One small design choice 🧩

Last year my family and I stayed at a resort in Costa Rica, four and a half hours by car from the nearest airport. To get anywhere on the property you walked a boardwalk through the trees. And every day on that boardwalk I passed the same couple heading toward the main hotel. One of them carried a jigsaw puzzle laid out flat on a proper puzzle board. The other carried the box with the loose pieces.

As an adamant carry-on-only traveler, I met them each day with equal parts awe, envy, and delight. Who wouldn't want to puzzle next to the ocean while on vacation? But who has the space to make that happen?!

Fast-forward to this July. I was in Seattle to run a client event and had a free afternoon, so I took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island to poke around the shops and make friends with a troll. Almost as soon as I got on the boat, I noticed two people at a table, well into a puzzle and clearly making progress. I thought, what a lovely way to spend a day, a boat, good scenery, a puzzle. But then again, this ride was only 35 minutes long, do they just go back and forth all day?

As I continued exploring the boat, I started seeing more tables, more puzzles, more people puzzling. I had missed the memo! It turns out this is a long-running thing on the Washington ferries: the puzzles stay with the boat. Whoever sits down adds a few pieces on the way across. You are not expected to finish. You contribute to something already in progress, then you get off at your stop and someone else takes your seat. (The puzzle tables were a hot commodity, by the way.)

One small design choice, and a commute becomes a collaboration.

I am definitely adding a puzzle corner to the next gathering I run.

Is it too soon to talk about the fall? 🍂

I find myself torn in August. One part of me will cling to the last few days of summer and ignore the fact that the sun is setting slightly earlier than it has been. While the other part gets excited when there is that slight crisp in the air, and the school supplies aisles are full of new notebooks and fun highlighter colors.

If you are blissfully still in the summer mood, feel free to skip over this next section, but if you (like me) are starting to feel that back-to-school itch, and ready to look at the fall here are a couple of things we are excited about:

The Gathering Design Sprint is happening again!
Kicking off September 14, with live sessions on Wednesdays at 11am ET.

For people bringing others together in person: retreats, recurring event series, team gatherings, celebrations, conferences. We walk the whole design process together, from emotional purpose through to what happens after everyone goes home. I'll hand over the templates and tools I use in my own work. You'll leave with a filled-in Gathering Playbook and a method you'll use for every gathering after this one.

The Community Strategy Sprint is all new and starts October 5th, with live sessions Thursdays at 11am ET.

For the folks building communities, memberships, and onboarding. Four weeks on the craft behind: purpose and audience, how people discover you and get oriented, what participation actually looks like (a lurker is not a bad word), and what makes people come back. Real examples of what has worked and what hasn't, metrics that fit your community instead of somebody else's.

🐦 Use the code EARLYBIRD to get $100 off each of them!

💎 Internet Treasures:

As someone who typically doesn't leave the house without at least one layer Jillian Bejtlich's post: Weather ≠ Climate deeply resonated. A great reminder that "The metrics we measure are almost always proxies. Treating them as endpoints is where community strategy goes wrong."
I loved this takeaway from Joshua Zerkel's newsletter: "Community participation looks lower than it is when a program only has one format for members to show up in." Making the case for why one community format will never reach everyone

Something to try

This post from Rebecca Courtney caught my eye this week. She asked a room full of facilitators to share their favorite activity, and then turned the answers into a 100+ activity playbook. What would your answer have been?

Until next time—keep gathering with intention,

—Christina

Founder, Community Council & BoardingPass