Events as core to building community

This is a reflection on my years doing events as part of my community building efforts. The world has definitely flipped, but maybe some of my reflected thoughts and processes are helpful to others.

Before covid I spent years doing real life events, mostly conferences but also plenty of meetups too. I put a lot of thought into these events and, honestly, they've been life changing.

There were many things I definitely didn't want them to be, but at the center of it I knew that they had to be a valuable part of the communities I ran. I didn't want to run events then forget about the community until the next event happened.

Pre-covid, I feel, this is how people often treated events. You were forgotten about until the next event. And of course the next time you had to part with some money. This always troubled me and made me think carefully about how I approached things.

Not all events build community