Professional, cultural, and social online communities are at risk. Xitter is in the final stages of enshittification. Facebook is inundated with advertisements and extensive data mining practices. LinkedIn groups’ algorithms bury most comments and reduce the visibility of posts with links. While private groups on major platforms remain functional, opaque and ever-changing algorithms control what users see, and the future viability of these groups is uncertain.
In addition, all corporate platforms are vulnerable to changes imposed by the owners, who can sell them at any time to new proprietors with different visions for operation or monetization, potentially further compromising the user experience.
For a clue, read this AT&T advertisement promoting telephones in the 1900’s!
A 1909 AT&T advertisement that promotes the telephone as broadcast & messaging technology.The_Implement_Of_The_Nation
Here’s Kevin Kelly’s analysis of what AT&T totally missed about how telephones could be used.
“Advertisements at the beginning of the last century tried to sell hesitant consumers, the newfangled telephone by stressing ways it could send messages, such as invitations, store orders, or confirmation of their safe arrival. The advertisers pitched the telephone as if it were a more convenient telegraph. None of them suggested having a conversation.“
Early telephone ads marketed it as a better telegraph. They focused on the value of sending messages rather than fostering conversation.
So, perhaps it’s not surprising that many conference organizers today make a similar mistake by emphasizing broadcast content over attendee interactions.
Just as advertisers missed the phone’s potential to connect people in real-time, many events fail to prioritize the natural value of attendee conversations. When organizers structure conferences as one-way content delivery sessions, they overlook the simple, high-impact power of peer-to-peer dialogue. By designing events that actively support and facilitate attendee conversations, conferences become spaces of meaningful connection, creativity, and insight that go far beyond passive listening.
Event planners must shift their mindset to seeing attendees as active participants, not just an audience. Facilitating genuine exchanges can turn an ordinary event into a transformative experience, helping people connect, share ideas, and solve problems together—things that no amount of broadcast content alone can achieve.
The social media platforms we once relied on for authentic connection are disintegrating. My ikigai—the reason I get up in the morning—is facilitating connection. But today’s major social media platforms—Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, et al.—are all owned by billionaires and tech bros who impose their political leanings on their users and/or seek to make massive fortunes from revenue streams such as ads and selling user information.
Major social media platforms are a dumpster fire, with no quick fix. Users remain on these platforms due to their network effect advantage; i.e., their value increases as more users join. For example, though I find Facebook’s ethical choices increasingly repulsive, I still use the platform sparingly because it is the only online service that some friends and family use, and a few of its local and professional groups have no significant online competition.
A corollary of the network effect is that as networks grow they become full of strangers, less coherent, and harder and more expensive to moderate effectively. Large platforms also become attractive places for those who need to feel important by having many followers and who concentrate on broadcast communication rather than two-way connection.
If you, like me, are interested in authentic connection with people in ways you determine, unfiltered by secret algorithms constantly tuned to maximize revenue or political ideologies, the future is bleak.
11 years ago, I pointed out that most meetings are small meetings. It seems the meeting industry is finally catching on to this reality and its benefits. Yes, small is the new big!
“Small is the new big. Smaller meetings, known by industry experts as micro events, continue strong growth. Simpler internal team meetings, VIP events, and client advisory boards will be among the most common types of meetings as we go forward. These are smaller (< 100 attendees) meetings, often held offsite. That doesn’t mean they don’t need all the things that larger meetings need, including speakers.” —Dave Reed, Joe Heaps and Roxy Synder, eSpeakers‘ report on IMEX America 2024
Why is this happening?
During the early COVID years, online meetings became the norm, while in-person gatherings dropped dramatically. Smaller online meetings revealed that broadcast-style webinars were often disengaging, while interactive online meetings helped attendees make peer connections and stay engaged.
As in-person events now return to pre-2020 levels, attendees increasingly value connecting and learning with peers, as Freeman reported in its Q1 2024 Trends Report:
“When it comes to networking, attendees are less interested in discovering new career opportunities and obtaining/providing mentoring. Instead, they view networking as the most valuable when they can exchange ideas with peers, meet new people, and speak with industry experts who may otherwise be out of reach.”
—Freeman Trends Report Q1 2024, Winter 2024 Freeman Syndicated Survey of Event Attendees.
