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Author Cal Loo is a serial social entrepreneur, the founder and executive director of a nonprofit company, a self-professed techie at heart, a 30-year tech consultant, and an ordained ceremonialist. He has been blogging about living more intentionally and navigating major life transitions since 2015. In this final piece in a ten-part series Cal summarizes the key messages of the other nine parts and brings it all together with the imminent introduction of the Eos Community Connections Portal – an online community connections portal unlike any other.  Redefining online community – sounds simple enough, right? It isn’t. Over the course of my last nine posts on this topic I’ve used over 12,500 words to introduce key elements of and platforms for online community, and explore the good and not-so-good things about them. Am I simply too verbose? Well, maybe - but I’ve tried to get straight to the point in all of the posts. If you’re interested in a concise summary of those nine posts, dear reader, then check out my synopsis at the end of of this one - but if you’d rather just jump straight to the punch line on this series then here it is: World, meet Eos! The Eos Community Connections Portal - scheduled to launch in December of 2022 - is the culmination of over three years of work by an established non-profit company to develop and deliver a uniquely powerful community-building and community-support system that’s also integrates many compelling features that offer a fresh, safe alternative to conventional social media, event management, discussion forum, blog, and story sharing platforms. We guarantee to never sell Eos user data or allow advertisements to paid accounts on the platform, and all users agree to abide by our Good Human Code of Conduct (™) or risk losing their accounts. The primary goal is to build better community by providing a place to connect online with other people and organizations in a safer, more authentic way. If you happen to be in a city where we’ve already established a local footprint, you’ll find that our in-person spaces operate on the same principles of community orientation, safety, respect, and integrity. I’ll wrap this series up with a simple invitation: come check out Eos for yourself on the TILC website or at eosportal.org and see if it feels like a community you’d like to be part of. It isn’t perfect and we’ll be continually evolving it to best meet the needs of people and communities across all of North America. Come be part of something amazing with us!  Looking back on the previous nine posts, I’ve covered a lot of ground in this series about redefining online community. Here’s a concise summary of the earlier posts:
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Author Cal Loo is a serial social entrepreneur, the founder and executive director of a nonprofit company, a self-professed techie at heart, a 30-year tech consultant, and an ordained ceremonialist. He has been blogging about living more intentionally and navigating major life transitions since 2015. In this ninth piece in a ten-part series Cal explores the concepts of online safety, security and privacy. In the final post he’ll close the series by introducing the Eos Community Connections Portal – an online community connections portal unlike any other. Online safety - a complex concept to define and a challenging one to deliver. The internet is an amazing place, but it can also be an unforgiving, hostile place. While it’s great to stay connected with friends on social media, get the most recent news updates anytime/anywhere, and use your smartphone to find virtually anything you want, there are many downsides. Toxic content, rude interactions, bullying, gambling and addictions are all realities in the online space, and in extreme cases they can lead to threats of physical danger and violence that end up in the headlines - as in the example mentioned in this 2018 Washington Post article by Rachel Hatzipanagos. The reality of these experiences can be harmful to the mental health and emotional well-being of participants, and as I mentioned in part 2 of this series, many people are ditching their social media accounts because of it. If you’re going to be online - and most people are in some shape or form - then you need to take steps to protect yourself from the bad stuff. Esmée Telman’s April 2022 Mashable article gives five practical tips for staying safe online and it’s worth a quick read. There’s a lot more to it of course, but this is at least a place to start. The fact that all this online yuck exists means that a “safe online community” like the one we’re building at The Intentional Living Collective needs to effectively and transparently protect its members from it. Actually, the very concept of safety - online and in person - is a challenging one to define, but it’s so vitally important that one of our core values at The Intentional Living Collective directly addresses it. Regarding safety we say “We are safe: We speak and act toward all members in ways that safeguard or protect them from harm or danger of all kinds - including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.” Saying it isn’t enough though - we also have policies and procedures in place to back it up. Our approach starts with the fact that only registered members that have accepted our Good Human Code of Conduct can either post content in our platform or reply to posts by members. Our code of conduct is pretty simple and clearly defines eight shared-community values that add up to just being, well, good human beings towards each other. Our transparent and fair content flagging and moderation policy and processes are explicitly designed to safeguard and protect members from experiencing unfriendly words and unsafe actions from anyone on our platform, and people that don’t live up to their agreement will lose their accounts. Importantly, our processes begin with facilitated member to member conflict resolution, and then adds layers of escalation support that ultimately ends up at a “Member Escalations Team,” made up of respected community members, for a final decision.  