch of extra structure to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Hello, I'm Shelly Keridwen and I'm here today with Richard Bartlett, and Richard is someone who's been on my radar for the last two years, since I really started delving into the idea of community. And, Richard, I found on Twitter Twitter isn't a channel that I use a great deal, but it seems like every time I go on there there's a post from you and it is all about community, bringing people together, and really that's why you stayed on my radar for so long. I started delving into what you're into and I just my curiosity is sparked more and more. So I would love to say hello, welcome, and I'll give you the floor to tell us a little bit about who is Richard.

Speaker 2: 1:50

Thanks for having me. Who is Richard? It's a philosophical question, to start with. Where is it useful to launch? I mean, probably at the moment.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I've noticed that as I tell my story over the years it kind of changes. You know, like what chapters I want to emphasize change? And like what's present with me at the moment is, I grew up in this very tight knit, super religious Christian community and when I was about sort of like 20 or so, right, so I have this. I have this like really intensely kind of quite old fashioned fundamentalist Christian community, and then, and then I kind of break out of that and go to the big city this is in New Zealand, where I'm from and and do like the Six Drugs and Rock and Roll thing. We're kind of like rebellion against the old fashioned thing. I find myself quite lonely, disconnected and a bit lost. You know, like kind of somewhat having fun with the rock and roll but also being quite lost and nihilistic. And then, when are we? 2011,? It's the start of the Occupy movement and that obviously started in Wall Street but it reached all the way down to New Zealand, and so, like I got involved in that and that was a big kind of aha moment like, ah, these people are doing something together. You know, like they're doing something in a cooperative, non hierarchical way. There's like a real sense of peer to peer connection. So that was that was a sort of spark of it, maybe like a new kind of community that wasn't so dogmatic or like strictly organized as the one that I grew up in and from there I went off and built some technology. It's a bit boring to me now. I've kind of like lift the software From person to view. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I don't know. Software is interesting for some people, but I've kind of I think I put enough time into it that I got a bit bored and and then so most of the story is all in New Zealand. But then in 2018, I think it was my wife, nati and I decided that, like New Zealand was too small to disconnected, maybe too quiet, and we wanted to travel, and so now we live in Europe, we've been traveling around a lot different parts of the world and the transition out of New Zealand and into the wider world kind of came with it.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Yeah, this question of community, like who do I want to be spending time with? What? I mean, what even do I need? Like, what do I need to? What do I need to have a satisfying life? Like is can I, can I have? I mean, I think a lot of us had this experiment during the pandemic, right Like, can I have a satisfying social life all through Zoom and like social media platforms? Personally, no, I can't. Maybe some people can. But yeah, I've been.

Speaker 2: 4:40

I've been trying to understand like, what do I need to really feel like I'm thriving on the community side of things?

Speaker 2: 4:46

And my answer to that question essentially has been to develop.

Speaker 2: 4:51

I guess that's like a community building framework called micro solidarity, and that is a map that I've used for my own community building work, but also a bunch of other communities that picked it up, and now it's a.

Speaker 2: 5:02

It's a network of community organizers that are all supporting each other and learning from each other. So that's really satisfying, yeah, not just for my own needs of like having some belonging and having some collaboration and having some sense of shared purpose and like cool people around me, but also seeing the other, the other organizers out there and being able to learn along with them. So that's a big part of my focus these days and, yeah, I've just come from. Two weeks ago we had what we called micro solidarity summer camp, so it was like 50 something people outside of Berlin, yeah, bunch of community organizers learning together. So that that's kind of where I'm at at the moment. There's many, many more other things about who is Richard, but I think that's enough, kind of like post-it notes, to get the and I think there's two things that I really love to delve into.

Speaker 1: 5:49

One is the fact that the sunk costs you mentioned about kind of being being into a technology project and you kind of getting over that and moving on, and I think for a lot of people in our careers, we kind of start doing something, we get kind of good at it, we get known for it, and for a lot of people they they don't step away, even if they're calling is actually I'm done with technology, I'm done with staring at a screen all day, because they just think, oh well, this is just what I do, so what called you hard enough to go? No, I can step away from that.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Okay, I'm going to give you my honest answer, which is potentially a little philosophical, but hopefully it illustrates how I think, if I were to say like, if I were to use this phrase, like the inner compass, like that, you have some kind of inner compass that tells you which direction to point. Do you know what I'm talking about? 100%, right.

Speaker 2: 6:56

So in my current worldview, I like to imagine that I am, I'm like the individual, me as a part of a super organism, potentially part of multiple super organisms that make that I'm I'm an organ or I'm a limb in this larger creature and a higher being of some kind. And there's a way of living life where I kind of ignore the super organism as an, I ignore anyone apart from myself and I just like kind of knuckle down and like have my own desires and pursue the thing that I care about. But then there's this other way, which is more receptive, that's more curious about a bigger, to be part of a bigger thing. And, yeah, I've been trying to cultivate that sense of receptivity and when I listen, yeah, it's so hard to describe, you know, because it's like personal in a process which doesn't actually fit much in words.

Speaker 1: 7:56

You are kind of picture.

Speaker 2: 7:58

Right. Yeah, I think there's a way to kind of listen to what am I being called to and that when I align my action with that compass or with that call, then I get positive feedback. You know, like some of the positive feedback is just I'm doing good work and people like it and they say good job, rich. But also it's more than that. It's like that the work is effortless. In fact, it's kind of like negative effort that I get.

Speaker 2: 8:26

I get more energy from doing it than you know, that I that I finish feeling like I think where I was getting to was basically that I've been over the last well, for a long I mean probably for most of my life but it's been noticeable, especially in the last decade, that I've been navigating, trying to listen for the signal for this thing. That's not quite me, that I've got a role to play in, but it's not exactly me. It's that my participation in the larger system. I've been listening to that, that signal and yeah, the more that I steer my life towards it, the more satisfaction and meaning I have. So I just keep doing that and it's kind of taught me that risks are not, they're no problem.

Speaker 2: 9:08

You know, it's like things work out, things work out in the end. So like, for example, right now I'm calling you from my motor home. In February of this year my wife and I decided we were sick of living in an apartment. We bought a motor home. We've never done that before, we've never even been in a motor home before, but we decided we're gonna live in a motor home. So now we live on the road and we drive around and do our work and it's kind of a risky move, but I'm held by that sense of confidence that things kind of work out, and so, yeah, I'm not too worried about the sunk cost or like what we've been doing up until now.

