GreenPill VDAO Ep.4 : Pop-Up Cities, Membership Models & Network Societies with Chance McAllister
Dec 1, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Chance McAllister, a researcher and builder focused on pop-up villages and community formation, dives into what makes network societies tick. He shares the interesting origin of pop-up cities and how a simple Discord link sparked a high-talent online community. Chance contrasts formal safety nets with informal social support, and highlights lessons from the Mennonites on building belonging and negotiation tactics. He encourages exploring deeper connections among digital nomads and advocates for pragmatic approaches in creating lasting communities.
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Network Societies Over State
- Network states are an umbrella for organizations and movements that give people agency to make change.
- Chance McAllister prefers the term "network societies" to capture this broader, ethos-driven phenomenon.
Accidental High-Talent Discord
- Chance created a Discord from a comment thread and about 200 people trickled into a high-talent, self-filtering corner of the internet.
- That accidental community contained people with deep domain expertise, like contributors to Estonia's e-residency program.
Pop-Ups As Social Tie Generators
- Pop-up villages appear to generate social ties that digital nomads often lack.
- Chance researched mutual aid and informal safety nets to understand how pop-ups might recreate those social infrastructures.