“Attendees want to connect with peers over shared challenges and specific topics Just like with keynotes, content is critical when it comes to networking. Attendees want to bond with peers over shared professional challenges and topics. They aren’t as keen to speed-date over hors d’oeuvres or meet with an on-site ambassador at a phone charging station. These types of networking elements can be useful ancillaries – but they’re not sufficient on their own. Event attendees would be better served if organizers devoted more time to valued forms of networking and reduced their efforts on less-desired elements.” —Freeman Trends Report Q1 2024, Winter 2024 Freeman Syndicated Survey of Event Attendees.
Creating the valuable networking and connection that attendees seek is far easier at small meetings—when designed right! I’ve been designing and facilitating such meetings for over three decades, and both participants and organizers love them. These events foster a loyal community with high retention rates.
Large meetings can also support effective networking, but it’s far more challenging. As attendee expectations shift, more clients are contracting me to boost connection at large events, where existing tech solutions like brain dates and speed networking often fall short.
Meanwhile, small, well-designed events continue to thrive and grow in popularity. Small truly is the new big.
Next steps
Convinced that small is the way forward? Here’s how you should proceed:
Starting a new conference? Start small, with 50 – 150 participants. With the right design, you’ll create an event they’ll want to return to, year after year. You can then grow the event over time.
Struggling with a small conference? Your event design might need an update—I can help!
Running a large conference but receiving feedback about ineffective networking and connection? You’re not alone. I’m hearing from an increasing number of clients with this problem. Re-designing an existing event is challenging but achievable. The key lies in focusing on identifying, supporting, and connecting existing sectors and groups within the event. A small but impactful design shift early on can make a big difference. Contact me if you’d like to explore how this approach could transform your event.
The other day, I had the incredible opportunity to attend a mesmerizing performance of Tuvan throat singing by the Alash Ensemble at the Marlboro Elementary School, a small pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school in my hometown of Marlboro, Vermont.
It brought up a whole host of emotions.
Tuvan throat singing
The eerie, captivating music produced by the trio’s throats was spellbinding. Every sound humans make contains a spectrum of frequencies, but the magic of Tuvan throat singing is that specific frequencies are isolated and made audible, allowing the singers to produce multiple vocal notes simultaneously.
The band’s manager and interpreter Sean Quirk, introduced us to various styles of Tuvan singing, with each member demonstrating a different technique. My favorite moment was their a cappella opening performance, where the raw beauty of their voices took center stage.
The music was hauntingly beautiful. I’ve shared a short video of this a cappella performance above.
In the company of children
The performance marked the first time being around the children of Marlboro Elementary since the pandemic began over four years ago. Before COVID-19, my wife and I had volunteered at the school for decades. I spent time reading to the fourth and fifth graders weekly, gathered around after their lunchtime recess, sharing both classic and contemporary chapter books.
As I walked into the gym—fondly called “the outback” where school meetings and events are held—I felt a lump in my throat as the children filed in. I hadn’t realized how much I missed being in their presence.
Children and adults alike remained spellbound throughout the performance.
The children’s questions
Toward the end of the performance, we were invited to ask questions, which Stephen Quirk translated for the musicians. The children’s questions were delightful—thoughtful, curious, and brimming with wonder.
The final question came from a pre-kindergartener who asked: “Do you have a cat?” The room erupted in laughter. One musician responded that he had dogs, while another paused and, with a smile, said he had children. More laughter followed. My wife remarked later how the child was seeking a common connection with these musicians who sang in a foreign language and came from a place far away.
Serendipity
I feel blessed to have experienced this performance, especially because it wasn’t on my calendar when I woke up that morning. As it happened, I was dropping off a check for a nonprofit that supports the school to cover the cost of the performance. When I arrived, the school secretary asked if I’d like to attend the afternoon performance. My wife and I had some free time, so we came.
I recently attended a conference session that made me uneasy, and not in a constructive way. I won’t name names, but the session was centered around a specific program to increase “belonging” in organizations and included statistics such as:
“Only 13% of organizations are ready to actually implement belonging as a practice.”
“47% of our audiences are lonely.”
When the presenter said increasing belonging would be beneficial, I asked: “To whom, the organization or the employees?” The answer, after a pause, was “Both”.
While I hope this is genuinely the case, my doubts persist.
Why I’m suspicious of programs to increase organizational belonging
First of all, what is belonging? Curiously, Wikipedia lacks a direct entry for the term ‘belonging’! Instead, it includes a long article on “belongingness” that provides a nebulous introduction, including a short section on belonging in the workplace (see below).