Speaker 2: 9:42

I feel like quite a lot of freedom.

Speaker 1: 9:44

And I was just picking up the freedom feeling there with you, like how liberating that must feel to. It's kind of like people, that like going on cruises. I like the idea of having a different scenery every day, but being constrained to the same people in close confinements kind of terrifies me.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Yeah, that's not for me. Freedom's like really high on my list of values.

Speaker 1: 10:14

I would say and something else that you mentioned. There was aligned action.

Speaker 2: 10:21

Yeah, yeah, I mean another way to think about it is just that I want to die happy and for me that doesn't mean like having a bunch of objects around me. It means having put my energy into something purposeful and, yeah, to have a sense of satisfaction and a sense of dignity or sense of like meaning. That's what I've been optimizing for.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Something I like to think of is imagining coming to the end of our life, when we're 98 years old, sleeping in our beds and watching the movie of our lives. Is it a movie that we want to sit and watch before we pass? And creating a movie where we are the protagonist and the casting director having an intentional life is something that I'm down with.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Yeah, yeah, I'm down with it too.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Yes, cool. So let's dive into micro solidarity, Would you? I know there's a certain number of scales in this system. Is that something you'll be willing to kind of talk us through the different scales of this?

Speaker 2: 11:38

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of abstract, I guess in a way, to just talk about scales, but hopefully I can illustrate, like why that's important. One of the reasons that I start from scale is because in my community organizing work over the last decade and working with other people one of the problems that I think keeps tripping people up is a lack of scale sensitivity, and so that means like people don't have a really sharp idea about what different group sizes are good for. So, for example, some of my friends are into Burning man. I've never been, but I kind of have a picture in my mind a little bit about these kind of transformative festivals, and a festival is always hundreds or thousands of people, and it's quite common for people to go to a festival or something like that and have this quite profound experience of like, wow, I feel belonging, maybe for the first time, or I really feel like I've come home and it's a lovely feeling.

Speaker 2: 12:40

But the problem is, think, if it's you and 50,000 people and you're like having this powerful moment two weeks later when you're back at home and you've had an argument with your boss, or like your dog got run over, those 50,000 people are not there for you, like they don't actually care about you, like they haven't had a chance to get to know you At that scale.

Speaker 2: 13:03

You're anonymous and so, like you can't, while you do have this feeling of belonging, like I'm part of the tribe, it doesn't actually translate into any like material solidarity, and that's like one example of what I mean by a lack of scale literacy or a lack of scale sensitivity, that people kind of like oh, I've got this good experience, and then they might assume that that's their belonging needs met, like I'm part of this big festival community where actually it's like if you wanna have reliable, dependable support like material support or emotional support in your life, you're gonna have to be a committed member of much smaller groups where they can actually see who you are and they can see that they can notice when you're not there, and so on.

Speaker 2: 13:46

So that's like one of several reasons about why there's this focus on scale and I usually yeah, there's kind of like different steps and different sizes up and down this ladder. So often I would start from the bottom end, not because this is the right place to focus, but just says that's the right way to explain it. At the bottom end you have an individual person, and I found it really really useful for myself to use this metaphor of a person being a kind of a group and there are like different therapeutic modalities and psychological modalities that use this. The one that I'm most familiar with is internal family systems, but there's lots of them now.

Speaker 2: 14:27

That kind of treats your different aspects of your personality as kind of like parts or as like almost like sub people in a way.

Speaker 2: 14:35

So like right now there's a part of me who's a little bit anxious about being on record, you know. But then there's another part of me who's like completely relaxed because I'm in my motor home and I've had a good day, and so, like there's these different parts and it's sometimes useful to use that parts language because the parts of me have relationship between each other. So, like, the way that I treat my anxious parts is gonna be, there's gonna be some parallel between how I treat my anxious parts and how I treat your anxious parts, so like, if you're anxious, I might be all like oh you know, keep me away, I don't want to deal with that, I can't accept that because I can't accept my own anxiety. So I found this language of treating the self as a group to be really fruitful for my own understanding of myself and for others and how I relate to others. So that's the first scale. Like the first group is only one person, but it's still a multiplicity.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And then treating yourself like you would treat a good friend. Is that kind of it?

Speaker 2: 15:34

Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. And when you say like treating yourself that immediate, like how can you treat yourself as something You're immediately like in your imagination? You're kind of becoming two people in a way Like yeah, I'm the one who's in distress and then the one who's caring for them. So there's already like an internal relationship.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Abraham Hicks said that we are always designed to be our own significant other, and once we realize that we are always full, we are always complete and we don't need to be dependent on anyone or anything else.

Speaker 2: 16:03

Yeah, nice, nice. Another dimension of this, maybe, is like if you're having a bad time and you've experienced some fear, an emotion like fear can like fill up your entire awareness and become panic and just become overwhelming. But if you can see the space around the fear like if you can see like there's a part of me that's fearful, but actually there's this other part that's like quite sober or calculating or available further, like just has more creativity or something. Once you can start to decouple a little bit or see some space around, okay, you have this fear and there's other stuff at least for me and I think for others as well like the fear becomes a lot more manageable when it's not filling up your entire space, but it's just saying okay, there's parts of me that are fearful. There's other parts that are like, yeah, more confident or more courageous. So it's just been a really helpful lens for me, and I mentioned internal family systems I don't really like. For me it's important not to be dogmatic about any of these theories, but just to say this is a lens that's been helpful.

Speaker 2: 17:03

So then the next. So you go from the one person then up to the scale of two people and I call that a dyad, and I think what's useful about the dyad is, as soon as you have another person, you kind of have this opportunity for power dynamics to start playing up. So, like in this conversation, my expectation is that you're the host and I'm the guest, and that sort of sets some. You get to set the direction of where we go, but then also I get to do most of the talking. You know, there's kind of like some roles that get played out and it's the same like if I was having a dinner party and you came over, then the roles are reversed and there's these kind of expectations about what is included in that role definition and the power dynamic stuff I think is kind of essential to any kind of group organizing or community organizing. You have to think about power like it's gonna come up and inevitably comes up, and there's lots of different ways to come up.

