The Exchanges

Q All right. Let's, let's start. What's your, what's your first one?

A Um, so I got really into learning about this community. I'm going to butcher this name and then people are going to get so mad, but it's called Lomography. L-O-M-O, Lomography. And the, so, okay, you have to get into the history of Lomography. First of all, it's a product community, but you would never know it when you first stumble in. You would, you would, you wouldn't even understand that that's what you just fell into because it looks like For this community of artisans, very user-generated content based, but lamography is really based on a specific type of photography where the camera dictates the quality versus the subject. And so, okay. 1982. This is how it started. There was this general, I'm gonna butcher his name, General Igor Petrovitz-Kornitsky. Uh, he was the right-hand man to the USSR's Minister of Defense, and he brought in this, like, little compact Japanese camera and handed it over, and they were very impressed by it and decided that they were gonna improve it and then move it into mass production. So it started with just this, like, one product that they thought was sharp. And then a decade later, so 92, this entire society is built around it and it becomes a global society. So what's interesting about them today is that when you go to their website, it's pretty low-fi. It's not the fanciest thing you've ever seen, but if you go to slash forward slash photos,…

AI assessment note: “it's called Lomography. L-O-M-O, Lomography.”

Q So if you were running that community, what would you have done differently?

A I wasn't, um, active enough to know how she led into the idea. From what I can see, she posted one day, hey, we're going to turn this into a book. Here's my, and never expected the backlash. Just thought it was going to be this really well received, um, announcement. And I think what I would have done is long ago started seeding conversations about like, What are the ways that we can, um, memorialize what we've produced here? What are the ways that we can, because what happens is community members start coming up with the ideas themselves, and when they think it's their idea, or when they contributed that, that idea, there's much more, like, kind of ownership and grace in terms of, they're so excited to see that you're creating this thing that they have an idea over. So I think if I was going to do something like that, I probably would have started many conversations along the way, like, leading down that path first. Also being open to maybe a book won't be the thing. Maybe as the community speaks to me, there will be other things that emerge that I can respond to. So it's not really about manipulating them towards your answer, but that's how I would have looked at it. Like deep transparency.

AI assessment note: “what I would have done is long ago started seeding conversations”

Q Ok, so that's number one. Um, what's number two?

A Um, okay. So number two, I think is, is we can, we'll probably spend the least time on this because I just feel like it's a very, it's a micro version of what these things can look like. If you think about Lumography, Lumography, there was a product first, and then they built a community around their product. And usually when you have communities around a product, they're serving one of three, four specific purposes. So they're for acquisition. Your community exists to bring you more customers, um, internally at least. Um, they're for retention. Your community exists because you're trying to hold on to maybe a subscriber base longer. Um, the third is they're for success or support. So they're helping each other use the product better, which also is retention, but also reduces like support calls. And then the last is they give you user generated content that you're using to do something. So you have all these like Sort of north stars of these various communities. So with the Lomography, they have a product, they built a community around it. With this other one, they started with a community And the woman who was running the community, I don't think ever had any intention of building an audience, but I think she, she applied this kind of classic community based product framework that we like to talk about. Um, and it happened during the pandemic. So in 20, 20, when the world shut…

AI assessment note: “So number two, I think is... started this Facebook group called view from my window”

Q Yeah. What's, uh, what, what's something that almost made the list, but didn't make the list?

A Um, I would say that I would give a shout out to, uh, Ness Labs, which was gonna be on the list. Um, I have been in that community, so it's, it's one that I was also a part of. Um, Steph Smith actually put me on to that one, and Ness Labs is a community of people who, I don't know, it's like this, this, like, interesting and fun blend of, Um, mindfulness, and neuroscience, and, um, it's really around, like, productivity, but I think the, the thing that is so beautiful about it is it's science and strategy based. It's not just like, we're gonna manifest our best lives, and take bubble baths, and think good thoughts. Um, but she's really done a beautiful job of unleashing that community, because she gave kind of just the right parameters around what communities should look like, And, and all of these best practices and set the tone and the community just ran with it. There's like, if you were to last time, I'm not in it anymore, but you would click the event calendar and there was just endless events on deck that people were self organizing without any sort of additional resources or support because they were so interested in talking about these practices and being a true community of practice. Um, I think communities of practice have a really, really special place in my heart. Because there's something about, ah, learning and practicing a skill set as a group versus just like, y…

AI assessment note: “I would give a shout out to, uh, Ness Labs, which was gonna be on the list.”

Q Um, so like, how do you, how do you, how do you not make it, like, how do you make it exclusive, not exclusionary?

A Um, is that the phrase, exclusive, but not, you have, I think I've been misquoting you. Did you once tell me that communities are exclusively inclusive? Sounds like something I would say. Yeah, because I've been saying that ever since, and I hope I haven't been getting it wrong. Um, that is such a good question, and actually one of the first things I thought about when I did come across Common House, especially because of the way it looks, like it's just very beautiful. Um, and I think that kind of elevated, curated, kind of gastropub vibe, um, tends to appeal to certain subsets of people and not others. Um, And I, I do love the question about how do we keep this from being a Soho house, because I think the absolute key to this is how relationships are being fostered inside of those spaces. So I'm not, never been to a Soho house. I've never been to common house, but as from a community design perspective, some of the things I think about are how often you're allowing members into the physical space to just do their own thing, To co-work, to eat, to drink, to whatever, and how often you're actually providing any sort of programming or direction or opportunity for them to be making connections with each other. And I think there's this element of community builders not wanting to ask too much of their members. I've seen this a lot where people, like, they don't want to program too…

AI assessment note: “the absolute key to this is how relationships are being fostered inside of those spaces”