How to Meet People the Algorithms Don’t Want You To

Whilst we all have to social distance just now, we can break out of our own little bubbles. There is a bit of philosophy behind this. We’ll explain.

You know the meme going round saying ‘that meeting could have been an email.’

Well, this post could have been an email too but I wanted to set out why this little experiment is happening in a slightly more proper way.

Every week we’re organising meet-ups of small groups of people (5 or 7 or so) who would never normally meet.

These are very different people who work in very different fields, in different parts of the world, and who share very little in common. Or nothing in fact.

Apart from the fact that they are interesting people.

And that I know enough about them to put the group together. Which means there is always me, plus one or two others that I know or have worked with the company in some way. Just so we can get the conversation going.

Normally I invite one person in the group to speak a little about one part of what they do. I gather a group that i know will look at that topic from some very different perspectives. Then we talk about it.

Simple enough. Does that even count as a format?

But its sort of strangely fresh because so much of the time we are introduced to people because of algorithms or because someone wants to sell something. We do set them up for the evenings mostly so people do tend to have a drink in hand which helps remove some of the strangeness too.

This thing is happening because of three observations;

• Lockdown has meant that we hardly meet new people anymore. We all stick within our pre-existing networks all day, every day.
• Social media has actually been surprising bad at keeping us all in our own little filter bubbles anyway.
• David Hume said that “truth springs from arguments among friends” so actually I suspect that when you gather interesting people, get a bit of a friendly atmostphere going, and talk about things from very different perspectives… good things might happen. Maybe not enlightenment but at least progress.

So that is a bit of philosophy to describe this little journey of introducing people who would never meet otherwise. For an hour or so. Just as a bunch of interesting people talking about stuff in amongst a world in lockdown.

Which is why were are calling the meetups ‘Arguments Among Friends.’

Arguing is not compulsory.

If you would like to come and get involved in this thing then;

• if we’ve already invited you let us know you are up for it (I'll fix up the best group to invite you to join)
• if you’ve just come across this let us know on twitter or on email

It will be fun. I promise.