So I have this idea that in the days before gated "communities", before suburbia and the car -- basically in any age but our own, people used to get together and do things. Talk about politics, go to church, attend salons, foment revolutions, things like that. But then I started noticing all these ways that people get together.

I was at PC Forum this week, a yearly conference about technology and business that takes place in Scottsdale AZ. At lunch I was telling Greg Elin of Fotonotes that even though I used to speak at a lot of conferences I didn't attend a lot of conferences. When I went to Doors in 2002 it was the first time I'd actually attended a conference. Stewart is a frequent conference attendee, so since marrying him I've been to more conferences, summits and industry shindigs than ever before. And they're fun. You see the same people over and over, and there are some people you see *only* at conferences. You become friends with people from all over the world. You talk about interesting things. The speakers and the attendees are often interchangeable, doing stints in both roles. At least the conferences I've attended. These are often organized by conference-giving corporations.

Then there are Festivals. These are often centred around the arts -- I've been to dozens of music festivals, art festivals and writers' festivals. These are more hierarchical -- the plebes gather round to watch an elite group of performers or artists strut their stuff. There is often an accompanying fair or market where you can get things appropriate to that particular festival -- beeswax candles, incense and toe rings, say, at a Folk Festival. There is usually an organization that puts these together, often a non-profit, but not always.

Then there are Gatherings, like Burning Man or Sturgis or the Rainbow Gathering where people come and do assorted stuff. These have various degrees of structure -- they are predominantly emergent and self-organizing, freeform, and are cousin to parties, the kind of things regular people have when they just want to get a lot of people together, themed or unthemed. Protests probably fit into this category too. And when I was a teenager and living in New York, outlaw parties were all the rage. You'd call a special number at a certain time and they would tell you where to go. It was usually an absurd destination such as the T.G.I. Friday's on 51st St. or the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building, or the uptown platform in the 79th Street Station. There an ad hoc party would take place til the cops broke it up.

These are all large, deliberate ways of getting people together. There are other less deliberate, less planned or less frequent types of gatherings that have a negative character like lynch mobs, looting, wilding.

Also at PC Forum I met Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup. Meetup was, famously, where Dean's supporters organized their meetings, and where chihuahua owners, knitters and, yes, Bush supporters also organized their in-person meetings. And Pierre Omidyar claimed that what Ebay was really about was connecting people to each other. I was skeptical of that.

I have a lot of ideas about community and gatherings but not enough time to write them down and think them through so I'm leaving this post as a placeholder to think more about it some time in the future when I have more leisure.

LINK | 10:24 PM | TB

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