As Priya Parkers says: “You will have begun to gather with purpose when you learn to exclude with purpose. Over-inclusion is a symptom of deeper problems — above all, a confusion about why you are gathering and a lack of commitment to your purpose and your guests.”

Can gamification be powerful for incentivizing social connection, rather than group competition, meaningless engagement, or task completion?

This week, I don't want to invite you to ponder anything or do anything extra. I just want to invite you to breathe deeply.

We may need a mindset shift: If you show up and do the work, you will not get every opportunity or acknowledgment, but this is not a zero-sum game. We share our triumph. Scarcity is a reality, but it’s not the only reality.

Four Stanford data scientists analyzed thousands of conflicts on Reddit using public data from 2014–2017. As a result, they were able to suggest a data-backed model for mediating intercommunity conflict.

For almost two weeks now, I've been thinking of Anthony Bourdain every day. I've been trying to work out some of the lessons he has taught me so far about community through his work. There are many, I've realized. But what I want to share with you today is how I think his work serves as a model for the type of creative work we do: gathering people.

We cannot create rigid, homogeneous spaces where everyone believes the same thing. That's not a community; that's a cult. But we do have to put a stake in the ground: For which issues do we need to raise our voice and take a stand?

You can follow how-to posts all day, but you also need to answer these larger questions about your community work.

I hope that the future of community is splintered and that power becomes distributed. But what does that look like?

We need a framework for self-care in this profession. Here are 7 steps to take each day to take better care of #1.

We burn out because we lose all sense of ourselves. The shouts and demands and the subtle persuasion of our community members drowns out our voice. The business goals ignore what brought us to our work in the first place. We forget who we are.

Great community spaces create powerful recruiting engines.