Speaker 2: 18:01

This power question. Obviously that's a very juicy topic, but the one that I've found the most fruitful in the last few years when it's like, yeah, that's actually been productive for me to keep returning to is a lens from Rianne Eisler, who's a really awesome theorist that I love, and she talks about a spectrum of relationships from domination to partnership, and the domination mode is, like you know, one person basically has more power and they use it to threaten other people, to be in power over them, to limit their freedoms, to force them to do stuff for us. There's gonna be negative consequences if you don't comply with my instructions. You know like this is the kind of coercive power that people associate with, like a bad boss or something like that. And then on the other end you have the partnership being.

Speaker 2: 18:51

We're still different people. You know, like in the hosting guest relationship, we're different, we've got different roles to play, but neither of us is trying to dominate the other. You know like we're not trying to force each other, we're trying to find, like, a mutually satisfying arrangement here. And when Rianne Eisler described this framework for thinking about power, she's talking about between two people, but she's also talking about between two countries or like any kind of scale.

Speaker 1: 19:17

And again I found that.

Speaker 2: 19:18

It's beneficial. Yeah, yeah, and I want to emphasize the difference thing, you know, because there's a kind of some people that get it. How do I say this? You can be upset about inequality and power and some people take that anger and turn it into a pursuit of pure equality where everyone's the same, and that, to me, is not partnership, you know. That's a kind of like conformity, or I'm like no, no, no, we can be different, like we've got different roles to play, we've got different strengths. Everyone's got something to contribute. And it's not about different, it's not about trying to get everyone to be the same. It's actually like finding a way to enhance our differences and make them fit together in a harmonious way. So that's the scale of two, and there's things that you can do with two that you can't do on your own. You know, like a podcast is not very interesting if there's any one person on that, it's much better as a conversation. And then the next scale.

Speaker 2: 20:16

I call the crew I was thinking about like the crew of a sailing ship, you know, like all hands on deck. For me, the crew is like they can be quite productive, generally like size-wise. I usually think it's like three, four or five people. Some crews are a little bit larger, but five is a good number and the number's important because above five people I mean you can actually see this Like if you go back to the dinner party example like if you're at a restaurant or something and there's like five of you sitting around having a conversation and then suddenly two of your friends walk in and you're like, oh, come and join us.

Speaker 2: 20:59

If you have six or seven people in a conversation, either the conversation will split in half or some people will just disengage, and that's not a random thing, that's a property of our cognitive capacity. Like five people can mutually hold shared context, they can all kind of simulate each other's state of mind simultaneously. We can become like a hive mind with five, but with six or seven it's too complicated, you can't kind of keep up with that. And so either, yeah, the conversation splits in twos, either some people like they just tune out and they stop paying attention, or you could you know, if you're in like a meeting, you might have a facilitator or a whiteboard or some kind of structure that helps us pay attention and kind of like manages people's time. So you can obviously have a useful conversation with more than five people, but you need a bunch of extra structure to make it happen.

Speaker 2: 21:50

So the thing about the group of five is like it's about as big as you can go without needing any. I call them prosthetics, you know any like artificial structure. You can just do it completely organically, just relying on our like animal instincts, and you become this kind of yeah again I use the word super organism. You know, like a group of five people is a super organism of a particular species and it's super, super powerful. It's really capable of doing a lot and because you've got these different perspectives, it's got a huge amount of intelligence as well as capacity.

Speaker 2: 22:23

So the crew scale for me is where most of the focus in the micro solidarity community is. So like, yeah, if you're doing practical projects or if you're trying to, I don't know we use crews for how do you do governance? You know it's like as much as possible we try and break things down into small groups and say, okay, you can be in charge of the branding decisions and we'll be in charge of the gardening or whatever. Instead of trying to get a whole massive community to all see things the same way and all agree in the same way, we just break it into chunks and say like okay we delegate this responsibility to you and five or four people, six people, whatever.

Speaker 2: 22:59

There's enough cognitive diversity to be able to make good decisions with. That needs to involve everyone.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Amazing, amazing. I love this so much. It's speaking to so much of my recent research and it's just like, yes, this is it. So recently I came across Dunbar's number by researcher Robin Dunbar and I've been delving into this and it's like this makes so much sense, like we can. In his theory we have the capacity for 150 people in our widest circles, so any more than that we are not able to really keep connected, know who they are, and then that comes in and in, and five is his optimal number for close connections, and then it kind of stretches out to 15 and then 50 and then you're 150. So I'm loving this so much.

Speaker 2: 23:53

Dunbar's really good because he has described larger numbers as well and it basically just goes on in that same pattern. So like five, 15, 50, 150, 500, 1500, 5000, like it just keeps going. And his theory I don't know, I haven't looked close enough at the primary research, but his theory is that you can actually see, like if you look at, for example, how is a population distributed around a country into like little hamlets and villages and towns and cities and so on, that you'll kind of start to see these different size populations that they get. You know, like that even, just how do you what are the sort of jurisdiction bodies in your city council versus your state level thing or your national level thing, that you'll start to see these different thresholds or groups of different size. And basically, for me I just think it's useful to train.

Speaker 2: 24:43

If you're an organizer, it's useful to train yourself in this literacy of scales and understand that groups of different size are capable of different things and they're good for different things. And like a group of 15, maybe you can have a really satisfying consensus decision-making process, but a group of 500, like it's not even, it's not realistic, you can't do that. But then you can do things with 500 that you can't do with 15. And so it's like understanding that these are all different organisms and they need different treatment. I think, yeah, it's just something that most many organizers I feel like they've missed, and developing that sensitivity really helped.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Thank you. I've had experience living a different way. I spent four months at an eco village, living in community, to see how it feels to be in community. I thought this was the way that I wanted to live. My perspective has shifted on that now and I've come across a few groups that are doing like I. Like the idea of like co-housing, where you've got a degree, you're kind of all putting your hand up to say, yes, I wanna be part of a community, but you're not. The expectation is lower in terms of how many meals you're having per week and that kind of thing. And I'd love to hear about your experiences of kind of living just outside of conventional society and maybe your views on what you think is the way forward for yourself and perhaps even for humanity.

