likemind in the New York Times
There is a nice New York Times Sunday Styles piece on likemind (its already on the web). No matter how much people talk about the decline of newspapers, it’s kind of awesome to see something you’ve created under the heading of the New York Times. The article has some nice quotes from attendees around the world and is generally pretty balanced (the gist of the story is that it’s networking but not networking).
I particularly liked this part with quotes from Ethan Watters: “These workers need new ways to connect, said Ethan Watters, who studied young urban professionals in his book, ‘Urban Tribes.’ They live far from their families, he said, and work in highly fluid industries where co-workers change continuously. Unlike professionals from an earlier generation, they marry later and have weak ties to organized religious or community groups … ‘They have no old family, no new family, so there’s a vacuum there, and since we’re social creatures, the vacuum gets filled with things like this,’ he said.”
Hi, I'm 
Awesome, but I’m a little weirded out by the general tone of denial about networking – if people are sneaking each other business cards and using likemind as a spot to cruise for dates, how is this any different from the businessman networking & card-exchange events so viciously lampooned by Kids In The Hall?
My feeling is that a context with legs needs to be for something rather than against something, so it’s been interesting seeing so many new social contexts label themselves with a preceding negative: “un” conference, “not” networking, “bar” (as opposed to “foo”) camp, etc. Why do you think that is? Is there some deeper current that’s surfacing here?
completely awesome mate.
beersphere next. zero networking, only drinking ;)
@Mike: Thanks for the comment Mike.
Yeah, I was a little wierded out by that as well. In specific regards to likemind, I mostly think that’s the thread that the reporter followed. The simplest way to define something like this is in opposition to those evening networking mixers. But that was never our intention. likemind is purposely vague, which doesn’t work out all that well for a story. I tried to talk to him a little about the laws of open space — http://www.openspaceworld.com/brief_history.htm — (which he mentioned briefly) and were a huge help in me understanding how all the right people turned up for that first likemind. Generally I think when people enquire about likemind (and almost anything) their first instinct is to try and box it in. We’ve always kept things purposely vague on the site and when describing likemind to others (at least for me) it’s always just a place to drink coffee and chat with interesting folks. As the name symbolizes, it’s more about similarities than difference.
As for the larger question of defining things in opposition, the unconference point is interesting but I don’t know that it’s any different than anything else. Opposition parties and groups always start by defining how they’re different and then eventually settle in (or not) to what makes them them. I actually think that the biggest problem of the democratic party over the last twenty years has been their inability to define themselves in any terms other than their opposition to the republican party. In the marketing world this happens with challenger brands (Reebok springs to mind immediately), who feel like the only way to win is to explain how they’re different than the other guy. Reebok ran a campaign last year called “Run Easy” which was in direct opposition to Nike’s “Just Do It” and specifically some ads they ran with athletes in pain. More recently Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign is clearly a reaction to Apple’s ads and almost feel like they’re a bunch of Microsoft dude’s trying to convince themselves it’s okay to use a PC (which is amazing since they are the vast majority).
Anyway, just some thoughts. Interesting question. Thanks dude.
@Faris: Thanks dude, looking forward to drinking at beersphere.
The Open Space article looks like a great read!
I find it interesting that you have a different view of the events than the reporter. I can see how a journalist might be interested in the discontinuity narrative, the idea of a break from the past. Seems like in this case, people want to network, but they don’t want to “network”, they want to go to conferences, but they don’t want to “go to conferences”, it’s all in the opposition to the scare quotes rather than any particular standard of behavior!
I appreciate that you bring up this year’s DNC. A friend was telling me about doing regressive imagery analysis on 2004′s convention speeches (http://brevity.org/code/ridcat/) and found that there were only two speakers who used metaphorical imagery suggestive of forward motion, hope, and aspiration: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barack Obama. Can it be any surprise that these two continue to ride high even now?
Have you ever read Whyte’s The Organization Man, btw? There’s a lot of relevant material there about the durability of initial conditions and the social circumstances surrounding rootlessness.
Hey, this is awesome! Likemind is up and running in Mumbai. Nice! Who knew? Maybe I should go and check it out next month. Congrats!