The Podcast Roundup is an introduction to ordinary people building extraordinary communities featured on the “Get Together” Podcast.
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Issue #8
Last year we hosted a holiday party for two.
Kevin and I indulged in some delicious Zenkichi sushi, crammed into a tiny booth near the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was lovely, but we spoke that day about what next year’s holiday party might look like. Would we have more collaborators and friends of P&C in the coming year? Could we host a big bash to celebrate with them all?
This year didn’t pan out like any of us expected, but we made sure to realize our holiday party dream this past week. Folks from all around the world joined us for a virtual “Holiday Spectacular” live recording of our podcast. To the attendees and all of those who built with team P&C this year, thank you. You made it a meaningful one for us.
We can’t wait til next year’s holiday party 😉
Onward ✌️
Bailey
🔊”Get Together” Podcast Year in Review
The Podcast Roundup is an introduction to ordinary people building extraordinary communities featured on the Get Together Podcast.
The people who get people together are sacred.
We humans are at our absolute best, and most fulfilled, when we feel we are part of a benevolent group that is pushing forward something we collectively care about—whether that’s personal, political, or professional. Community leaders facilitate that for us. They make it all possible.
In 2020, we heard from 47 community leaders in 40 episodes on the “Get Together” podcast.
Thank you to each and every one of you that trusted us with your story, and for doing the work you do to serve others.
Catt Small is one of the organizers of the Game Developers of Color Expo (GDOC), an annual event that aims to create a new normal in games by putting creators of color at the forefront. This year they pivoted and went virtual.
Erin Wayne (@Aureylian), was brought on as the first pure community hire at Twitch six (almost seven) years ago. More than a million people are on the site at any given moment and Erin has been part of broadening our perception of what we go to Twitch for.
Scott Amenta found himself as a Chief of Staff, a role that is quite new in tech-land, and, for Scott, felt somewhat undefined. He decided to seek out other Chiefs of Staff so he could learn tips and tricks. COS Tech Network, a community of people working as Chiefs of Staff in companies around the world, was born out of the search.
Nitika Chopra has been living with severe psoriasis since age 10 and was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis at age 19, which made it difficult for her to walk. She began speaking openly about her experience and organized Chronicon, a conference that brings together hundreds of people with chronic illnesses.
Kelsa Trom is Head of Programming at NEW INC, the first museum-led "cultural incubator." In its sixth year, NEW INC has over 100 creative entrepreneurs as members, with 175 mentors supporting them and 350 alumni.
Carly Ayres is the founder of "100s Under 100,” a Slack group brings together a vetted collection of designers to share resources, insights, and feedback. We checked in with Carly and talked about how we find meaningful community online in the time of Coronavirus and self-isolation.
Dr. Gbemisola Boyede is the founder of Ask The Paediatricians, an online medical education community that connects 580,000 parents in Nigeria with medical questions to more than 2,000 doctors, nurses, and experts.
Tim Courtney was the steward behind LEGO IDEAS, a crowdsourcing platform that allows superfans to submit and vote on new ideas they want LEGO to bring to market. If you've ever played with a Minecraft LEGO set, a Big Bang-themed kit, or a collection of women of NASA, you have the LEGO IDEAS community to thank.
Casper ter Kuile is the co-founder of a 70-chapters reading community around the Harry Potter texts. He also has a deep knowledge of ritual which he shares with the world in his new book, The Power of Ritual.
Aundy Crenshaw is the COO/CMO/CFO of Dirtybird Records, a house music label that is truly building with its fanbase. She has gathered a group of artists that feel like family and fans that are their greatest advocates.
Kuik Shiao-Yin is the co-founder of The Thought Collective in Singapore and two-time Nominated Parliamentarian. She has committed herself to develop the "social and emotional capital" of the young nation and in the process found cognitive clarity as a community builder.
LiJia Gong & Joelle Berman claim there is no such thing as a giving circle expert but they are the experts in our eyes. LiJia started Radfund, a giving circle with friends that pledged to pool their money to support organizers in NYC doing the work to challenge structural inequality and fight for racial and economic justice. Joelle formerly served as the founding Executive Director of Amplifier, a global network of 125+ giving circles inspired by Jewish values.
Pei-Ru Ko & Jovida Ross are humanizing the food system through storytelling and generous listening at Real Food Real Stories (RFRS), a Bay Area nonprofit. Pei-Ru is the founder and Jovida currently serves as the Executive Director.
Laura Gluhanich is the co-founder of Silent Book Club and has done what some may say is seemingly impossible—created a community in silence.
Ankit Shah started an organization called Tea with Strangers which has hundreds of hosts who have brought over 50,000 people in 25 cities. Ankit has brought his community-first mindset to work at Facebook and Airbnb, and also in his personal life, creating Silent Hike Society and weekly neighborhood gatherings.
Hema Karunakaram & Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani are two of the volunteers behind Letters for Black Lives. They joined hundreds of first-generation Americans and Canadians to draft templates for conversations with elders around anti-blackness and racism.
Justin Connelly and Emily McNeil have codified a knitting practice that visualizes temperature data into a shared framework and language that cohesively illustrates the history of climate change. They call their effort Tempestry Project.
