“Hosting” was a big theme for me in 2024. In January, I hosted my first two-hour party at my home following Nick Grays’s formula. In March, I traveled to Berlin and co-hosted an Interintellect salon with Simon at his place, talking “meta” about hosting and sharing my experiences from the party. I ended up hosting additional instances of the two-hour party in April and November. I continued hosting a public board game night at a local community space twice every month and, together with two friends, co-hosted two additional full-day special editions of board game meetups. With my local Effective Altruist group, we hosted another intro talk. For professional networking and bringing together the local developer and tech scene, I co-hosted three Webmontag (“Web Monday”) Mittelhessen meetups throughout the year, rebuilding the event series that had stopped with the COVID pandemic.

I also participated in many events I didn’t host, like tech and game meetups in the greater area. I had some invitations to birthday parties from people where I attribute my inclusion at least partly to my activities as a two-hour party host. I attended a running dinner event in my city for the first time.

Also, I traveled to meet people and join a like-minded community for a limited time. My first travel destination was the German Effective Altruist Community Builder weekend. Furthermore, I attended two “TPOT camps”, Jesscamp 3 (I didn’t write a blog post, but you can read the one from Jesscamp 2 in 2023) and TREEWEEK. Luckily, the dates aligned, so I combined Jesscamp 3 with a NoCode conference and a Ness Labs meetup in London. In the summer, I went to Greece for a two-week workation hosted by Ida from Playground (who I initially knew via Ness Labs).

As for online activities, I attended the two-week Microsolidarity Vibes program after meeting some from the community at TREEWEEK. I will not list all the one-on-one catchups, offline and online, as there would be too many.

I’m motivated to continue hosting for the new year. There should be more Webmontag meetups, and I want to get more local companies on board and deepen my ties with the universities. I also want to host more two-hour parties, experiment with modifying the format, and support others in hosting similar events (two friends have already indicated interest). I will keep on hosting the regular board game nights. However, I’m also building a hosting team to sometimes step away and keep the events in capable hands while I go on new adventures. There’ll probably be no larger board game events under my lead, as one of their co-organizers has opened a shop and runs these professionally.

I’ve tremendously enjoyed all the social activities I led and participated in the past year. At the same time, I’m questioning my priorities, wondering what my goals with hosting and community building are and if I should be more strategic about them. One goal might be to have a more substantial professional focus, tying in with an overall strategy for my freelance business. I wanted to move to new projects in the past year but hardly did. Instead, I kept nurturing existing projects and client relationships. If that continues, I don’t need a lot of professional networking opportunities, but I don’t want it to continue that way. So, I need to focus on business strategy and have at least part of my socializing aligned with that strategy. Conversely, I’m still open to romantic relationships, so my socializing should also help me build and leverage a dating pool. Finally, I want to emphasize the intercultural component in my community building.

I also think about location. On the one hand, I want to travel and see places and meet people from different countries and continents. I don’t live in a “TPOT hub” like Berlin, so my online communities have no offline equivalent in my location, and I need to travel to meet them IRL. On the other hand, I am happy in my hometown, Gießen (Giessen), with family nearby, old friends, and the local community that I’ve built in the past decade I’ve been back here. I can’t imagine moving away permanently, except maybe for a spouse who’s more tied to her location than I am. I haven’t fully tapped into the potential of this city, although I’m also well aware that the potential of a town with less than 100K inhabitants, most of which are college students, is limited. I don’t think I can simultaneously be an avid traveler and involved in a global community while actively building a local community. Or maybe I can, but then I must be more deliberate and strategic. I won’t be happy if I feel torn between places.

There’s also a variant that I haven’t explored as much as I could, and that is expanding on including nearby cities like Frankfurt in my socializing and networking activities, stretching the area while staying rooted. Many options! I plan to set some goals in the next few days and write a follow-up post here.