Lewis Carroll’s famous quip, “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean,” comes to mind here.
I worry that some people are corporatizing “belonging” to make a buck.
Here are four reasons I’m suspicious of the presenter’s program to increase organizational belonging.
1. What does successful belonging look like?
A great technique for looking at ideas from a fresh perspective is reverse brainstorming, aka “Let’s make it suck.”
When I applied this approach to “implementing belonging as a practice”, guess what first came to mind?
The most successful example of belonging is a cult!
This is not the kind of belonging that appeals to most people. Except for cult members.
In addition, a short section of the belongingness Wikipedia article covers belonging in the workplace. It includes this slightly ominous sentence:
“Charismatic leaders influence followers by bringing awareness to the collective unit and strengthening the feeling of belonging, and that enhances employees’ compliance.”
Enhancing compliance via “strengthening the feeling of belonging” is advantageous for an organization led by a charismatic leader. But what’s the benefit for the employees?
2. “Belonging” is a binary concept
“Belonging” is a binary concept. You belong or you don’t.
However, except in extreme situations—like cults—our relationships with peers and organizations are much more nuanced. You can be a member of an organization without feeling you belong to it. At times, you may feel strongly or weakly connected to your peers. Over time, your peer groups change. These days, belonging to an organization, if even possible, is unlikely to consist of forty years of devotion with an engraved watch on retirement.
This is why my ikigai is about facilitating connection, rather than attempting to force belonging.
“Implementing belonging” is trying to force an employee’s time-dependent experiences of connection into a yes/no box.
3. We can improve organizations without programs to increase belonging
The session presenter began talking about how they use stories to implement belonging. I asked whether they were familiar with Appreciative Inquiry, (the original AI 😀) a pioneering approach from the 1980s, and how their method was different.
After another pause, the presenter said they did know of Appreciative Inquiry.
“AI revolutionized the field of organization development and was a precursor to the rise of positive organization studies and the strengths based movement in American management.”
“AI advocates collective inquiry into the best of what is, in order to imagine what could be, followed by collective design of a desired future state that is compelling and thus, does not require the use of incentives, coercion or persuasion for planned change to occur.” —Gervase Bushe, professor of leadership and organization development at the Beedie School of Business
Although I’m not trained in AI, the approach is simple enough that I’ve often used it with clients to build a positive environment before moving into the “problems” they’ve hired me to solve. It strengthens connections between employees and their organization by uncovering and sharing good experiences and expertise that live in the culture of all but the most dysfunctional organizations.
The presenter explained that their approach involved recording stories and feeding them into a computer which analyzed the words used and classified the sharer’s type of belonging. They did not go into detail, because the whole process, including opaque computer intermediation, is the secret sauce they’re selling.
Using a computer to quantify “belonging”, in some unknown and likely unscientific way, is a classic example of building an unverified model of a system and then believing in its pronostications. Until this approach has a verifiable scientific basis, from my (50+ years) experience of model building it should be treated with extreme skepticism.
I wouldn’t pay for it.
An alternative
We already have at least one well-established method, Appreciative Inquiry, that uses positive human-mediated processes to meaningfully transform organizations. There may be others I’m unaware of.
Enticing organizations with the promise of quantifying ‘belonging’—a concept that may not lend itself to such reduction—seems, at best, to be overhyped, and at worst, misleading.
In 1997, Dar Williams, inspired by listening late at night to New Hampshire and Vermont’s progressive radio station WRSI The River, wrote the song “Are You Out There”. Her beautiful song about audiences and humans’ desire for connection speaks to today’s events industry.
Why? First, listen!
Hoping that Dar will be OK with this, here are the relevant fragments of her song’s lyrics.
[Verse 1] “…You always play the madmen poets Vinyl vision grungy bands You never know who’s still awake You never know who understands and
[Chorus] Are you out there, can you hear this? Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis I was out here listening all the time And though the static walls surround me You were out there and you found me I was out here listening all the time
[Verse 2] Last night we drank in parking lots And why do we drink? I guess we do it ’cause And when I turned your station on You sounded more familiar than that party was…
[Verse 3] …So tonight I turned your station on Just so I’d be understood Instead another voice said I was just too late and just no good
[Chorus] Calling Olson, calling Memphis I am calling, can you hear this? I was out here listening all the time And I will write this down and then I will not be alone again, yeah I was out here listening Oh yeah, I was out here listening Oh yeah, I am out here listening all the time”
—Lyrics [full lyrics here] courtesy of Genius
“I am out here listening all the time.”