Speaker 2: 26:21

Yeah, I don't know what humanity's up to. I don't know if I've got opinions about that, but for myself something that's very common in New Zealand and not so common in other parts of the world is just that basically from the time that you leave home you know sort of around. It's kind of like you go to university. Often that means you move towns until maybe you would get married and then like do the nuclear family thing. There might be like a 10 year gap there and it's extremely common in New Zealand during that period that you'd be living in shared housing with like six to 10 adults.

Speaker 2: 27:01

That's quite a common experience and I found that really satisfying to live that way and especially like that these houses, these shared houses, they don't come up in isolation, they're actually in neighborhoods and they're related to each other. So like this house maybe has a slightly more political focus and this one is more like sporty and this one's more spiritual or something, but they're all mutual friends or like they've got friends in common or they have parties and everyone's invited, or you know, there's sort of this extended social fabric of shared houses where you can kind of come in one and get redirected to actually use should be more and that one. You know they'd be a better fit In most New Zealand cities, I think. So yeah, I mean I spent most of my time in Wellington and it's really really strong there that kind of mentality. There's a university city, so that helps.

Speaker 1: 27:57

But I think yeah, I know Taronga up north, they have quite a few of that too. That.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Right, right, and that's just. I don't know. It's a very satisfying way to live and when I've traveled into larger cities and other parts of the world, I haven't found my way into those networks. I'm not sure if they exist, but they're maybe hard to find as an outsider. But I find that really, really satisfying.

Speaker 2: 28:20

And my shorthand for this is like neighborhoods and not communes, like I think, at least at this point in history. I think people want connection, they want collaboration, they want friendship, they want companionship. But piling a lot of people into one space and getting them to agree on things and like have to go through some kind of deep emotional process to decide whether or not we want to have a third dog that lives here or, like, most people don't actually have the appetite to do that. And I think most people find, yeah, they find that those kind of meetings quite tedious. Some of it like I'm quite into it, I'm a nerd about these things and so I find it fascinating that, yeah, I'm having like such profound psychological insights about my opinion about whether we should have two or three dogs in the house. But most people like I say it's tedious, it's like.

Speaker 1: 29:15

I was like the observer, like watching your own thoughts play out.

Speaker 2: 29:19

Yeah, yeah, that's fun, but but I just don't think it's realistic for most people. And even without that like people that have spent a lot of time just with less, with, with fewer people around, with less expectation of collaboration they're often not very well equipped for it, even if they think it would be nice and theory like it requires a level of clarity in your communication. It requires a lot of self awareness about your emotional state and like how do you regulate your emotions, especially when things getting difficult requires a bunch of skills Around decision making and around conflict. Like there's a effective community living. Like if you're going to put a whole bunch of people into one space, yeah, it just comes with a bunch of skills that are required and not necessarily taught anywhere. So that's that adds to that. That's the struggle of it that it can be quite painful and people can be quite disillusioned after they try it for a while and go like, oh, this is not for me.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Personally, I think my dream, for the least. I mean, at the moment we're traveling like we're nomads and so that's a. That's a weird. It's a weird temporary life where most days of the week it's me and my wife and nobody else and all of my socializing is happening digitally, which is happening a lot. So I'm not.

Speaker 2: 30:38

I'm not alone, that's for sure. I'm not lonely. But then I have these, like we just came from summer camps. It was like a week long gatherings are very intensive, very intensive socializing process and so, like my life has these like periods of intensity and then and then more space for reflection and inspection and so on. But I think that the sort of next stage after being nomads would be a nice big piece of land, maybe three or four families on it, a retreat center. That's like hosting events periodically, but, yeah, finding that balance between privacy and collaboration, you know, like having having our own set apart spaces where it's easy to just say I don't want to deal with anyone. Today it's pretty essential, but not doing it on our own, like I think it's more interesting to do it with, like I say, three or four families, like pretty small but enough that you can just take on projects that are much harder to take on as one family.

Speaker 1: 31:38

But what?

Speaker 2: 31:38

about you. Tell me more about your, your, your experience of it.

Speaker 1: 31:41

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to pick up was that was the term nomad. So when I was at the eco village and we're obviously all sharing about ourselves, so I'm someone that's lived in 10 different places around the world and then a month or more in four or five other places, like I'm, I'm a, I'm a traveler and my father emigrated to New Zealand when I was 11. So from the age of 12 I was traveling long haul just with my sister and I. I guess that just opened our eyes from an early age of everything's possible and we we have a great relationship with with my dad and that continued. So we we just really embraced the opportunities that were presented to us as kids and that has translated into my grown up life.

Speaker 1: 32:30

But when I kind of told a bit of my story the eco village and someone said, oh, you're a nomad, like that didn't sit comfortably with me and I've been in Canada. I think by that point I've been in Canada for just over a year. So essentially I am, I was a nomad, but for some reason I think I'm starting to starting to accept the term more readily now. But like in my marketing message, like people said, I'll use nomad and I'm like, well, I don't know, because it didn't necessarily sit comfortably with me, but rolled off your tongue, really easily.

Speaker 2: 33:06

I mean, I think that's that's been a process as well, when I sort of realized that nomad doesn't mean traveler. Those are different things like I think a nomad has a role to play, like has a. It's kind of like being a plumber, like there's a specific job for a nomad and that involves like moving from place to place and sharing stories and sort of like doing something that you can only do after you've been in 50 different places, you know. Like kind of like seeing the things that they all have in common and and sharing inspiring stories for one place to the next and making introductions and connections and like, yeah, figuring out what is the role to play that only someone who's traveled a lot can play. Like that. Once I sort of got that self image, I think it became a lot more satisfying and like, yeah, this is a, this is a job to do.

Speaker 1: 33:56

Hmm, I like that and, yeah, essentially I definitely do want to put, put some roots down somewhere and this is a pretty spectacular spot that I'm in right now on Vancouver Island. It's not an easy place to get, to get into. It's quite a clicky scene here. So two years into our into our Canadian adventure, it feels like we are just kind of really getting into it. So it takes time wherever you go.

Speaker 1: 34:30

But I guess essentially for me, like I'm, I'm really trying to build my hybrid intentional community because, like for me, lockdown I was in, I was living in Wales at the time most of my friends in the family are in England or elsewhere around the world and you know, like you have traveled a lot. I've got a lot of people in my you know it's more than 150 my wider orbit. But during lockdown it certainly didn't feel like they were in my life. I felt I felt lonely. So I'm like I'm not going to accept that that could happen again or I could feel that way again. So I'm like how can I hedge myself, hedge my sanity against that occurring?

