We are going to run our own.
Why. This product exists because help does not travel between people who cannot see each other. A room solves that faster than any piece of software, and always has. Every institution of mutual help we studied began with people in the same place agreeing to something, and the ones that lasted kept meeting. Running our own is not marketing. It is the same mechanism as the product, done in person, and it is how we find out what the software is still getting wrong.
What we want out of it. Three things. Exchanges that actually happen, in the room, between people who did not know each other at the start of it. A record of what was hard to arrange, which is the only way the pricing gets better. And the arguments we are wrong about, said to our faces by people qualified to say them.
Who will be in the room. People who give things away regularly and have never been asked why. People who build the systems underneath this: matching, trust, valuation. People who run communities that already work and know exactly where they break. And people who disagree with the premise, which is the seat we will always keep free.
Two kinds. Small and local, a table of ten or twenty, in one city, run by whoever is there. And one a year worth travelling for.
Where and when. Nothing is scheduled yet. The first will be announced here and in the Newsroom.