How We Connected

In 1996, Christopher Phillips put out a handmade announcement for his new philosophy gathering at a coffee house in Montclair, New Jersey. He perched on a bench and waited for the masses. One person came: Ceci. The question that night was what is love? Thirty years later, they’re married. Socrates Cafe is about 500 groups and 40,000 members around the world. The method is the opposite of debate. A...

Every Sunday 100 million Americans watch football. Half of them watch alone. Todd Rogers and his team at Harvard tried something simple: they asked people who planned to watch by themselves to invite someone. That’s it. Watching with others jumped by more than 40 percentage points, people enjoyed the game more than they expected, and weeks later people who’d been nudged were still watching with co...

Colum McCann came to America at 21 to write a novel. He failed miserably. So he got on a bicycle in Boston and rode 8,000 miles over 18 months, all the way to San Francisco. Everywhere he went, people asked if he was mad. They invited him into their homes and told him their stories. The failed novelist learned the power of listening. It’s a conviction that has carried him through 13 or 14 books si...

In 2017, Mike Skirpan and seven friends bought an elementary school. Johnston Elementary in Wilkinsburg, Pittsburgh had been closed for five years. They negotiated the price, took out a loan, and scraped together some collateral. Mike's share was lent to him by a former student with one condition: please get out of tech and do this. Why does a tech ethicist buy a school? Mike grew up in a smal...

A man in a rural California town joined the Neighborhood Village Project and threw a potluck. Nobody came. So he asked what his neighbors actually cared about. The answer was the dried brush ringing their homes in a wildfire zone. He put up a new invitation. People who'd never spoken cleared 8,000 pounds of brush together, then stayed for dinner. That's the method, according to August Elli...

Saumya Gupta was six months postpartum when she read a statistic she couldn't digest: one in three teenage girls feels persistently lonely, and one in four has considered suicide. She'd worked in health her whole life. She left her full-time job without a plan. That question took her and her co-founder Colton Heward-Mills around San Francisco, asking the people who host clubs how it was go...

Jessica Gifford grew up in a tiny community of hippies, peace activists, and draft dodgers who built their own one-room schoolhouse. From kindergarten through eighth grade she was with the same 15 kids, so she never learned how to meet people. Her fix came at college: become the RA. It's easier to create the community you want than to break into one that already exists. Years later, as a social wo...

Gina Phillips grew up in a family of introverts. When they went out to eat, everyone brought a book. As a kid, she was shy and had hearing problems. Making friends didn't come naturally. But if she made the thing happen, she had a role to play. She still calls herself your friendly neighborhood introvert. Gina won't be the life of the party, but she'll make sure it happens. That carried her from f...

An hour before the first-ever Girls Who Walk Baltimore, it was raining, and Emily Trageser had a choice to make. She pushed the walk back an hour and hoped. Women started messaging: I was there; I walked without you. 60 women showed up. Emily and Summer had cases of water, hair ties, band aids, and a paper sign-in sheet. Walks now draw up to 500 women, and Under Armour hosts a Women's History Mont...

Every day, a 90-year-old nana opens Marco Polo and records a weather report. She's sitting outside. It's sunny, and that's just about the whole message. Some of her grandkids reply and some don't. It's not the point. Her family gets to see her face and know she's alive and well. Our guest this week is Vlada Bortnik, who co-founded Marco Polo. In Soviet Ukraine, Vlada was a leader in her classroom....

At a Seam retreat, even the meditation is a relay. Whoever's leading snaps their fingers three times and someone else takes over. Nobody holds the mic for long. That's the point. It's how a murder mystery game about birders became a campfire musical by the second night. It's also how another gathering produced a seven song musical about a fight over the center of a cinnamon roll. Micky Wolf co-fou...

When Sandra Slater knocks on your door, she has a script. “Hi, I'm Sandra, and I live across the street.” She points to her house so you know she's a neighbor, not a stranger selling something. Then the invitation: come to my home for a gathering, not a meeting, so we can get to know each other better. More than half the people she invites say yes, partly because everyone secretly wants to see ins...

When you arrive at Chumstock, Aaron Altabet hands you a sardine tin. On it is your name, and inside are business cards shaped like fish. They’re simple: your name, personal phone number and email address. There are 14 cards: you get a stack of salmon and one orca. It’s based on how many friendships Aaron thinks you can build during the four-day weekend. You have to choose. The salmon can be traded...

