Oof! This is the question that formed the basis of yesterday's "Unreasonable Connection". It's a lot more direct than I heard it in the room!

The breakout group that I was part of, talked mostly about running events and dealing with such events "not working" in some way – usually evidenced by the feeling that not enough people turn up. I believe, and said so, that there are loads of reasons why people don't come to an event at their coworking space, but that we, the community managers, (or whatever we're calling ourselves this week) usually make up that there are only two possible reasons – we chose the wrong subject or put it on at the wrong time.

My blog archive tells me that I've been failing to get people to come to things since at least March 2007 so I feel pretty expert in this!

The approach I've developed over the years has boiled down to "have no expectations" – that's what's working well (for me) at the Living Culture Coffee Mornings but also to have a theme, which distinguishes what you're doing from most other things people could be doing, while being loose enough to allow people to see themselves fitting in. That can take time and a few iterations, but it's good medicine for the "wrong subject" bit. When it comes to the "wrong time" all I have is that within the constraints of when you're open, every time is equally able to be wrong and right for everyone, so you have to choose the right time for you (with a little help from your friends) and stick to it unless and until you've been proved totally wrong.

So on occasions when I've been really focused on showing someone else that I'm actively persuading people to come along rather than accepting that "whoever comes are the right people", have I been killing real community? Does what I focus on really matter that much? I guess the thesis underneath that is that when you're doing something mostly for performative value (ie for the impression it makes on stakeholders rather than the value it adds to the network) then the network suffers.

I've been fond of saying that to add value to a network, you can either add new nodes or new connections, but also you can make existing connections richer and that enriching connections is the tricky bit. What makes interpersonal connections richer? It's not just finding out how people are the same as you, it can sometimes be finding out that people are different, or (more likely imho) how they're the same as you in some ways but different from you in some important other ways. At this point at C4CC, Brian would probably say something about homophily and propinquity and we'd all nod.

"Where am I going to put my attention when I actively build this community?", "how will I know I'm doing a good job?", "what will add value to this group of people?", "what reduces value among this group of people?" Those are questions that I prefer to dwell on.

Also, is there a "fake community" to distinguish this "real community" from? It feels to me like that's the spreadsheet version, or the "directory". It's a capture of the nodes in the network rather than the nature of the connections. And even if you manage to draw in some of the connections that you're aware of, these aren't all the connections there are, possibly by a really long way. Because there will be connections that none of the participants are aware of, that don't get revealed simply by getting people to further fill in a form about what they know, what they like or don't like, where they've worked before, what they can offer, what they need etc. And the problem is mistaking all that for the "real community", mistaking the data about the network for the messily human, complex system that it is. (extra credit for pattern matchers who ask "is there a 'dead culture' to distinguish this 'living culture' from?" – a common question in these parts)

Again, does this "kill real community"? Or is it no worse than a distraction, something that makes people (including you) feel better about the level of connection (and diversity) in the group and that it's at least kind of manageable when you've got some data and you can feel like you've done what you can. Or is it possible that the only way to get me to unpick this for myself is for Uncle Bernie to make up a provocatively-worded question? Empirically, it would seem so.

On Friday, it’ll be 34 years since I first became a father.  It’s the role I’ve played most consistently (if not always brilliantly) in this lifetime.  Since then that time of year that used to feel like “back to school” has felt more like “woah! wtf?! we made a person!”  

I’ve done a lot of dadding, but I still feel like a noob.  Last week we went to Frinton for a few days and Ewan joined us for a couple.  We had good conversations over the breakfasts that I made for us.  Cleared some things up, laughed at ourselves, got a bit more understanding.  Walked down to the sea and paddled together.  Like you do.  Like we do.

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This is my desk this morning.  Yes it’s a mess, but it’s my mess and I love all the bits of it.

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I’m finding it hard to disconnect from the rolling dopamine frenzy driven by social media algorithms. I bet nobody else ever feels like this (ha!) Even when I write here, I’m thinking, should I be putting this somewhere else? Should it be somewhere where it will get more engagement? So the work at the moment is to simply put one word after another, here in my own place, to practice detaching from who is reading or even who is just noticing that I’ve posted something – which is what I’m doing most of the time when I’m scrolling. It takes a lot for me to click through, but I think, “Oh, @friend47 has posted something, that’s nice”

That can’t be what all this typing is for. Just a mutual neurotransmitter depletion game.

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I think though that I will resurrect my mastodon presence, not because I think masto is a great place to hang out, more that wordpress has good integration with it. You get to see the full text (unless it’s ridiculously long) rather than a link that you won’t click on unless I write a click-baity caption that will take as much time and effort as writing the actual post in the first place.

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Dan has been appointed Writer in Residence on the Sittingbourne Steam Railway and has published his first piece.

One sentence – four links, that’s what the web gives you, my dears.

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Thanks to the awesome Bernie Mitchell, I just went along to “Unreasonable Connection” billed as the “world’s smallest coworking event” – it’s a tightly-run (but relaxed) hour-long call with a bunch of people running spaces or building community or both. Interesting conversation about the things that we think we *ought* to do in a space and what actually works. I was in a break out with lovely people doing their coworking magic in London, Tunbridge Wells and Toronto. Thanks Bernie!

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In the last couple of days, I’ve watched both Oppenheimer and Barbie (in that order). Over the weekend, I rewatched Stephen Poliakoff’s 1999 TV play ‘Shooting The Past’. So all in all, I’m feeling a bit emosh.

I was going to write something on Facebook, but Nick was a blogger and so this belongs here.

I heard this afternoon that my dear friend Nick Booth died yesterday after a fall at the weekend. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be like this. We ought to have been celebrating his 60th birthday next month. We should have continued to intermittently tramp around bits of South Birmingham together as we got older and older. We should have sat in odd cafés and nattered and sniggered and laughed our socks off at our respective ridiculousness.

Nick got me, in a way that few people truly do. Maybe it was being Brummie boys of a certain age. Maybe it was our shared love of seeing people do things for themselves and each other in community. Or maybe it was just because he listened better than anyone else I know. As a natural-born journalist, he listened and he didn’t forget.

At first it was the power of podcasting that drew us together. I have David Wilcox and Simon Baddeley to thank for separately suggesting we might have common interests, but it would have been hard for us to avoid each other in those early days. We were both most at home in loose, unconference-y spaces and we connected through our dark but gleeful, sixth-form humour with a dash of self-deprecation.

I think Nick’s most generous gift to the world was Social Media Surgeries – they had just the right balance of ease and informality together with a desire to get shit done and really help people who were helping others and embodied the Podnosh company values of “Think, Make Things Better and Give a Fuck!”

We attended the G20 in 2009 together, swooning under the Obama-fever but mostly just wandering around laughing at how bonkers it all was and we were for even being there.

I also had the privilege of working directly with Nick (and the late John Popham) on the Nominet Trust’s “Our Digital Planet” project – luring people into portakabins and generally being “the ice-cream man of the internet”.

But mostly we enjoyed the ambient awareness of each other’s lives that came with blogging and being on Twitter. When we were fortunate enough to be in the same neck of the woods, we got to hang out and snigger at things it would be inappropriate to list here, even if one of us hadn’t just died. I had a look through our various private messages and there’s not much in there except lots of “I love you”.

I did love him and I already miss him desperately.