Speaker 1: 35:16

So I'm trying to build at a hybrid intentional community because I want people physically here, but there's also people in my wider network that I want to feel in my life and I think the research that I'm doing, like the Dumbars number and speaking to you and other people that I'm speaking to, it is thinking about.

Speaker 1: 35:36

It needs to be smaller and all of our social networks are too big. So we need to kind of do these regular digital events with with our wider groups to then go to them, feel into who is resonating with the stage of life that we are at right now. So people are going to be coming in and out of our life throughout our whole life and that's okay. But, yeah, really trying to define who those people are within those inner circles, whether they are in person or online, and then and then really working on having some solidarity with them to keep that alive. Because something that came to me this week and through a parking fine which I didn't pay the London low emission fee the other day, so I got a big parking fine. What learning can I take away from this? So my learning was action has consequences, but so does inaction have consequences when it comes to friendship.

Speaker 2: 36:47

Yep, absolutely. I'm actually in an environmental zone right now and I'm hoping I'm not going to get a ticket.

Speaker 1: 36:57

You know what?

Speaker 2: 36:58

comes to mind for me is like I mentioned my background with religion. I found it really useful just recently to think about, like, if you can look at religion and separate what religion says from what it does. So, like, the Christian religion has a whole bunch of stuff about God and about the afterlife and about morals and about sin. But if you just scrap all of that out, I just ignore that completely and just say what does it do? And when it's going well, at least, like in my childhood, what it did was like there's a, there's a building and people go there every week and at least an hour church. What happened was like and it was basically 150 more or less that kind of sometimes 100, sometimes 200 back in that ballpark, all these families would come, that go twice a day on a Sunday, and the feature of doing it twice is that, like, you come in the morning, you have your morning service and then, like, a bunch of kids from one family will go to another family for lunch or ask the the, you know the two or three people together. There's this kind of like blending process that happens, this kind of informal blending, and then they get together again in the afternoon for another service and so then the kids can go home, or like, you know, you've got that, so you've got this like daily I'm sorry, this weekly rhythm, where people have got the thing that they do every week they're singing together. I think that's another essential like bonding process and I think that they're going to give some fraction of their income partly to pay the guy at the front of the room who's telling them how to be a good person, but partly also to fund, like, an informal network of solidarity where, like, for example, if someone loses their job, maybe the church will cover their rent for a couple of months, or like, even without the money side of things, like if someone has a baby, then all the other families are going to cook casserole and send them frozen pies and things like that. You know, like this kind of informal, this informal care taking thing that's happening, and then you have the. You know, like there's the youth group and the Bible group and all these little clubs and things that are happening, and that model.

Speaker 2: 39:03

When you just look at what it does and you ignore everything that it says to me, I suspect that that's what is kind of necessary for most people to really feel at their best is to be plugged into something like that, which has this dependable rhythm of encountering each other. It's happening at a local scale. It's happening where you're like. You know like how, like I said, I'm married.

Speaker 2: 39:32

I'm not in the dating game, but a lot of my friends are in the dating game and they hate it. You know, it sounds like it's really unpleasant, whereas if you're in like a network of churches and you have like what we had when I was a kid, once a year you'd have this like big annual gathering where people from all the other churches would get together and it's like most of the young people and it's like basically a big dating adventure. You know like that's kind of what it's designed for. That, to me, is so much more pleasant than trying to like swipe on an app. So, yeah, I think I think maybe I'm just coming out as a very conservative person, but I think people need something like church in their life to help meet those needs for belonging and support, even when you ignore, like, all the purpose of things. Just that, just like having friends.

Speaker 1: 40:18

And the regularity, that ritual of every Sunday or one day. So I don't know if you're familiar with Time for Tribe. Have you come?

Speaker 1: 40:26

across them yet. So they're based in Seattle and it's run by this. I'm not sure if they're married, but this partnership and I guess they're in their 60s. They've lived at various intentional communities through their lives, realized what works well, what doesn't work well, and they've come to realize that they want to live in their own space but they still want that sense of community. So they came up with Time for Tribe. They created community values and then invite people in who resonate with those values, who live, they say, which I really like bicycle distance apart, so accessible.

Speaker 1: 41:07

They get together every Friday and they'll get together in circle. I think there's about 20 to 22 people in that. So it's kind of outside of the numbers that we've been speaking about. But you know, maybe not everybody attends everything, but that's the only commitment every Friday night and you know, if there's birthdays or celebrations in between, they'd certainly be inviting one another. But the only expectation is that once a week thing. And what I love about Time for Tribe is their initiation ceremony. Every new recruit or new member comes up with their own initiation, so it's really unique and really memorable to everybody else. And then there's no pressure on the organizers and they've said like, even though they started it. The idea is that it becomes a self managing team. So once it's then established, they then sit back and they are just the same as everybody else. And you know, if people leave and they want to invite new replacements in, that's not just their decision, it's the group decision consensus.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Yeah, cool, cool.

Speaker 2: 42:15

I mean, the focus on that regular rhythm to me has been the other half.

Speaker 2: 42:19

So I talked a lot about the scale, the other half is the rhythm and like that to me is the yeah, like kind of the most essential ingredient of like forming collective identity is that, like the group meets on a regular rhythm, which is, again, it sounds like kind of mundane and basic.

Speaker 2: 42:36

But yeah, when it comes to like when I, when I most need help, like that's the moment where I'm least able to ask for help. So, like, if there's not a rhythm, if there's not some like preexisting structure, and I'm having a hard time in my life, I'm just going to like drift off and be isolated. But if there's a thing that I do every week or every month, then I've got a lot of momentum to just keep doing that thing. And if I don't show up and someone's going to reach out and be like hey, you weren't there to speak, what's up, you know that's been really, really there's a really really solid and kind of kind of cultural. You know everyone people don't want to put unnecessary constraints on you or something like that. But yeah, developing that dependability is a huge, it's had a huge payoff.

