Talking to Joey Devilla in the Bloghaus about how to develop meetups and the like using wikis and blogs, which is something I’ve been thinking about all weekend. He mentioned a guy called David Crow who’s apparently the brains behind their many TorontoCamps covering developers, musicians, etc. I asked him how they got to a tipping point and he said they got the loudest, most enthusiastic people together and planted seeds then let them go off and do stuff. (Another connection to the Self Replicating Awesomeness notions.)
I suppose an example would the Flickrmeets I started a couple of years back, only rather than seeing that as an endgame looking at how to empower the people on there to take the basic premise to other areas. Which we kinda did a bit but not with much force. Why not monthly videomeets? Monthly music jam sessions where most of the prep happens online?
He then said something rather crazy. Apparently Birmingham UK is in the top ten cities with the most Facebook penetration. I’m trying to find the proof so if you find it let me know. It would explain why 600+ people have the Created in Birmingham Facebook app on their profiles, more than subscribe to the RSS feed, and how we got 20+ people to the last Blogmeet. If true, this would give publicizing events an incredible head start.
Where’s my brain going with this? I think it’s a mashup between the online world and the physical world, using the former to facilitate stuff in the latter. Flickrmeet saw 20-30 people who didn’t know each other at all come together and form a community and friendships (I’ve got two wedding coming up that I wouldn’t be attending without the Flickrmeets). Once you take away the photos the basic structure of Flickr – talking about stuff – isn’t unique. You just need to put the stuff first and foremost and let people talk about it. Finding the common ground. Then spin off real world events from that.
So, who are our loudmouths?
Im in! Let me know how i can get involved. I can head up the Wolves contigent. I have some other stuff blog related to tell you, we could catch up when you get back?
Kate x
Pete,
I think the other thing is to be open about your motivations. I have always said I missed the community and connections I had in Austin and in grad school. I wanted to know what was going on in Toronto and to find “interesting” people. Interesting that means designers, developers, entrepreneurs and social economists for me. But it means something different for everyone attending. These were essential the shared values of our community at the beginning (and probably still are today).
The job of the instigator is to recognize that “the community is the framework”. It requires you to build connections between people. This is the telephone network. It lets people begin to build systems and exchange currency. Connect people. Help people meet. It’s not about you. You probably know 150 people. You need to make sure they have the opportunities to know each other better.
Reputation then becomes the currency that gets exchanged by the connections. You earn reputation by participation, i.e., let me connect you to so and so, or I’m going to host the Lunch 2.0 next month, or I’ve heard about this really cool VizThink thing wonder how I do that here. All of the actual value exchange, i.e., monetary transactions, happen outside of the “community framework”.
I love this stuff. Let me know what I can do to help.
Thank you David, that’s really useful and I will get in touch when I’ve recovered from SXSW!
Hey, Pete! Good seeing you at SxSW.
Here’s where I heard that Birmingham was one of the top 10 Facebook cities (it’s #8) — it’s at Jay Monah’s blog:
* London, UK – 1,802,000
* Toronto, ON – 1,721,280
* New York, NY – 791,360
* Montreal, QC – 728,180
* Manchester, UK – 671,840
* Chicago, IL – 539,180
* Calgary, AB – 470,740
* Birmingham, UK – 390,380
* Vancouver, BC – 355,420
* Philadelphia, PA – 319,120
* Houston, TX – 312,260
* Los Angeles, CA – 295,240
* Sheffield, UK – 287,980
* Dallas, TX – 229,660
* Denver, CO – 142,600
http://jaymoonah.com/blog/2008/01/08/some-of-the-top-facebook-cities-in-canada-the-uk-the-us/
Well if you’re asking for loudmouths…
Seriously though, we have to make this happen.
Eric Skiff and Alex Hillman are good people to talk to. Alex even said he’d fly over and help us with it in some way.
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