The difference between feeling safe and feeling comfortable. When it comes to online safety there’s an important difference between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable. While it’s important to help people feel safe, it’s also important to not take things so far as to disallow or even discourage content or interactions that have good intentions but might push someone’s comfort zone a bit. In their book The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff do a great job of explaining that many in today’s society mistake feelings of discomfort for being unsafe, and how this can lead them to calling for the canceling of anything or anyone that pushes their boundaries. Sadly this can also result in an artificially sterile - but “safe” - interpersonal environment, and the loss of meaningful opportunities for important learning and growth. I witnessed this first-hand in a men’s group meeting over a decade ago, and it’s something I keep in mind even now. I was active in the Mankind Project at the time and we were in a closed-circle, safe-space discussion about some challenging personal things that we were all working on at the time. One of the members was talking about the work he was doing to overcome toxic-male programming passed down through his father, describing how his father had called him a “pussy” for the way he handled a situation and told him that he needed to “man up!” One of the newer members was listening to the story and raised his hand, calling “safety” - which is a way of saying that he didn’t feel safe in the situation. One of the more senior members recognized that hearing the story had triggered something inside the newer member, and calmly asked him what about hearing the story was an actual threat to his physical, mental, or emotional safety. Upon thinking it through, the newer member realized that there was nothing in the room, in that moment, that could actually hurt him and so he could “safely” continue to be part of the conversation. Similarly, in online community space it takes some work sometimes to recognize which elements are truly unsafe and which ones are merely uncomfortable - and then to know how to deal with them appropriately.  Online security and privacy considerations According to Wikipedia, data security means protecting digital data, such as those in a database, from destructive forces and from the unwanted actions of unauthorized users,[1] such as a cyberattack or a data breach. I could list endless examples of recent data breaches; it seems I’m constantly either reading stories about data getting stolen from a social media site, or hearing from my credit card company that my data had been stolen and I need to replace my card. Because I don’t trust that my data is secure, I’m reasonably careful about how much of my data I put into my online profiles. With that in mind, we’re designing the Eos Community Connections Portal to be highly secure, so our members can trust that their personal, private information stays private. To ensure privacy, we started by committing that we would never sell our members’ information to anyone, and we decided that we wouldn’t host advertisers on our platform at all. To minimize security risks, we chose a platform host that offers sophisticated security features, and implemented them across our site. We have also developed solid data management practices to lock things down as much as possible. While it isn’t possible to absolutely guarantee that data privacy or security incursions won’t happen, we can feel pretty good that we’re doing everything we can to prevent them and keep our members’ data safe.  Coming up next: Bringing it all together with the Eos Community Connections Portal. Finding and holding a very delicate balance … To be honest I’ve been looking forward to writing about this particular topic since I first envisioned this ten-part blog series. I’ve known from the very beginning of the Eos project that we’d be challenged to strike a delicate balance between providing an assuredly safe, healthy space for people to share their experiences, thoughts, ideas, and feelings while also encouraging people to show up in their most authentic way. Sometimes thoughts and feelings can be messy, and being real with people can sometimes mean saying things they don’t necessarily want to hear. Creating such a space to me ultimately comes down to a few clear guiding principles: community orientation, safety, respect, and integrity. Not coincidentally, those happen to be part of the core value set of The Intentional Living Collective, and they’re four of the core tenets of the Good Human Code of Conduct upon which the Eos content curation and member dispute processes are based. More on that later - but for now I’ll summarize this to say that all members agree to a.) value all member voices and strive for productive and healthy collaborations between all, b.) behave toward all members in ways that help them feel safe in all situations, c.) let their actions and words reflect our values and strive to meet our commitments, and d.) treat all members with respect at all times and use language that reflects appreciation of their wisdom and perspective. Further, all members agree to hold themselves and each other accountable for following these principles and we’ve built fair and transparent processes to help enforce them when needed.  So about that first amendment … Freedom of speech is the right to express opinions without government restraint, and in the United States the First Amendment guarantees free speech - though it also places limits on this freedom. I thought the SCOTUS decision in Texas v. Johnson was particularly interesting. The First Amendment applies only to state actors, and there is a common misconception that it prohibits anyone from limiting free speech, including private, non-governmental entities. A private organization can and in some cases should place limits on speech in the interest of protecting its members - if it’s done in fairness and with respect to all involved. Freedom of expression is considered by the United Nations (UNESCO) to be the cornerstone of democracy. International human rights laws protect freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. In Article 19 of the UDHR, it states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Even though there are fundamental laws protecting freedom of expression, there are multiple international laws that expand on the UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically concerning the safety and protection of individuals. For example, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) addresses hate speech through the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and monitors its implementation by State parties. Also article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibits national, religious, or racial hatred that incites violence, discrimination, or hostility.  