Speaker 1: 43:31

Something that's been coming through to me and I'm just going to scat out loud with you because I'm curious to know what your thoughts on it. Right? So, because I've traveled around a lot, I actually found that in my like 20s I actually had really good relationships because I'd often like start dating someone and I'd be like I knew I was leaving in six months and I can just have a really nice relationship. We know there's an end in sight and then it's all good, like we'll remain friends and all that kind of thing. I'm like with someone have children now, so that that's kind of passed, but this kind of having an end and then there being a beauty in what is knowing that it's finite, like something that came through to me when I really started thinking about this was the number 22. And I was just for some reason just thinking what, what we create, people can stay in for up to 22 weeks.

Speaker 1: 44:29

I've had a spiritual mentor for the last year and a half and I was just really curious about this and I mentioned to him and he had an intentional community in Ontario decades ago and and he said that's really interesting because when they would bring people in, people would either do a one or two week immersion or they'd stay for five months and that was like a natural cycle and I'm like that is pretty much. That's the 22 weeks. So I just wonder, is anything like that come to you before?

Speaker 2: 45:00

Yeah, I don't I haven't got a ping on 22 exactly, but more that this thing of having an end, beginning with the end in mind, that's been really solid as well. So, like I mentioned the rhythm when I went when it, when it comes to like starting a new group or, like you're saying, inviting someone in to an existing thing but they're a newcomer, I think it's many of the times not all the times, but often that's it's really useful to invite someone in for a time limited. You're not saying, you know, until death. To us part, you know, like that kind of endless commitment is like a really special thing, but most of the time I found it helpful to say so. For example, I'm going to start a. I'm actually trying with this idea right now. I want to be doing more writing. So I'm sort of thinking about maybe I'll start a writing club and I'll invite five people and we'll meet once a week and the invitation will be let's do the five times or you know some limited number of times, rather than let's pretend it's forever when we all know it's not going to be forever. It's going to be some point where it stops anyway.

Speaker 2: 46:10

So let's design a moment where we're going to stop and reflect. We're going to say, like, how's it going? Was this a worthwhile use of our time? Do we do? We want to keep going, but maybe we will change something? Or do we want to say, no, I'm done, thank you, and you have like a graceful way to say that's enough for me, you know, thanks for your time, like a face saving way to quit on something that's not super satisfying. I think, like having that yeah, having that moment of pause, even if it's not an end of an end, but like a moment where it's okay to end, where it's kind of like, naturally, like this would be a good time to close, thank you very much. I think it saves a whole bunch of awkwardness and like allows for the thing to stay fresh and, like you have an explicit moment where you can say, ah, it's nearly there, but if we just change this and this, then I'd find it much more gratifying. Yeah, having that kind of pulse built into it, I think, makes a big impact.

Speaker 1: 47:04

I love that so much. I come from a corporate environment where you would do like I used to be in the internal comms so I'd be doing employee engagement wellbeing and we would do those engagement pulse checks and it's like why don't we do those in our personal relationships? What is serving you Am I, am I serving you? Like? What could I do better in this relationship? Imagine that full transparency.

Speaker 2: 47:34

Yeah, one of my colleagues, alana Irving, wrote a blog post that went viral called Running Agile. I think it was like running Agile Scrum on our relationship, something like that.

Speaker 2: 47:46

And she describes that they do this monthly process, her and her husband, and I did that for a while with my wife as well, and it's useful. I think we kind of internalized it over time. So, this thing of like it was useful to have a mark in the calendar that says once a month we're going to stop and we're going to like really reflect and talk over whatever issues are built up. But now I think we've been together long enough that we don't need to wait for a special meeting. You know, like you're going to just kind of do that, but that's like I say that's the person that knows me the most in the world For everyone else like it actually is quite helpful to have some kind of explicit container or some kind of moment in the calendar where you're like, hey, let's talk. You know, like let's step out of what we're just doing habitually or instinctively and like be a little bit more aware or a bit more conscious about what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 48:34

And we did. We did bring that into our family after being at the Eco Village. So every Friday we would have heart circle at the Eco Village. So it's a real ceremony, got candles, you have a facilitator and you go around the circle three times, kind of really, kind of just checking in then really saying what's alive for you. And the rule is that you're not allowed to premeditate what you're going to say. You're really really listening and connecting in with the speaker. And then, yeah, you get the talking stick and you say what's alive for you. But it was adults only. My children are still little, they're only four and seven. Because the end of our experience there I'm like, well, I want to bring some of these practices into my life. So I kind of stepped away from heart circle in the community environment and brought it into the family. So we've probably brought it back to that monthly now, because weekly was definitely too much for the kids. I think it was too much for my partner as well. So we do do that and it's not necessarily like assessing each other, but it's just if there's something we want to bring up.

Speaker 1: 49:47

And for my young kids, like my daughter, she really got into Pokemon when she was at a school near the Eco Village. All the kids are allowed to bring Pokemon cards into school. She used to trade them at recess. And then we came to this new school and they're not anti Pokemon but they just don't let the kids bring anything into school from home to play with. So she brought that to our Friday Heart Circle that she doesn't have anyone to play Pokemon with. So we were like cool, so we set up a Pokemon club on a Saturday at a local park and went there and not many people rocked up, like one or two, but we took extra cards, so there's always other kids there, so we could just let her play Pokemon and let her have that release. So it's just a beautiful invitation for people to share, whether or not they have something to share or not.

Speaker 1: 50:42

And if you're happy for me to just keep rolling, I'll kind of let you know what I'm thinking about my kind of hybrid circles. It's really about bringing regularity in. So, for instance, my family groups who my family are in the UK and then partly in New Zealand. So if we have a digital family group and you bring some regularity to that, it doesn't need to be that regular, like maybe every three or six months is kind of sufficient to bring the whole group together. But that then enables people. If they have something to share, they can actually be quite a lot of worry or unnecessary rumination. How am I going to share this, whereas if they know that, oh, in September we've got that family get together, I know I'm going to have airtime, I'll share it then if it's not urgent. So just having that regularity and having somebody to be the community instigator to bring that together, I just think if more of us do that that can only be a good thing.

Speaker 2: 51:52

Yeah, assuming that people are actually heard, right, because in the good case you have that regularity and you share the thing, because you've got the spotlight or you've got the opportunity, and then people hear you and they respect you and they respond in a useful way, and then you know, next time I'm going to do it again. And the hard thing sometimes especially when it's family, because family is spicy is if that process doesn't go well, then of course it's like well, you can have the dependable rhythm, but if you don't, actually if you can't count people hearing you or like responding in a constructive way, then people are going to be, they're going to withhold.

