Get Together

Today we’re talking to Erin Wayne, or @Aureylian as she’s known on the internet. Six years ago, Erin was brought on as the first pure community hire at Twitch, a company that we cite often and respect for how transparent and collaborative they are with their community. If you know Twitch, you’re likely obsessed with it. The statistics are bonkers. More than a million people are on the site at any given moment! But if you don’t know Twitch, here’s the deal: Twitch is a platform that allows people to stream their lives. Twitch started as a place where people played video games while other enthusiasts watched along, but today has evolved to much more and Erin has been a part of broadening our perception of what we go to Twitch for. We’ll dig into the story of how Erin came to work at twitch, her early efforts there, and two remarkable community programs she’s led: Twitch ambassadors and meetups. You can find Erin on Twitch and Twitter @Aureylian.Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we’re talking to Catt Small, a product designer, game maker, developer and–most importantly for today’s podcast–one of the organizers of the Game Developers of Color Expo (GDOC).GDOC is an annual event that aims to create a new normal in games by putting creators of color at the forefront–showing off their projects, holding space for new conversations, and pushing games forward as an artform. This year, GDOC held their fourth event, which was hosted at the historic at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. More than 700 people rolled out, some flying from lands as far away as Australia, to attend talks and share the games they’ve been working on with each other inside a 3-story arcade.On the podcast we’ll hear more from Catt about why she and her collaborators started GDOC in the first place AND she’ll share her secrets about how they’ve been successful with finding sponsors.If you want to get involved with GDOC, go to their website: gamedevsofcolorexpo.com. You can find Catt on twitter @cattsmall.Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

We're interrupting our regular broadcast for a holiday spectacular! We'll get zany and share some behind-the-scenes snapshots from how our business (People & Company) has grown and changed this last year. //To learn more about our company, head to https://people-and.com/Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbookLearn more about the podcast: http://gettogether.fm

Today we’re talking to Lennon Flowers and Carla Fernandez, co-founders of The Dinner Party, a worldwide community of 20- and 30-somethings who have each experienced the loss of a loved one.Using the age old practice of breaking bread, Dinner Partiers are transforming life after loss from an isolating experience into one marked by community support, candid conversation, and forward movement.Today, The Dinner Party tables are regularly meeting in nearly 100 cities around the world, from Milwaukee to Tel Aviv. Most of their 275 tables gather at a host’s house over a potluck. To attend, everyone involved must fill out an application, which the team at HQ reviews by hand, carefully matching each person to a table near them.The Dinner Party is not about one-off dinners. These tables of 10-15 people meet every couple months, so the attendees build meaningful connection over time. If you want to get involved with The Dinner Party, maybe attending, donating, or volunteering, go to their website:  https://www.thedinnerparty.org/.Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we’re talking to Jay Herratti, the Executive Director of TEDx.TEDx began as an experiment. Ten years ago, Chris Anderson, the CEO of TED, made a big decision. He took all the videos from the exclusive, private TED conference and put them up online for free. That decision had huge consequences for TED, and Chris recalls from that moment, TED “became obsessed with this idea of radical openness, of giving everything away for free. That led to us giving away the TED brand itself, in the form of the TEDx conferences, a couple of years later.”People wanted to co-create with TED, not just sit back and listen in the audience. And TED gave them the chance with TEDx, volunteer hosted events of TED like talks that happen in communities around the world.The first TEDx conference was hosted at USC in March of 2009. Today, there are more than 3,000 TEDx licensees in 170 different countries. They put on 4,000+ TEDx events each year, which are attended by 600,000 people. More than 22,000 TEDx talks have been put on stage and recorded. Each year, those talks are viewed on the TED website more than 1 billion times!In our interview, we talk to Jay about the origin of TEDx and how the organization has evolved the support it offers TEDx organizers over the last 10 years.If you want to get involved with TEDx, head over to TED.com. You can also follow TEDx on Instagram at @tedx_official.Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we’re talking to Rafe Offer, CEO of Sofar Sounds (Sofar is an acronym for "Songs from a Room"), a community-led global movement that’s bringing the magic back to live music. Dissatisfied with a concert-going experience in 2009, Rafe and two friends decided to take action. They hosted an intimate concert in a flat in North London for eight people. At the event, music was the undeniable focus: "At our gigs you could hear the music rather than the clatter of drinks being served, the purring of phones or murmur of side-bar conversations." Three living-room concerts later, there were lines around the block of people hoping to attend. Soon, people living in other countries raised their hands to bring the format to their cities. Ten years later, there are 500 gigs per month in more than 300 cities worldwide, and more than 25,000 performers have put on Sofar shows - including big names from Leon Bridges and Billie Eilish to Benjamin Clementine and Karen O.In our interview, we talk to Rafe about the origin of Sofar and how community members around the world host these gigs, and how Sofar went from hobby to a full-fledged business. If you want to get involved with Sofar, maybe attending or helping to bring an event to your city, go to their website sofarsounds.com or check out videos from concerts on their YouTube channel.Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we’re talking to Camille Ricketts (@camillericketts), the superstar Head of Marketing for Notion.If you know what Notion is, you are likely obsessed with it.But if you don’t, here’s our best shot at explaining the software: Notion is an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, project management and task management. Most importantly, Notion is modular. People can remix and reuse the templates they offer to create their own powerful tools. That’s where the community comes in.Kev, Kai and I all have roots in the Bay Area, and when we rub elbows with folks in tech we’re always curious about who out there is using digital platforms to connect people in interesting and innovative ways. Recently, a number of people we respect have begun to singing the praises of Notion and Camille, so we’re so stoked to have her on the podcast.Since she started as Head of Marketing, she and her team have invested in Notion superusers, swelling their ranks and meetup numbers in the name of educating even more Notion-curious people about what the platform is capable of.  If you want to get involved with Notion, download their app or go to their website: notion.soGrab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook 