So who decides what content or speech is and isn’t acceptable? Oh man, there’s a lot to explore here. If you want to explore this topic in more depth than I can possibly cover in a single blog post, please feel free to dive into this wiki on freedom of speech and expression. For now I’ll just touch on a couple of specific subtopics - obscenity and hate speech. Obscenity. In a 1964 case about pornography, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, famously said that, although he could not precisely define pornography, "I know it when I see it". Later, the Court decided Miller v. California (1973) and said that a work is obscene if: (a) 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest ... (b) ... the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) ... the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Interestingly, “Community" standards—not national standards—are applied to determine whether allegedly obscene material appeals to the prurient interest and is patently offensive. The standards of the Eos community, then, are the ones that will guide us as to what’s offensive and what isn’t. Hate speech. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation". Laws against hate speech can generally be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The line between free speech and hate speech is a tricky one, as evidenced when the ACLU defended a neo-nazi group over freedom of speech. In the case of Eos, our content guidelines will serve both of those purposes - and not just in cases of obscenity or hate speech.  Community standards and content curation The concept of “Community standards” seems like a pretty reasonable place to start, right? Except … someone has to define what those standards are. In defining the Eos “Good Human Code of Conduct” (GHCOC) we start with the understanding that we’re all unique individuals and that none of us want to be unnecessarily controlled or told how to behave. To that end, we knew it was important to give “clear enough” guidance on what is and isn’t okay while providing enough room for individuals to express themselves in their most authentic way. We based the GHCOC on the eight core values of The Intentional Living Collective: community, safety, integrity, respect, fairness, supportiveness, constructiveness, and organicness (yes, that’s really a word) and we put it right into the membership agreement that everyone signs before they can post any content on Eos. To reiterate - anyone can view the non-private content that’s posted in Eos, but only members that agree to behave according to the GHCOC can post content. While that may sound prescriptive on face value, I believe that this is the most fair and enforceable way to create a safe space for all members. So if all members agree to follow the GHCOC when posting content or interacting with other members, who is responsible for enforcing the GHCOC and how will they do it? Simply put, the community is. The Eos content curation system, also clearly spelled out in the membership agreement, is based on three key principles: transparency, fairness, and community determination and enforcement. To summarize the process, members first hold themselves accountable to follow the GHCOC, then they gently hold each other accountable, then they can ask for moderator intervention if needed, and unresolved conflicts between members are ultimately decided by an escalation team run by actual community members. In the event that a member is an unrepentant jerk and keeps breaking the GHCOC with their content or posts, they will simply lose their account privileges. I’ll end this post with the same honesty I started it with - I can’t even pretend to know how well this is going to work at first. I do know that it isn’t going to be perfect, and I fully expect that it’ll be tested quite fully as more and more members join and then start posting content and interacting with each other. I think we’re based on solid principles and processes, and I know we’re going to learn and adjust as we go. It’s a New Earth, and I’m super excited to be part of it!   Coming up next: Online security, privacy and safety
April 2022 Author Cal Loo is a serial social entrepreneur, the founder and executive director of a nonprofit company, a self-professed techie at heart, a 30-year tech consultant, and an ordained ceremonialist. He has been blogging about living more intentionally and navigating major life transitions since 2015. In this seventh piece in a ten-part series Cal explores hidden costs of “free” app. In future posts he’ll address online security, online safety, and freedom of speech/information. He’ll close this series by introducing the Eos Community Connections Portal – an online community connections portal unlike any of the others. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”People have been throwing around this popular adage since the 1930s, basically saying that nothing is ever really free. Sometimes, you’ll just hear the acronyms TNSTAAFL, TINSTAAFL, and TANSTAAFL. It’s hard to say who actually originated it, but free-market economist, nobel laureate and author Milton Friedman popularized it with his book There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch. In the context of this blog, TNSTAAFL suggests that things that appear to be free will always have some hidden or implicit cost to someone, even if it is not the individual receiving the benefit. In the software industry, we also say: “If you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product.” All-for-profit companies sell something, and their underlying objective is normally to make as much money as they can doing so. Whoever is paying for that something is the real customer. When it comes to social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram, and most search engines like Google or Bing, the platform owners make a ton of money somewhere, and it isn’t always obvious how they’re doing it. If you are using a service you don't pay for, it's because they may be selling the data they collect about you while you’re using their product, or selling ad space to sponsors that take advantage of the fact that the platform has your attention. Facebook, for example, has spent an embarrassing amount of time and energy defending their data usage and management practices. In the end, it’s become very clear that they’re engaging in business practices of which many users are unaware and may not approve. The 2020 primetime Emmy Awards winning film The Social Dilemma takes you pretty deep down this rabbit hole and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you do. I just watched it again and honestly, it was a big reason why I recently completely deleted all of my personal social media accounts.  