Speaker 1: 52:36

Have you toyed with many digital platforms other than Zoom to have gatherings like that? Is there any apps that you love?

Speaker 2: 52:49

Not really, honestly. I've played with a bunch. I'm basically agnostic about the technology. I think it comes down to the facilitation, the clarity of the plan and the clarity of the invitation. Obviously, each tool that you use has different affordances or capabilities. There's things that you'll get in a video call that you won't get in a text and vice versa. If you have a rough understanding of what the different platforms are good for, then I'm pretty agnostic. I've been in Discord channels or Telegram channels that have a dedicated community organizer who understands how to use the platform and how to orchestrate people's attention and how to bring good questions. They go really well.

Speaker 2: 53:48

I've been in the same platform, but without that facilitated posture, without that organizer, without the plan, they tend to fizzle out and not really go anywhere. It's the same with the Zoom and all these other platforms. We've done a few things, because I'm far away from my family too. When we try and pile everyone into a Zoom call with no structure, it's not really satisfying. If we're hanging out at a barbecue or something, you can have 30 people on the lawn and they'll naturally self-organize into conversation. But if you try and put 30 people onto a Zoom with no structure or plan and you're only really going to have one person speaking at a time. It's profoundly awkward, but if someone's got a plan, we're going to be in breakout groups. We're going to talk about what's happening with the kids right now. Basically, what game are we playing? If someone can tell you what game it is and what are the basic rules, then it tends to go a lot better than just throwing everyone into a digital space and hoping it works out.

Speaker 1: 54:58

Yeah, I love that response. Thank you, richard. One that I have enjoyed the feeling of is called spatial. There's a couple of different spatial chats. It's the one that I like because you're this little bubble so you can see whose face it is, but it's so much smaller than Zoom that you're not critiquing their makeup or whatever. You can't see them that well, but I love the autonomy that you can kind of shift yourself around. So if you do have a bigger group then you can go off into one to ones very easily and it just yeah, it does have the feel of real life much more than Zoom does that. You can't really even dictate where the faces are going to be on your screen. So I'm exploring.

Speaker 2: 55:48

Like spatial. There's another one called Gather Town and that one is like a similar mechanic where you can move around and you only can hear the people that you're nearby. But it's just styled in a sort of like old fashioned 8-bit video graphics kind of video game style. So for certain kind of applications the kind of aesthetic of it is really cool, like, for example, I've used it in like we might have a conference, that's kind of serious, and then we have the socializing time afterwards and we're going to go to Gather Town and it sort of puts people in a different frame of mind, like out of Zoom and into this video game reality. That's a bit more like I don't know a bit more playful maybe.

Speaker 1: 56:29

Yeah, there's another one as well, called Gather Round, which is a game one like they've got a lot of games already embedded, or you can kind of put your own in with their format. I played with it a couple of times with very small groups, and then I invited my family group onto it and it was a freaking nightmare. The tech totally failed. It was like multi-generational family groups. My grandparents were not happy, so I was like, okay, let's not test it in this again. But it's, you know, it's all learning what's going to work, and I think it definitely has potential. I think it was quite early, that they hadn't launched very long before I played with it, so I think there was still some niggles, which I'm sure are probably ironed out by now.

Speaker 2: 57:18

The thing about the tech, like, yeah, I built a software company, I'm an engineer, like I'm proficient in the digital side of things, and even I'm like completely irritated whenever the software doesn't do the thing it's supposed to. And so I do have a lot of compassion for people, like if they're older or they just don't spend so much time with computers, and then you're trying to get them to do something and they're like it's very easy to feel stupid or like, oh, I'm doing this wrong. Or like I find it quite unpleasant and it's very rare to find software out there that's actually user friendly and straightforward, like there's always some, you know, let you sit down on your thing and it's supposed to be all straightforward, but then some other thing jumps up on your screen and you don't know what it is, and it's like, oh, is there a virus? Or you know, like there's this whole process of feeling lost and confused, which I find quite it's kind of like the opposite of the kind of feelings that we're trying to invoke in people when we do community organizing.

Speaker 1: 58:14

Thank you for sharing. Okay, so something that I wanted to talk with you was on the topic of intentional versus inclusivity. So what I've noticed on some of your tweets. You'll be in a new place like Berlin and you'll be like, hey, we're meeting up here at this venue, See you there, like real open invitation, and kind of on the flip side. I'm kind of researching authentic, relating events and intentional friendship and values based friendship and all of this. So how do they? How do they kind of play together?

Speaker 2: 58:59

Yeah, and maybe, if you think about it as a funnel, right, so like at the very, very top end of the funnel would be a promoted ad where I'm like intentionally trying to reach out beyond my existing audience and just say anyone, or like posters that I put up in a city, or something like that. You know, like anyone that sees this, please come. And then at the bottom of the funnel, you have like, yeah, the decision to get married, right, like super intentional. Most of us only choose one person at a time to get married to, and you're making this like intense commitment to each other. And this is. There's a gradient of options all the way between those two ends of the funnel.

Speaker 2: 59:44

And I put a message on Twitter saying hey, I'm in Berlin, who wants to come hang out on Friday? That is already quite filtered. Like the algorithm is doing a lot of filtering of like who has shared interests, who, yeah, who's kind of like I say this like there's the people who will see the post, so that's already filtered, but then there's the people who will respond to it. That's much more filtered, because people have some internal sense of like oh, am I really invited? It says everyone's welcome, but is it really me. I don't know that kind of process is going. And so, like every time I've done this open invite process using Twitter or using a mailing list or something yeah, that's like pretty open.

Speaker 2: 1:00:25

I have honestly never, I've never, had a negative experience. I've never had someone come and I'm like, oh, what a disappointment it was to meet you. You know, it's like sometimes they're a bit random and you're like, okay, we're probably not going to see each other again, but never, never disappointing. So that's good for like a meetup where the intention is about finding like-minded people maybe, or like just getting to know some new people, but then basically, as you get into progressively higher stakes collaboration, that's not like let's have a picnic this afternoon, but it's like let's start a company or you know like you want to be more selective and again, that's been something that has been maybe a little counter cultural and some of my community organizing is being a bit more exclusive.

