"Get Together" Podcast Roundup
Interviews with Charlie Todd founder of Improv Everywhere, Kibi Anderson former president of Red Table Talk, and Steve Garguilo partner at Cultivate
The Podcast Roundup is an introduction to ordinary people building extraordinary communities featured on the “Get Together” Podcast.
________
Issue #6Greetings friends👋
You may have heard that this week, we had an intimate live interview with Carla Fernandez and Mary Horn, two of the remarkable leaders of The Dinner Party.
The Dinner Party is a community for grieving 20- and 30-somethings. Mary and Carla are part of a team that connects groups of 12-15 people who share a similar age and loss experience for peer mentorship and support. They’ve served well over 10,000 grieving young people to date.
I first met Carla, who co-founded The Dinner Party, and her partner Ivan Cash (who has also graced our podcast) at a wedding in Oakland last September. I can vividly remember chatting with them around a fire pit in the backyard of a Mexican restaurant, surrounded by fellow revelers. It’s a memory of an experience that feels far from possible in today’s world.
That night, I asked Carla if she’d be on our podcast. She obliged, and I’ve spent the last year gushing about what I learned from her and The Dinner Party. Here’s that first interview:
I’ve brought The Dinner Party up as a case study for clients on the power of having a specific WHO and WHY in the digital world we live in. Many Dinner Partiers once felt they were the only person in the world who had lost a parent or sibling at such a young age, but The Dinner Party has connected more than 10,000 people just like them.
I’ve shared their website as a case study for how to communicate about your community’s shared activity.
I’ve explained how they’ve launched more than 400 tables not by managing their community, but by creating more leaders who they call hosts.
And I’ve lauded the power of hand-matching table attendees to get their momentum going and transform a set of strangers into a community of peers.
The Dinner Party brought me inspiration in a pre-COVID world. So I was curious–how have they navigated a pandemic?
On Friday, a small group of us gathered to hear the answer directly from Carla and Mary. (If you missed the live interview, we took thorough notes.) “What does the future of The Dinner Party look like?” we asked. “Will your community go back to in-person dinner parties?”
Here’s what Carla and Mary shared:
While we’re not going to give up in-person, we’re learning that there are a lot of things that are better virtually.
So I don’t think we’ll ever go back to only in-person gatherings. In the future, it’ll be a “both/and.”
For The Dinner Party, a big plus of virtual gatherings has been expanded access. Where traveling to a stranger’s house for a meal may have been prohibitive for some in the past, virtual tables lower the barrier to entry. That’s been valuable for many Dinner Partiers, such as parents with young kids, people with physical disabilities, or people who live in remote areas.
Virtual tables have also allowed space for more specific connections. The Dinner Party is able to group tables around affinities, not just geography, when tables meet virtually. That means who share a certain identity (e.g. they are LGBTQI) or a similar experience (e.g. people who’ve lost a loved one to homicide) can find each other.
Thus, the pandemic has brought both challenges and growth to The Dinner Party. COVID-19 forced them to transform, and in doing so they’ve evolved. Yes, in-person will continue, but now there’s a thriving virtual option as well.
I suspect the future will be a “both/and” for so many of us. We will take our learnings about the new spaces we’ve forged, both for ourselves and our communities, with us into the future.
We’ve talked so much about what we’ve lost in the past year. After interviewing Carla and Mary, I’m wondering if perhaps now it is time to also reflect on how we’ve grown.
Onward ✌️
Bailey
Listen to our interview with The Dinner Party about their transition during the pandemic:
🔊Podcast Roundup
The Podcast Roundup is an introduction to ordinary people building extraordinary communities featured on the Get Together Podcast.
Crowdsourcing scenes 🤣
In August 2001, Charlie Todd moved to New York City with an interest in acting and comedy. He didn’t have immediate access to a stage, so he started creating in public spaces by hosting undercover performances.
Charlie documented his first undercover performances on a blog he called Improv Everywhere. Over the past two decades, Charlie has staged hundreds of “missions” involving tens of thousands of undercover performers and shared them on YouTube, garnering millions of views. Highlights include making time stop at Grand Central Terminal, a mass no-pants subway ride, and letting random strangers conduct a world class orchestra in the middle of Manhattan.
Editorial note from Maggie:
Charlie used the term called “crowdsourcing creativity”–giving people room to exercise their own creativity. I love this concept.
You see it come to life his Grand Central prank. The Improv Everywhere team asked 200 strangers to freeze in place in Grand Central Station. Participants were allowed to freeze however they wanted. People chose to freeze in place kissing, one person spilled a briefcase of documents, someone froze while eating an ice cream cone. People came together to create a prank, rather than just execute someone else’s vision.
🎧 Listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Apple, Google, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS.
Role modeling honesty ❣️
Many of us may know “Red Table Talk” as a TV show that Jada Smith, her daughter Willow, and mother Adrienne host. What you may not know is that Red Table Talk sparked thriving grassroots communities of viewers.
Women in cities around the world started their own “Red Table Talks”—literally dressing their own tables with red tablecloths and gathering with strangers to experience the honest conversations that the Smiths role model on the show for themselves. Kibi Anderson is an award-winning Emmy producer and the former president of Red Table Talk.
Editorial note from Bailey:
I met Kibi through a mutual friend about a year ago, and I immediately vibed with her. She’s open, confident, knows herself.
Kibi asked me to interview her for a Women in Media conference keynote she gave a few months back about her experience with the Red Table Talk community, and after that I was like, “Kibi, why the heck haven’t we had you on our podcast talking about this!” Kibi is a community building natural. You’ll hear how she’s able to building a business with a clear sense of community building principles in the podcast.
🎧 Listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Apple, Google, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS.
Instigating grassroots culture change 🧩
Early in his career, Steve did the (seemingly) impossible. He led a grassroots transformation of the culture of Johnson & Johnson, the fifth largest company in the world.
Frustrated by the pace and challenges of big company culture, Steve decided to do something he’d done in college: host a TEDx. He hosted the first J&J TEDx event at a bar and invited fellow employees to share their research, wild ideas, and learn from one another. Soon employees at other offices around the world wanted to host their own. By the time Steve was done, 23,000 people at Johnson & Johnson had engaged in a TEDx and he had a new title: “Head of Instigation at Johnson & Johnson.” Today Steve continues this work shifting big company cultures from the ground up as a partner at Cultivate.
Editorial note from Kevin:
Since the pandemic started, People & Company has been taking on more strategy work with orgs hoping to intentionally develop communities with employees.
Steve’s experience underscores one of our tenants which is: you can’t fake the funk. Genuine passion attracts passionate people. That’s what Steve encountered at J&J. He craved a community that shared ideas in an encouraging environment, and he found others that cared about that too.
🎧 Listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Apple, Google, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS.
More on all things People & Company and Get Together here.
We published a book, host a podcast, and coach organizations on how to make smarter bets with their community-building investments.