What’s the real price of free apps? For the purpose of this post, I’ll boil it down to three words: privacy, data, and ads. Most people have used Google to search the internet at some time, and probably have never wondered why they don’t have to pay anything to use it. In this June 2021 Bloomberg article, authors Nico Grant, Mark Bergen, and Naomi Nix report how the US Department of Justice were accelerating their probe into Google’s digital ad market practices, and this isn’t the first time Google’s been in trouble over this. This 2012 BBC article describes how Google had at that time “started to operate under a new privacy policy that enables the Internet giant to dig even deeper into the lives of more than one billion users,” claiming that “the changes make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, while allowing it to provide more helpful and compelling services.” Most of America’s state attorney generals disagreed, along with a leading regulator in France, believing “that Google is stepping too much on our right to privacy in its continuous mission to sell more advertising.” In the case of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook had harvested the personal data of 87 million users, which Cambridge Analytica then used to provide analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Wondering what else these companies might be doing with your personal data? In his September 2021 article in the Markup, author Alfred Ng writes “Even though companies like Facebook and Google aren’t directly selling your data, they are using it for targeted advertising, which creates plenty of opportunities for advertisers to pay and get your personal information in return. The simplest way is through an ad that links to a website with its own trackers embedded, which can gather information on visitors including their IP address and their device IDs.“ Companies pay Facebook and Google massive amounts of money to be able to more effectively market their products to you while you’re using their platforms. In his 2012 article in Forbes, Scott Goodson closes with “... in this digital age we have sacrificed our privacy in order to access all manner of free stuff on the web. It’s a movement that most of us have come to accept. Or have we? I’ll borrow a quote I read on MetaFilter recently: ‘If you’re not paying for it; you are the product.’ I’m not sure how many people are fully aware of this sentiment yet or whether they even care. But the next time you’re browsing the web or enjoying a video on YouTube, remember that Google is watching your every move; because that’s the price you pay.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Getting to the root of the issue. In a word, it comes down to capitalism. For-profit companies are exactly that - they’re out for profit, and to make as much money as they can from your use of their software platforms. Beyond government regulators trying to rein these companies in, I see two really good alternatives for people like us to get off this profit-crazy train: 1.) stop using their products, which is easier said than done, and 2.) find alternative platforms from companies that are transparently coming at this from a whole new perspective. Why would a non-profit company create and offer an alternative platform and forego the billions of dollars that could be made harvesting your data? Simple. To make the online community a better, healthier, and safer place. When we started designing the Eos Community Connections Portal three years ago we decided to base it on the concept that everyone should be able to use it for free to find the resources they need and feel like part of an authentic community during challenging times. When we say free, we mean it - our privacy policy ensures that users’ personal data will never be sold and that we won’t sell aggregated user data; and we also won’t allow advertising in Eos. Developing a platform as complex and elegant as Eos and then delivering it to the world hasn’t been easy or inexpensive, and it’ll also take significant resources to manage it and develop future versions, so we’re going to offer inexpensive annual memberships in which users can post their own content on the platform and also access additional powerful features by paying a small and fair annual membership fee. Everyone will be able to use Eos for free, but if you want to post content, you’ll need to create an account and sign our user agreement. We’re on a mission to prove that authentic, healthy, and supportive online community is possible without greedily taking advantage of its members, and we believe that fair and transparent membership fees should be the actual cost of using the primary features of the platform. Eos is the Greek goddess of the dawn, and the initial release of Eos will usher in the dawn of a new kind of online community.  Coming up next: Key concept: online communities and freedom of information. Finding your people through online groups I ended part 5 of this series by proposing this definition of community: a group of people sharing physical or virtual space that a.) have a particular characteristic or interest in common, b.) create a fellowship with others by investing time and energy into the group, and c.) have a genuine interest in the well-being of the other members. In a time when a lot of people I know - including myself - are feeling isolated, stir-crazy, and sometimes even downright lonely, it helps a ton to have websites and apps that make it easy to find different communities to explore! Facebook Groups makes it easy to connect with specific sets of people - like teammates or coworkers - offering dedicated spaces where you can share updates, photos, or documents and message other group members. If you have a Facebook account you can easily create groups of your own: just choose its name, decide if it’s public or private, visible or hidden, and then invite other members to join. I have to admit, they make it really easy to start and manage groups of your own, and if you’re looking for groups to join I find that Facebook is eerily good at recommending groups for you - offering at a glance groups that are Suggested for You, Friends’ groups, and groups that are Popular near you. Honestly, it’s a little scary at times to realize how much Facebook knows about you, even if they do use the info to connect you to things you’re interested in. Conveniently, Facebook Events is also a good companion to Groups, making it easier to get other members’ attention and keep it. With Facebook’s calendar connection, most people have their Facebook events connected to their smartphones. Another good example is Meetup.com, “… a platform for finding and building local communities.” People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions. Among a collection of almost 80,000 personal and professional groups from 45,000 different cities, virtually every interest and hobby is covered, ranging from food-related brunch and dinner groups, movie and book clubs, gardening groups, stitching groups, business networking groups, outdoor activities groups, and more. As a self-described community builder, their “Find your people!” tagline resonates with me for sure, and Meetup makes it easy to find events hosted by local groups where you can meet new people, try something new, or just do more of what you love. Once you create your account, just type in a keyword and a location and a list of related groups and events in your area pops up. It’s that easy. Like most of you, I’m ready to get back to doing things with real people in a way that doesn’t include a screen, and as the Michigan winter gives way to spring I’m really, really, REALLY ready to get outside and do something active! Turns out there’s a local group called the Ann Arbor Adventure Club that’s pretty active and it has 6,002 members - and I’m sure some of them are as ready as I am to get out safely and do something fun.  