Speaker 2: 1:01:11

I'm really comfortable with being exclusive and saying like I'm going to do this community experiment. Say we're going to have a retreat every six months and these are the 15 people that are invited and no more. You're like that, I think it's completely appropriate to do when you're trying to achieve a specific thing to be very specific about who you invite and the more refined you are with that invitation and the more limited you are then yeah, it kind of opens up possibilities that you can't do if random people are walking in and kind of like having to be brought back up to speed or like they come actually with quite a different set of values and they don't want to do what you're doing. So so, yeah, I think there's that wide, wide, wide spectrum of options and they have different uses.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

So if you wanted 15 very specific people to come to a retreat, would you? Would you charge them? Can you charge them when you want them, when you want them there, because, like we're saying before, it's kind of mutually beneficial. You obviously you have a goal in mind for the end of it. You also don't want to be out of pocket when you're, when you are creating a beautiful experience for them. How is that? How do you?

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's this. One of one of the big bottlenecks, I think, in community organizing is the economics of being an organizer. I know a lot of people that can pull up a cool event and get people together, but I don't know many of them that can do it sustainably, because they do it either volunteering or severely underpaid and then and then their energy gets kind of they're in competition with all the other things that they could be doing with their time and so they run out of puff and they stop doing it. So, like for me, I'm better at this, like advising others than I am taking the advice myself, but but I think it's really important that community organizers get paid for what they're doing. Like it's extremely valuable.

Speaker 2: 1:03:21

Like two weeks ago or three weeks ago, I was at a more intensive kind of Twitter meetup it's called Jess Camp, where Jess is an organizer and it's called Jess Camp because she didn't have any other name for it and she booked a hotel in the Black Forest, a 75 bed hotel, for a week and then filled it with Twitter people and she always says, oh, I'm hardly doing anything, you know, like it's so self organized, everyone's, you know, everyone's helping in the kitchen, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 2: 1:03:51

It's not really worth much. And I'm like how many people are there that have the confidence to say I'm going to book a hotel for a whole week and to hold that sort of uncertainty and anxiety for a whole year? Well, you know, like in the future, saying I'm holding this, we're going to fill it up, it's going to be great, like to me, that is a very valuable service and deserves a salary. You know, like it deserves to be paid, like any other valuable service. So yeah, I guess I would say, look a bit more closely into whatever resistance you have for getting paid and, and my experience has been like, if you can be clear about what kind of value people can expect, then they tend to be happy to pay.

Speaker 1: 1:04:36

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I'm going to look up Jess camp for next year.

Speaker 1: 1:04:43

When you were talking about putting posters up. It reminded me of Danny Wallace and the stuff that he you familiar with. Danny Wallace, he's a British journalist. He wrote the yes man, which became a film with Jim Cary, but he's done a lot of very random things and I think his granddad did a lot. His granddad tried to start a cult, like in a different land, and he was just very inspired by that. So, yeah, he's looking up because he's got some great stories.

Speaker 2: 1:05:22

I've done some. I've been involved, like, for example, with art projects that are where we've got a bunch of artists from out of town that will come to a local place and kind of install themselves in public and and in those kind of settings you're really you're really dealing with random people, you know, you're really dealing with just whoever is around and whoever shows up and walks into the space, and that's really interesting to deal with people that have very little in common with each other and and to sort of like find, yeah, what are our shared values across this level of difference. But when it comes to like Twitter, for example, I put a post on Twitter it's so much more narrow than that. Like this, there's so much filtering. That's already happened. So, yeah, I'm just I'm just really feeling the gap in that spectrum is like it's really really really wide.

Speaker 1: 1:06:08

It's interesting because I'm like, in some of the work that I do with clients, I'm kind of suggesting that they break away from the algorithm so like feel into who is coming to mind and then actually look them up rather than be dictated to by the algorithm. But in your experience in that, in that context, it's like the algorithm is actually working for you, not against you. I really like that. I've my thoughts have been challenged on that, so thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:06:40

I mean. The flip of that, though, is like there are times where the personal invitation is exactly what you need, you know, and it's like if you're trying to create something of, yeah, something a little bit more precious, you know, something a little bit more refined or curated than the person invitation goes all the way, and I would never trust the, the algorithm, or like a public invite, to be able to deliver on that level of quality.

Speaker 1: 1:07:05

I had a really good tip from an older guy that I met this weekend called Marshall Drummond, and and he said that I'm just about to get some business cards made up and he said don't get too many, like make them, make them in demand, don't give them out easily. And he said his favorite business business cards was a friend of his who is an artist, and the business card was just very plain, just the contact details. But before they gave one they would do a little piece of art and so every card is is unique. So that was a little tip that I got that I thought I'll share. Is there anything else that you really feel cool to share with us, to share with your audience, to share with my audience while we're here today?

Speaker 2: 1:07:58

Final words, Maybe just one thing on the topic of Twitter.

Speaker 2: 1:08:07

All of these social media platforms are really complicated from an ethical perspective and and I've talked a bunch about how Twitter is great and I also want to sort of hold the other end of the spectrum, I think I think that on the whole, most of these social media platforms are doing a bunch of harm to like I'm into health and our democracies and so on.

Speaker 2: 1:08:34

So I don't want to leave with a whole hearted enthusiastic endorsement of like yes, let's hang out on Twitter.

Speaker 2: 1:08:40

But I do also want to say that for me personally and for a bunch of my friends now, we have found really, really meaningful connection through the social networks and if you set your mind to it, you can treat these platforms as a legitimate like community building space, and the art form for me is basically you use the digital layer to filter and find the interesting, like minded people and then cross the threshold into the physical layer, like out of just the digital and into the physical, and that like this, just count that I described and other kind of meetups that we've been doing is so, so gratifying to kind of convert someone from a 64 pixel you know digital avatar to like a fully three dimensional human being and getting to know them and spending time together Like that. Yeah, I just want to invite more people into playing that game of treating these online platforms as like a dating platform for making friends and and and doing something. Getting together and doing stuff together is like so much more gratifying and just having annoying arguments online or like sharing pictures of cats.

Speaker 1: 1:09:46

Like your petri dish, petri dish for play, and then bring them into the physical. Richard Bartlett, I want to thank you so much for being with me today. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've got loads to take away.

Speaker 2: 1:09:59

Thank you, it's been a great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1: 1:10:33

Yeah.