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My very loose sense on this was developed after a lot of perspective shifts via fortunately living in a lot of different spots in the US. I think these small orgs are still around, are needed and I wish they were easier to find, but feels like finding them filters through: - If it’s useful, it involves coastal tech people so to speak, and you can wade through many unknown gates to include “community” that’s actually sponsored marketing: often seems to be small group digital communities on Signal with shared thematic backgrounds of the members. Pair these with meeting people IRL when you can via travel and find time, it’s quite a useful network that’s all built digitally at first. - If it’s fulfilling but low stakes, and peer-oriented: a lot of this is in infosec still via hacker culture, but overall I think you have to get outside of your economic class and bubble to find it generally, esp if you’re a tech person. In tech and similar careers, every “small group dinner” under the hood feels like 6-7 men making $550tc and trying to hit 650tc, or a group trying to attract those people. Dodgeball league for young professionals or not, career management feels very often in the background. It doesn’t feel authentic, or at least feel safe, because it likely isn’t. Groups of people still do go fishing together, hiking together, cities sponsor makerspaces, community centers offer wood working classes, small group s get together to dicusss ideas, people have standing brunches… but it’s really hard to find this stuff in authentic contexts if first you’re not looking for it over some time, second you can’t suffer through being into the things you’re into alone, until you find someone doing the same, and third *if you city or area doesn’t have a moat to keep out, or at bay, modern, massively networked economies and what I think it tends to incentivize - the small org is in the cheap but functional community center, that is sponsored by a city that cares about it, that is advertised via the community radio station, that is in a city not under water by angry people at the exploding CoL… I found 1 city out of 6-7 that still offers the latter input, and it to me feels is the lynchpin. |