Finding and hosting fun and interesting events When it comes to setting up and managing events or finding events that look interesting, Eventbrite has been a go-to for me both personally and professionally. Eventbrite “enables anyone to create, promote, and sell tickets to any event imaginable, while also helping people discover and share events that match their passions.” I’ve used Eventbrite for years to manage the annual Rising Phoenix Awards event when tickets are being sold, and I really like how easy it is to create events, invite people to them, promote them beyond my immediate circle, accept registrations and payments, and communicate with people that register before, during, and after the event. It’s also super easy to find interesting events to attend personally - in fact, as I was doing my research for this article, I did a quick search on fly fishing events in my area, and immediately found a weekend retreat that I want to go to this fall. And there ya go! You should also check out Mighty Networks, who says “It’s time to give your community the platform it deserves. Mighty Networks unlocks a new era of independent communities creating and mastering something interesting or important together.” I have an account and am currently a member of one private group, and I do like how easy it is to communicate with the host and other members about what’s going on in our little community. That same host also offers a “premium” group in which they offer a paid event series, providing a simple and powerful way to offer and manage community offerings. With more of a business approach to communities, Mighty Community “is where creators and brands can build businesses they are proud of.” They offer a Community Design Accelerator Course for $349 that shows how to take your brand, course, ideas, or goals and translate them into a thriving community.  Downsides aside, these are really useful sites and apps. It’s not all great – there are downsides to these tools for managing groups and events. First, in online community groups, it can be challenging to keep member information current. In a quick scroll through a list of other members in the Ann Arbor Adventure Club Meetups group, I found several people I already know - which is great - but I saw that the list included one that I know moved away from the area nearly a decade ago and one that passed away about five years ago. While there are certainly a good number of members that are still active, I can’t know for sure how many of the 6,002 people are really still there and engaged. Second, there is the issue of codes of conduct for these groups and their events. It’s appropriately up to the group and event managers to establish and clearly communicate their expectations about member and/or participant behavior, but I find that often there isn’t anything to be found. As a community builder myself, I worry that this leaves the door open for inappropriate behavior that feels emotionally or physically unsafe for some participants. Check out this Sept. 2017 Medium.com article by Mike Roberts for some good thoughts and suggestions about establishing a code of conduct for groups and events that you’re part of. What does a solid code of conduct look like? Here’s a good example of Sketch.com’s code of conduct for meetups:  Of all the online community websites and apps I’ve explored in this series so far, these tools for managing groups and events are the ones that I may continue to use even after we launch the Eos Community Connections Portal. While we do plan to offer integrated tools for creating and managing both groups and events, these existing apps offer ease of use and advanced features that are compelling enough that we’ll connect to them and complement them rather than try to supplant them for our users. What we’ll do differently is offer these tools, along with all the other great features in Eos, with consistent use of our Good Human Code of Conduct - which guides members’ behavior across all elements of the platform. Coming up next: What’s the real cost of “Free” apps? Making connections with previously-unknown speed and scale. If you’re looking to make connections and have real conversations with like-minded people about your shared interests, then online discussion forums can be an amazing place! You can find and engage people that share an interest in virtually any subject with just a few clicks. Impressive as that is, the sheer scale of the engagements you can create may be even more impressive than the speed! Within seconds of signing into my Reddit or Quora accounts, I can literally start or join conversations with other interested users from anywhere in the world. Not familiar? Reddit is an online network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies, and passions. Reddit is broken up into more than a million communities known as “subreddits” each of which covers a different topic. It’s easy to get started by creating your own account, and Jake Widman of Digital Trends offers a decent primer for getting started using Reddit. Quora defines itself as an online place to gain and share knowledge; a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers, empowering people to learn from each other and to better understand the world. Deepak Mehta offers a good guide for getting started on Quora in this blogpost. Want some examples of the impressive scale of these kinds of platforms? I’ve been fly fishing for almost 30 years, and I love learning about beautiful new places to fly fish and hearing about others’ experiences catching species that I haven’t. With my Reddit account I can hit the r/flyfishing subreddit and immediately join in conversations with the 135,000 members around the world. Think that’s a lot? The r/interestingasfuck subreddit has 9.3 million members - seriously - and browsing there will take me to interesting places I never would’ve imagined on my own. On Quora, I can choose the topic addiction & mental health and get immediate access to posts by or Q&A threads involving 8 contributors and 17,900 followers. I can also just dial up the topic of mental health and jump in with 108 contributors and 46,000 followers. The internet has enabled us to connect with other people in ways never before possible, enabling us to share data, information, opinions, and feelings with speed and scale never possible before.