Ivan Cash is an interactive artist and filmmaker whose people-driven art projects—emails transcribed by hand, conversations with strangers on airplanes, a collection of home videos during a pandemic (A Social Distance)—break a social code and take us below the surface-level.
Elena Favilli’s book, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, pushed the boundaries of traditional publishing by building with, not for. They co-constructed the collection of stories with the help of 60 collaborators from around the world and $1.2 million from crowd funders, making the book the most crowdfunded campaign in literary history.
Lindsay Russell and her team spearheaded a novel effort within Facebook’s walls: investing in the community of power admins who were essential to the product’s success.
Kat Vellos is the author of We Should Get Together. As a user experience designer, she uses her trade to help people connect authentically, making friendship more “user-friendly.”
Bree Nguyen is a Mariah Carey superfan turned “Lamb” community cultivator who at 16-years figured out one thing that music executives were unclear how to venture into: internet fandom.
Berna Anat is bringing humor and hype to personal finance. She is a “financial hype woman” who is leading Hella Helpful, a free workshop that sparked a community of BIPOC and first-gen children of immigrants who talk finance.
Shana Sumers is the Head of Community at HER social app, the largest community and dating app for LGBTQ+ womxn and queer people. She has helped create a radically safe, welcoming space online.
Cindy Au has over a decade of experience building communities. She built the early communities at Kickstarter, Zagat, and now, Brainly, the world's largest peer-to-peer learning community by walking in the users’ shoes.
Laura Nestler built the early Yelp community and is currently VP of Community at Duolingo. After 15 years in community work, Laura offered us this insight: when you growth hack with incentives, you erode authenticity.
Isis Miller is the Community and Events Manager at Black Girls CODE, a nonprofit organization that provides young Black girls a tech education and access to peers who share their passions. She is training and connecting the coders of the future.
Fiona Monga is Head of Writer Partnerships and Nadia Eghbal leads Writer Experience at Subtack. Having worked in publishing and at Instagram, Fiona understands how creators connect directly with growing audiences. Through Nadia’s past experience working at Github and writing Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, she’s developed an appreciation for the power of documentation to scale know-how.
Jonathan Carey is the Associate Places Editor and Community Headmaster at Atlas Obscura. Atlas Obscura is one of the few community-driven travel platforms, crowdsourcing the world’s hidden wonders.
Nate Nichols and Steffi Behringer run a creative production house, Palette Group. Over the past year, they have met uncertainty with community building—creating the Freelancers Cyber Summit to make sense of the ad industry during the pandemic and Allyship & Action in response to George Floyd’s death. They are a rad duo, partners in business and life, that offer insight into the role of storytelling, brand, and live events to bring people together for collective action.
Joe Robinson has mastered the art of the meetup. He founded Live Music SF and led Silicon Valley NewTech, a sister event to New York Tech and the first-ever series on Meetup. Now he runs Designers + Geeks, a mashup of his personal interests in design, art, and technology.
Charlie Todd has been leading Improv Everywhere’s weird, wonderful prank missions for 19 years. Improv Everywhere is a comedic performance art group based in New York City. They aim to delight strangers through positive pranks.
Kibi Anderson is an award-winning Emmy producer and the former president of Red Table Talk where she empowered the show's viewers to continue having raw, honest conversations in their own lives.
Steve Garguilo led a grassroots transformation of the culture of Johnson & Johnson, the fifth-largest company in the world, early in his career. Now a partner at Cultivate, he is helping other companies spark culture shifts from the ground up.
Jodianne Beckford created Noire Girls Plant, “from a dark place of feeling numb.” At a low point, she found plants were giving her joy. When she couldn’t find the space she craved, she decided to create it herself. That first event sparked what today is called Noire Girls Plants, a community of growers, in aspects of health, prosperity, and nature.
Onyango Otieno was the victim of sexual assault in his early twenties and found he had nowhere to turn. In Kenya, as in many other societies, the patriarchal structure turns a blind eye to the sexual experiences of men. Onyango now hosts “Nyumbani,” a WhatsApp-based mental health support group for men who have experienced sexual assault.
Carla Fernandez joined the podcast again, but this time for a live interview. She brought along Mary Horn, community manager at The Dinner Party, a worldwide community of 20- and 30-somethings who have each experienced the loss of a loved one. Together they have transitioned Dinner Parties taking place around the world to virtual tables, and added 70 new tables in the process.
Anna McAfee put up a simple post on LinkedIn inviting neighbors to a meetup in her hometown of Coffs Coast, Australia. That post sparked a movement called #LinkedInLocal that, at its height, had more than 1,000 hosts leading events in 650+ cities across 92 countries.
Nicole a'Beckett is the co-founder and CEO of SameSide, a platform making grassroots political action more accessible. They are supercharging hosts to incorporate civic engagement within existing communities.
Ceyenne Doroshow is the founder and CEO of G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society). In June 2020, Ceyenne announced that G.L.I.T.S. had raised more than $1 million to secure stable housing for Black Trans New Yorkers, a dream 30 years in the making.
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We published a book, host a podcast, and coach organizations on how to make smarter bets with their community-building investments.