Like Dar Williams, a true fan of obscure (at the time) music, people search for experiences that meet their wants and needs. We yearn for connection and look for opportunities to get it. Events are the most powerful opportunities for connection (and learning). While today’s radio is, with few exceptions, a pure broadcast medium, it’s available to anyone with a radio who wants to turn it on and find an interesting program.
Event professionals must remember that their events’ true fans are “out here”. They are the people who will form the nucleus of your events’ success. These days, we have far more powerful tools than broadcast radio to find true fans. Use them!
“I will not be alone again.”
The young Dar Williams learned through her radio that other people like her “got” the music she loved.
While listening late at night, she realized that she was not alone.
Through attending decades of Vermont Town Meetings, I learned that effective facilitation requires respect.
For over two hundred years, my little hometown of Marlboro, Vermont, met at least once a year for “town meeting”: a form of local government where every eligible resident can directly participate in town governance. At our main annual town meeting, we discussed and voted on published agendas that included the town and school budgets and many other articles. Debate, facilitated by a town moderator, was common, people made amendments and voted on them, and the meetings (one for the town and one for the school) could last most of the day.
People filling the Marlboro (Vermont) Town House for the 2012 Town Meeting. Photograph by Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer
In my experience, though people in the room had different points of view, town meetings worked as well as they did because our town moderator respected everyone present and, for the most part, town residents respected each other. We remembered that the folks around us were our neighbors. They were people who, if we needed help, would be there for us despite our disagreements about politics and other issues. Sometimes votes wouldn’t go how we liked, yet we shrugged and moved on.
We could listen and make (sometimes) painful decisions because our moderator modeled respect and we respected each other despite our differences.
However, I’ve learned that listening is a gift you can’t fully give when you don’t respect the person you’re listening to. Effective facilitation is inherently rooted in showing respect to each individual involved. A facilitator needs to respect diverse perspectives and honor the contributions of each participant. This involves active listening—truly tuning in to what others are saying without judgment or interruption.
Respectful facilitation also involves fostering inclusivity and fairness. It means ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to speak and participate, regardless of status or background.
In essence, effective facilitation is a delicate dance between structure and empathy, where respect serves as a guiding principle. When participants feel respected, they are more likely to engage authentically, share ideas openly, and collaborate productively.
A perspective from meditation practice
Meditation practice can teach us how to cultivate mindful respect. Recently, one of my meditation teachers, Narayan Helen Liebenson, has been speaking about respect from a Buddhist perspective.
One concept she shared is “loosening judgment”. We continually interpret our sensed experience. When this involves listening to others, we may judge them or what they say. Some form of judgment is, perhaps, inescapable, but when we notice it we can practice loosening judgment: moving away from judgment and towards direct experience of another.
She also described performing an “inner bow“. This is a way of honoring either another or oneself, a conscious intention derived from an external act of respect: the act of bowing to another.
Ultimately, such language only points to the action to convey. Listening, loosening judgment, or performing an inner bow are ways to treat others with respect. All of these actions are intertwined and reinforce each other in the process.
Postscript
Marlboro abandoned traditional town meetings at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. My town has not readopted them, though many Vermont towns still practice this form of local government. We’ve switched to voting on articles via Australian ballot so there are no more large spring gatherings, debates, or amendments. I appreciate that our new form of government allows all eligible residents to vote, rather than only those who attend an in-person meeting. But I miss meeting with townsfolk and discussing our town’s direction and future together.
No matter our differences, I hope we continue to respect our neighbors, in the same way effective facilitators respect those with whom we work.
Many meetings still focus on creating audiences rather than community. Yes, there’s a big difference. And not just at meetings. Here’s how Damon Kiesow, Knight Chair for Digital Editing and Producing at the Missouri School of Journalism, compares the concepts of community versus audience from a journalistic perspective.
Kiesow says:
Community does not scale. Audience scales.
Community is decentralized for quality. Audience is centralized for profit.