Getting help, finding help, and seeking a diversity of opinions. So what do you DO with all these connections? Sure, you can gain and share knowledge from reading others’ posts and even participating in chats with them - these ARE discussion forums, after all! At a high level you can start to feel like you belong to a larger, online “community” of people that share an interest in a particular topic, and you can even form friendships with the people you connect with there. These platforms can also make it easy to get help from other members of that “community,” allowing you to gain information you didn’t already have, hear perspectives and opinions that are different from yours, and even get personal references to other helpful people or organizations that aren’t already directly involved in the conversation. I’ll use Stack Overflow - an online community for app developers that lets them learn, share their programming knowledge, and build their careers - as an example. In a former role as the third-party app developer program manager for a company in Sweden, I had to build a community of app developers all interested in creating mobile apps using our software and hardware technologies to transform smartphones into legit thermal cameras. We created an in-house website that included a dedicated discussion forum, but I also realized that we needed to meet the developer community in a more public place to make it easy for them to communicate with us and with each other, so I created an account on Stack Overflow. I found that the developers I worked with tended to use the in-house discussion forum to communicate directly with my colleagues and our technical support team, while using Stack Overflow more often to interact more freely with each other where they felt more open to share opinions, things they learned, and information about other helpful resources. They learned from, supported, and complained to each other; they formed connections beyond what they were working on for my program, and they helped each other build their experiences and career paths.
The dark side of all these online connections and discussions. To be honest I’m not spending much time at all on these discussion forums outside of work right now, for a number of reasons. First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, information overload is a real thing, and I found myself getting overwhelmed with posts and responses in the discussion forums that I found to be irrelevant, un-interesting, or “off-key” for my tastes. Everyone is welcome to their own opinions of course, but I don’t need to hear all of them and I definitely don’t want to hear them from people that are being rude or disrespectful. On the other side of that issue, I don’t personally find satisfaction or a sense of connection from the many impersonal, shallow responses I encountered. Second, personal safety is a real concern on multiple levels. Most discussion forum platforms offer engagement rules that instruct people to be good to each other (like Reddit’s “Be Civil” policy and Quora’s “BNBR” (Be nice, be respectful) policy), but realistically online platforms often give people a sense of anonymity, so they’ll say things in ways they normally wouldn’t. If the platform’s rules and enforcement policies and processes don’t have enough teeth, then there is no true accountability for the things users say online. It can feel mentally and emotionally unsafe to put your authentic thoughts, feelings, and opinions into that space. Further, there are documented cases where some users have threatened other users’ physical safety - and really, who has time or energy for that? Third, data security issues are also a real thing. This 2019 Digital Trends article about a security breach at Quora that affected about 100 million users is downright scary. A clear commitment to protect users’ data is a good place to start, and an explicit commitment to never sell users’ data is even better. More on that in a future post.  (Photo credit Douglas County Sheriff) In the first post in this series I explored what exactly a “community” is, and these two definitions served as a starting point: Community (noun): a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. Also: a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.
Closing out this post about discussion forums I’d like to suggest a better definition: Community (noun): a group of people sharing physical or virtual space that a.) have a particular characteristic or interest in common, b.) create a fellowship with others by investing time and energy into the group, and c.) have a genuine interest in the well-being of the other members. That’s the kind of online community I’d like to be part of, and I’m honored to be part of the team creating it in the Eos Community Connections portal. Coming up next: Event management platforms. It’s a big, big world and there’s something for everyone. We live in the information age, which the Cambridge dictionary defines as “the present time, in which large amounts of information are available because of developments in computer technology.” In this age, the ability to shape opinions from peer to peer has grown vital. Two popular and powerful vehicles for the flow of that information that I personally tune into are blogs and podcasts, and in this post I’m going to explore how we might be affected by both. Chances are pretty good that somebody’s doing a blog or podcast about everything and anything you might be interested in, and services like Spotify and Podbean make it really easy to find a plethora of information anytime. Looking for some solid ideas about how to handle home and family issues in today’s chaotic world? Check out Becky Mansfield’s Your Modern Family blog site. Want to learn about how the actions of humans could inadvertently lead to the end of civilization and what we can each do to prevent it? Explore it with Josh in The End of The World with Josh Clark. Maybe you’re pondering what it means to be human and who we will be to each other in community as things evolve – in which case you might enjoy checking out the Peabody-award winning On Being podcast by Krista Tippett or the excellent Sam Harris podcast Making Sense. In the big, big online world I honestly find that the challenge isn’t to FIND information about virtually anything – it’s to sort through everything that’s out there to get to the stuff that’s most relevant and helpful to what I’m exploring.  