Conversation

· May 17

from the Cotswolds, a place of outrageous fantasy. At a sort of “walking conference”. An outstanding format worth spreading: hike 5-15mi/day—trails encourages long 1:1 chat—then facilitate whole-group sessions over dinner. (See amazing @chrismichel & @craigmod for more

) twitter.com/chrismichel/st…

(Of course, a normal conference could achieve this, too, but the constraint of walking enforces a small group size and conversation over presentation)

Just by comparison, my normal venue for long conversation is walks around SF, or dinners. That's ordinarily 1-4 hours, avg ~2. So getting 50 hours of contact time takes ~20 events. (And of course there's catch-up overhead…)

But a weekly event with a new contact is rare. Even meeting monthly is pretty rare. Getting 20 walks/dinners often takes me years! Occasionally there'll be day-long trips, etc, but those are exceptions.

This is of course part of the classic argument for coliving. But ideally you want good methods for rapidly spending a lot of time with new people who seem interesting, in addition to spending many hundreds of hours with housemates.

It feels pretty weird to have a couple chats with someone, then invite them on a week-long vacation together. Most people only take a few weeks of vacation a year; it's a big, vulnerable ask. But it's somehow much less intense to invite them to a week-long *conference*.

Walking the Cotswolds, Walking Japan

Along very different lines, see also

@craigmod

's reflections on the format.

craigmod.com

Notes on a week of walking through rural England, comparing it to rural Japan

4:35 AM · Jun 21, 2022Twitter Web App

Replying to

This format sounds wonderful!

Oana Carja

@oanacarja