Aaron's in France for his sister's 50th birthday, so this one was recorded ahead of time. Before the interview, he and Charlotte get into why life transitions are at the center of the Chamber's work. Transitions are when people are most at risk of drifting into isolation. They're also when people are most willing to build new relationships.  This week’s guest is Chip Conley, who founded MEA....

Aaron and Charlotte recorded this one early, since Charlotte's about to be off the grid and overseas. She's heading out to host a Women Who Explore trek on the Tour du Mont Blanc, hiking the circuit around Mont Blanc through France, Italy, and Switzerland with a group of women she's never met. There's a guide on the ground handling the trails, which leaves Charlotte in charge of what she calls the...

Aaron Hurst and Charlotte Massey of the US Chamber of Connection discuss initiating invitations despite fear. Meanwhile, Charlotte enjoyed a trip to Minnesota for a family reunion and Aaron helped an Amazon delivery worker stuck behind a gate. This week's guest is Seattle-based friendship and social skills coach Alexandra Friedman, who is a lifelong connector. Her work has evolved from hosting din...

From the US Chamber of Connection, Aaron Hurst and Charlotte Massey catch up after the Fourth of July. At the Chamber there’s planning for Welcome Week, the Best Day Ever program with five partner events, an August Seattle volunteer potluck, and Aaron’s National Night Out block party collaboration  In Memphis and Nashville, Aaron met leaders exploring a Nashville chapter and observed common t...

On this week's How We Connected, Aaron checks in from Memphis, where the Peabody has a duck parade and the tailor who once dressed Elvis, then heads to Nashville to meet leaders hoping to open a Chamber of Connection. Charlotte is off to see her grandma and family in Minnesota for the Fourth of July. This week's guest, Erik Hillesheim, moved to Seattle from Minnesota knowing just one person and fi...

Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst of the US Chamber of Connection catch up on Charlotte's second wedding anniversary weekend in Portland, where she and her husband reread their vows, and Aaron's trip to New York for his sister's 50th, the Knicks championship parade, and a Father's Day in the Yankee Stadium. Charlotte walks through her hunt for breakable Guinness World Records for Welcome Week. This...

Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst of the US Chamber of Connection discuss Charlotte’s weekend sorting childhood boxes and finding old party invitations and Aaron’s excitement about the New York Knicks championship, a Pittsburgh chapter launch, and a team retreat. This week's interview is with Safi Aziz founder of Joust, a “play club” that uses curated, fast, easy-to-learn games and carefully design...

It's been a busy week for Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst at the US Chamber of Connection. Aaron joins from a San Francisco airport while touring with board.dev, his nonprofit board effort, as the two launch Welcome Week, a week built around one idea, inviting someone to do something. Charlotte shares her own bad art from a cabin in Colorado, made just for the process. This week's guest is Jules...

It’s been a busy week for Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst at the US Chamber of Connection. Aaron’s son celebrated a place at the University of Michigan and high school graduation with family storytelling prompts. Charlotte’s looks forward to the “Best Day Ever” downtown Seattle event with partners at Pike Place Market, including connection workshops and art activities.  This week’s guest is...

Hosts Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst of the US Chamber of Connection open with Memorial Day week updates, including Charlotte's 22-hour Colorado-to-Seattle drive spent talking and listening to Gone Girl and Aaron's bittersweet last hurrah weekend with his son before graduation. This week at the Chamber, there's Seattle's Connection Council, Bellevue workshops, Best Day Ever, and a Workday sympos...

Hosts Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst of the US Chamber of Connection discuss Charlotte's 24-hour screen-free experiment from a cabin in Colorado, reflecting on our technology addiction. Meanwhile, Aaron enjoyed a trip to Coney Island as a model of authentic, locally rooted connection. And the idea that you can throw a celebration for almost anything. This week at the Chamber, there's Seattle's C...

Hosts Charlotte Massey and Aaron Hurst of the US Chamber of Connection discuss community-building efforts at the Chamber, including Charlotte’s Seattle Picnic Society, her involvement in women’s outdoor groups, and upcoming Chamber events. They reflect on takeaways from the Council on Foundations conference in Seattle, emphasizing funder interest in connection, a conference design that fostered re...