Breadth and depth. Looking to explore a really broad set of related topics? Pick your subject and go! With a quick online search you’ll find blogs and podcasts that take you to the most remote corners of whatever you’re interested in. A good example is the earlier-mentioned Your Modern Family blog site, where Becky Mansfield – a mother, a wife, an elementary-school teacher, and a child-development therapist - covers family-related topics ranging from marriage, parenting and kids activities to saving money and preparing healthy meals for your family. On sites like hers, you benefit from the knowledge, experience, opinions, and resource-base of a real person who has personally walked a path similar to your own – and who isn’t trying to convince you to buy something while you’re there. Want to go really deep on something and learn from experts in the field? The information age blesses us with access to the most amazing people from almost any discipline you can think of. As a social entrepreneur building something vastly different from anything I’ve seen out there, I’m learning a ton from the How I Built This podcast by Guy Raz. He does in-depth, insightful interviews with other builders who created something amazing, and then chose to share their amazing stories for the benefit of people just like me. I particularly got into his January 2022 interview with Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson, in which a Buddhist monk and a man burnt out from a high-powered job at a London ad agency tell how they collaborated to create Headspace - a guided meditation app that now has users in 190 countries and annual revenue over $100 million. Another really good interview with a thought leader that got me thinking in a whole different way is Krista Tippett’s February 2022 interview with visionary Trabian Shorters about the concept of asset framing. As a community builder, the idea of defining and engaging the people I’m trying to serve in terms of the assets they bring to the table rather than their deficiencies is so important - and yet so simple. Seriously, how else would I possibly get insights from people like Andy, Rich, and Trabian?  Swimming in the wide, deep ocean. In my mind, the idea of navigating the near-infinite breadth and seemingly limitless depth of the world of blog sites and podcasts conjures a vision of getting dropped into the middle of a vast ocean. Can it be invigorating and exciting? For sure! Is it easy and completely safe? Ehhhh … maybe not so much. It’s certainly easy to find general information in this wide and deep ocean, but finding the specific, useful, high-quality info you seek can be a challenge. Whether you’re using Google, Bing, Safari, or DuckDuckGo, the results of any basic search will return more information than you can possibly use and much of it won’t be useful at all. Information overload is a real thing! Looking in the right places, knowing the right search terms to use, and effective use of filtering are all important tools to use to most easily get to the exact information you need. While there aren’t any literal sharks swimming around in this ocean of information, there are certainly metaphorical predators to keep an eye out for. While you’re busily searching and surfing the internet, there are often dark shadows emerging from the depths to check you out as possible prey as well. For one, nefarious characters like phishers, scammers, or hackers will try to capture personal information about you and use it in ways you don’t want them to. My father was the victim of identity theft from online activity and it literally took him years to recover. Another facet of online safety is risk to your personal mental and emotional health from harmful or even toxic responses to anything you post about yourself. The online world allows for a level of anonymity that lets some people behave without fear of accountability, and as such, people will say rude, offensive, and hurtful things online that they’d never say in person. On a less-obvious level, many of the big tech companies that provide these online tools and applications are tracking all of your online actions and using that data to make money off of you – whether they sell you something or simply sell your personal data to someone else to be used in any way they wish.  Yes, the information age has presented a glorious amount of information to us all – and it’s on each of us to protect ourselves in this figurative ocean and use the tools available to us wisely and efficiently. I close today with a suggestion to choose your online information source carefully. (You’ll want to check out the soon-to-be-released Eos Community Connections Portal, brought to you by an established non-profit company that guarantees it won’t sell your data or allow advertisers to prey on you. The information you’ll find in it is on topic and easy to filter. Only members that have accepted the Good Human Code Of Conduct(™) can post information in Eos, and Eos’ fair and transparent content moderation processes will shield you from mistreatment at the hands of other members. Coming up next: Online discussion forums. We all need help sometimes! The singularly toughest period of my life, in which I faced one major life transition after another, felt like a series of waves crashing over me so quickly that I could barely catch my breath. A painful divorce. The birth of my son the same week the divorce went final. Leaving a job. Starting a new job. Selling a home. Buying a home. The death of a loved one. Seven of the most challenging things I’d ever faced, all hitting within a few months of each other. I wasn’t prepared for all of this – I mean, who gets taught how to navigate this kind of thing? Not knowing where to turn I reached out to family, friends, church, therapists … and in the end, I found that all of them wanted to help, but none of them could truly understand me, much less help me. And so I felt alone; like I needed to figure it all out on my own. And I did, and I learned and I healed and I grew … and I resolved to one day create a “safe port in the storm” to help people understand that they aren’t alone even in those dark times and to help them find the resources they need. Major life transitions sometimes do come at you in waves, and when they do you’ll have to figure out how to navigate more than one major life change at the same time like I did. If you find yourself in that position here are two things I learned that may help: the first is that we’re actually a lot stronger than we know. Our true strength doesn’t reveal itself until we’re tested. The second is that with hope, inspiration, belief in ourselves, and access to resources, we can get through just about anything. I’ll put it right out there that I brought most of these big changes – and the massive stresses that came with them - on myself. I could’ve made different, safer decisions and chosen an easier, more comfortable path, but doing so would’ve meant taking another big hit of Novocaine for the soul, and accepting a life in which I could never truly be myself. The decisions I made – starting with the gut-wrenching decision to end a marriage that looked idyllic to most – weren’t popular or easy to understand. That first decision set in motion a domino effect that ended up costing me nearly everything that was important to me at the time, but in the long run allowed me to reclaim my soul and become someone I’m proud of today.  