Community is generative. Audience is extractive. —Damon Kiesow, @[email protected], Mastodon toot on Nov 06, 2022, 10:37
Kiesow concisely sums up why the news business and the meeting industry concentrate on audience rather than community. When media and meeting owners focus on short-term interests—big circulations and audiences, leading to higher status and consequential larger profits at the expense of “consumers”—it’s understandable that building community plays second fiddle to chasing media visibility and large audiences.
“What the internet changes is our relationship with the public we serve…What is the proper relationship for journalists to the public? We tend to think it’s manufacturing a product called content you should honor and buy…That’s a legacy of mass media; treating everybody the same because we had to…So we now see the opportunity to serve people’s individual needs. So that’s what made me think that journalism, properly conceived is a service.” —Interview of Jeff Jarvis by David Weinberger
A new definition of journalism: “…convening communities into civil, informed, and productive conversation, reducing polarization and building trust through helping citizens find common ground in facts and understanding.” —Jeff Jarvis, Facebook’s changes
Jarvis believes that journalism should serve people’s individual needs rather than manufacture content for the masses. In addition, journalism’s service should be about convening communities into civil, informed, and productive conversation.
Community versus audience
I began my first book with the research finding (and common observation) that people go to conferences to network and learn.
My later books (and many posts on this site) have emphasized the superiority of active over passive learning. Active learning occurs almost exclusively in community. Creating community at conferences around participant-driven content, therefore, creates a far more effective learning and connection-rich environment. As Kiesow illustrates for journalism, emphasizing community over audience also pays rich dividends for meeting attendees.
This brings us to a key question that is rarely openly discussed: Whom are conferences for? For decades, I have been championing peer conferences, where participants own their conferences. When the attendees are the owners, meeting designs that build and support community are the obvious way to go.
But, all too often, attendees are not the conference owners. Such owners, whether they be individuals or for-profit or non-profit entities, rarely have the same objectives for the event as the attendees. Making money for themselves or their organizations, increasing their status by running large events, promoting the ideas of a few people, or influencing the direction of a cultural or industry issue are their primary goals. Supporting attendee learning and connection is a secondary consideration.
The largely silent battles being fought about the future of journalism and meeting design are strikingly similar. Both realms can learn from each other.
I am delighted and honored to be featured in ‘Harnessing Serendipity,’ a unique book that explores the magic of facilitating connection that leads to collaboration. It includes the stories of 66 “talented connectors” who share insights on how they create transformative experiences. The primary professions of the collaboration artists the authors include are wide-ranging—to say the least. We are actors, impresarios, meeting designers, diplomats, teachers, musicians, creative directors, facilitators, management experts, sports team owners, fundraisers, journalists, experiential marketers, retreat leaders, event producers, philanthropists, coaches, and dealmakers!
I appear in the section on fostering community and belonging. However, the work of everyone included in this book incorporates most if not all of these approaches. They are all important modalities that support people coming together to meaningfully connect and collaborate.
The authors define a collaboration artist as follows:
A “Collaboration Artist” knows how to bring people together, enroll them in a common mission, create idea flow, and translate ideas into new solutions to solve problems and drive achievement of important goals. From modest challenges like moving a small corporate initiative forward, to eradicating a disease, whether in small or large endeavors…collaboration equals success!
—”An Invitation”, Harnessing Serendipity
My take on Harnessing Serendipity
Harnessing Serendipity celebrates the art of connection and collaboration. It’s an easy and absorbing read; you can dip into it and pick up little gems everywhere. The book opens your mind to what is possible, yet it’s sobering to realize that it just scratches the surface. I know quite a few of the featured collaboration artists. All of them have much more value to share than can be included in this book.
Perhaps the authors’ greatest gift is to introduce the reader to people who can change how the world thinks about convening, connecting, and collaborating. Certainly, that’s been my focus for the last forty years. I encourage all readers to explore working with any of the people featured in the book, and thank the authors for making us more visible, and perhaps a little more influential than we were before.
The corporate-owned platforms we rely on for professional and personal communities are increasingly failing to meet our needs. Major social media networks have become saturated with advertisements, data mining, and algorithmic controls that hinder authentic engagement. This shift poses significant threats to the integrity and autonomy of our online interactions. We need alternative platforms for communities and events.
The social media platforms we once relied on for authentic connection are disintegrating. My 
11 years ago, I pointed out that 
I recently attended a conference session that made me uneasy, and not in a constructive way. I won’t name names, but the session was centered around a specific program to increase “belonging” in organizations and included statistics such as:
