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.

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/

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.

Kate x