Sometimes it’s really hard to find the help you need, when you need it. When shit hit the fan, my first instinct was to turn to family and friends. I’m blessed with a loving and supporting nuclear family that loves me and wanted to help, so I went to them first. But we lived across the country from them, so they didn’t see the day-to-day things that wore away at what started as a lovely relationship. I found that my decisions and direction were outside of what was considered normal or acceptable in the eyes of my family and church, and so it was hard for me to really open up to them and to not feel judged in some ways. While my ex and I were also blessed with large group of friends, most of them didn’t understand my decisions and vilified me to the extent that I came out with only two friendships intact. In an October 2019 American Psychological Association article titled “Manage stress: Strengthen your support network”, authors Mary Alvord, PhD, Bert Uchino, PhD, and Vaile Wright, PhD, write “Emotional support is an important protective factor for dealing with life’s difficulties. The 2015 survey found the average stress level for those with emotional support was 5.0 out of 10, compared to 6.3 for those without such support.” My experience taught me that family and friends can be an amazing source of support and love during challenging times, but I probably needed to invest more in strengthening those relationships much earlier - and even then, they can’t always see things through your eyes and may not be able to give you the support you need. I also turned to professionals for help for the first time ever, and admittedly I found it really hard at first. I felt like asking for that kind of help was a weakness and it took some work to overcome the stigma of “working with a shrink.” I’m really glad I did though; there are huge potential benefits of therapy as explained by Sara Lindberg in her October 2020 Healthline.com article. My (ex) wife and I worked with marriage counselors trying to get things back on track, and even though it didn’t work well for us, I learned a lot about myself in the process. When that failed, I sought out another therapist for individual counseling. Once I found someone that I was comfortable with, I did a significant amount of work on my own and again learned a lot about myself in the process. In the end, however, it felt to me like he wanted to figure me out, put a label on my “condition,” and write a prescription to fix it. I disagreed with his course of action and decided to follow my own heart, much to his disapproval, and again felt judged harshly by someone I had turned to for help. I learned from this that therapists and other mental health professionals can teach us a lot about ourselves and give us new tools that can be a huge help in times of need, but also that therapy isn’t for everybody, every therapist isn’t a great fit, and that sometimes the professionals don’t have all the right answers. Depending on what you’re facing, I think you’ll find there are a plethora of other resources and programs that can help, many of which you can access online. One example is United Way 211, a free and confidential service that helps people across North America find the local resources they need 24/7. Most of the yearly 20 million 211 calls, web chats, and text messages are from people looking for help meeting basic needs like housing, food, transportation, and health care. Another good example is The Life Transition Zone, an online resource-matching service that offers you hope & inspiration through the power of personal story as well as access to local and national resources to help on your journey. Their resources are organized by major life transition, so finding what you need in your area is as simple as choosing the transition you’re facing and then setting filters to narrow down the search results. I find that current resource-matching sites like these can be excellent ways to quickly and privately find what you need, but they’re limited to the resources that are currently listed in their databases and they can also yield an overwhelming amount of information to sort through to find what might work best for you.  A better way! If you have an existing network of trusted family and friends, that’s a good place to start when looking for help and support. Working with a therapist can also be extremely helpful, if you can connect with one that you’re comfortable with and whose style and skills get you the results you need. Using tools like United Way 211 and The Life Transition Zone may also help you find helpful programs and resources, though they have limitations as well. Recognizing that there should be a better way led me to create a nonprofit company called The Intentional Living Collective years later, and we envision a better tool that anyone can use to find the resources they need, anytime they need them. That tool is being built as a multi-sided platform that will make it very fast and easy to find a breadth of relevant services and programs and then filter through the results to narrow it down to your best options. We’ve prioritized keeping your information secure, our privacy policy ensures your data will never be sold or misused, and our member code of conduct ensures that you can safely share what you want without experiencing rude or hostile responses from other members. There’s a unique “Community Support” feature that makes it easy for like-minded individuals in the community to give help to or get help from each other, and a transparent member-rating system based on feedback from other community members helps you figure out who you want to trust. This resource-matching tool is one of the really cool features you’ll find in our Eos Community Connections Portal when it’s released – stay tuned!  Coming up next: The big world of blogs and podcasts.
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Cal LooFather. Son. Brother. Friend. Business owner. Change agent. Social entrepreneur. Ordained ceremonialist. Outdoors enthusiast. Fly fisherman. Community builder and connector. Archives
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