Are you ready for a good story about people power and the environment?Gravy because today we're talking to Jeff Kirschner who kickstarted a community of people around the world who are picking up the trash on our streets, parks, beaches, and more. They call themselves Litterati.Bailey met Jeff back in 2014, when she was still working at Instagram and Jeff’s Litterati hashtag was burgeoning on the site. People concerned about how we were leaving the planet were photographing the pieces of trash they were picking up everywhere from Oakland to the Great Wall of China. Since we met back then, Jeff built a standalone app for the Litterati community. With this new app, the community can catalogue exactly what piece of trash they’ve picked up where. Some of the members of the Litterati community pick up hundreds, even thousands, of pieces of trash EACH DAY.  To date, the cumulative impact is remarkable: 145,000+ people in the Litterati community have picked up 4.2 million pieces of trash. If you want to get involved with Litterati, download their app or go to their website: https://litterati.orgGrab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we're talking to Ruth Verhey, a clinical psychologist who works for the Friendship Bench team in Zimbabwe.Zimbabwe is a country of over 16 million people, but there are just twelve practicing psychiatrists. Twelve! These statistics are the norm in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the ratio of psychiatrists and psychologists to citizens is one for every 1.5 million and some countries don’t even have a single psychiatrist.And because of the history of trauma and war in the country, Ruth tells us that ~40% of Zimbabweans may be suffering from some form of depression and anxiety.Friendship Bench is beautiful community-sourced effort to close that gap. Grandmothers give their time to sit at benches and listen to people facing mental health challenges.Since 2006, Ruth, founder Dixon Chibanda, and their team have trained over 300 of the grandmothers in evidence-based talk therapy, which they deliver for free in more than 70 communities in Zimbabwe. In 2017 alone, the Friendship Bench, as the program is called, helped over 30,000 people there. The method has been empirically vetted—meaning this treatment works, in some studies its proven more effective than conventional treatments like anti-depressants—and has been expanded to countries beyond, including the US.This organization is all about training and capacity building, something we love. Asking others to help you with work - letting others participate - is what is so remarkable to us. It's hard for a lot of organizations to give up control, but in this case it has helped Friendship Bench reach more people than they ever could on their own.If you want to get involved with Friendship Bench, go to their website: www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org/Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook

Today we're talking to Krystie Mak and Katerina Jeng, the founders of Slant'd, a collective that celebrates Asian American identity, one story at a timeBack in 2017, a piece of advice from Eddie Huang inspired Krystie and Katerina: “If spaces don’t exist for you, kick the door down and create them.”Krystie and Kat didn’t see themselves in mainstream media. They wanted a place to share personal stories—not about celebrities, but told by real Asian-American peers. So they decided to kick down the door and create their own space.When they did, they unlocked a groundswell of energy. They set out to create a humble zine, which quickly turned into a magazine, backed by a passionate set of crowdfunders.When they hosted a magazine launch party, it blew up too. They turned that launch party into a thriving events series.In today's episode, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of how they got Slant’d off the ground, and how they’re exploring building Slant’d as a business now.If you want to get involved with Slant’d, go to their website slantd.media or follow them on Instagram @slantdmediaGrab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook