Phil Robinson is Meetup's Organizer of the Week for July 16 - 22, 2007

Sometimes situations come together that one would never expect. Call it kismet or fate or a failure to communicate, but the outcome is brilliant. Its tough when I'm seeking an honoree in a large city such as NYC. There are so many qualified Orgs and groups, I could interview years worth of successful Orgs and never leave the Lower East Side.

I really hit the jackpot contacting this week's MOW! Phil is a special guy; not only because of his Meetup groups success, but for his passion for people, his topics and Meetup as a whole.

Imagine my surprise when he informed me that he was a new colleague! Yes, we snapped him up. We're always on the look-out for smart, passionate people. So, you never know!

Let me leave you to get to know Phil. He organizes three successful groups and has MUCH information to share with all of us.

I'm thrilled to introduce you to The Meetup Organizer of the Week for July 16 - 22, 2007, Phil Robinson and his Meetups:

NY Musicians Group

NY Mythology Group

NY Culture Circle

Thanks, Phil!

1. Three groups, Phil! Which came first and what prompted you to start the subsequent two?
   
   
   

   The NY Mythology Group came first. I thought of it as an experiment-- I had no idea what to expect. One of my friends had invited me to a 'Dream Analysis' group which I attended a couple times and loved, even before I realized that the people running the group were using Meetup.com.

   Once I learned about the Meetup site, I searched for other topics that interested me; unfortunately I didn't find one on my obscure interest in mythology. So, I left my name on the Mythology Alert List with a brief note saying that Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces (a classic mythology text) was my favorite book ever. I then pretty much forgot about it.

   A couple months later, I received an e-mail, through the Alert List, from a young woman who was also hungry to talk about all things mythological. We agreed to meet for lunch, and the two of us had an amazing conversation and ran to the local Barnes & Noble to show each other some of our favorite mythology books.

   It was so energizing! I felt so re-connected to something I love; and it was an amazing feeling to have met someone who shared the same rare passion. Meeting that first person made me realize that there was potentially a whole city full of people dying to talk about mythology who simply lacked a communal context to do so...

   So, inspired by that first meeting, I decided to step up and become the organizer of a Mythology Meetup. Within three months, the group had developed, and grew to become an incredibly close-knit community of friends-- my life was once again populated (as it had been in college) with close friends who shared by obscure interest.

   I was so startled to have been able to fill that void in my life (and so EASILY!) by using Meetup.com, that I began to reflect: "Hmmmm.... what else is missing from my life?"

   Since I was a musician who had just moved to New York and was trying to break into the scene, I realized that it'd be extremely helpful to meet other musicians: to perform with, collaborate with, record with, and support each other's gigs, etc... So, I started the NY Musicians Group. Similar to my experience with the Mythology Group, I quickly discovered that the group wound up being extremely helpful to the other members as well.

   Finally, the other thing that I craved was being a member of a supportive community of artists and creative folks of all types. When I was in college I had started a 'Dead Poets Society'-like group where we would gather once a month and share songs, poetry, stories, artwork, etc... I really craved having that kind of community in my life once again, so, once again, I thought that Meetup.com would be an invaluable tool to help create, organize and promote such a group. Thus, the NY Culture Circle was born. It wasn't long before it blossomed beautifully as well...

   With all three groups I made a startling (and extremely rewarding) discovery: By trying to address my own needs, I inadvertently created something which addressed the needs of many other people as well. It's been an absolutely beautiful and inspiring experience.

   
   

2. Do you find much cross-over with your membership?
   
   
   

   Yes, there is a lot of crossover. I think that as members get to know you as an organizer, they tend to like and admire you as a person, and become generally interested in other events that you're involved in organizing as well.

   I've had a lot of members of the mythology group follow me over to the culture circle, and then there has also been some cross-over with the musicians group as well.

   As members of the groups become friendly with each other, they tend to follow each other to different groups as well. At some point, the company becomes more important than the topic.

   
   

3. Any pitfalls to lookout for when managing more than one group?
   
   
   

   Yes-- it can become SO MUCH WORK. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started groups number two and three! Each group became very popular very quickly that it became clear that I'd need to hold events more frequently than once a month in order to accommodate the interest.

   I became overwhelmed to the point where I was too busy to do a good job with any of them; it actually became stressful, consuming, felt like a job, and I became a little resentful of the time that it seemed the groups were demanding of me.

   (Granted, I realized I brought that all on myself!)

   Each of the groups was so valued by its members, however, that I couldn't bear the thought of ending any of them. So I stumbled on to a different solution: how could each group continue on, but without being dependent on me doing all of the work? It became very clear very quickly that I would need assistants to help plan and host events, as well as maintain things on the web-site.

   I soon formed teams of multiple assistant organizers in each of the three groups. The core members enjoyed taking a more active role and once the workload became distributed among multiple people, no one person had to do TOO much work for any one group.

   So, by now I have teams of very competent, very dedicated, very capable assistants, to the point where I can choose to be obsolete if I wanted to. If I moved to a different city, the groups would capably go on without me. The centers of the groups have become larger than a single person holding them together.

   In fact, after 18 months of organizing three groups I had become very burnt out, to the point where I took a two-month sabbatical this past May and June, in which each of the events for each of the groups was being successfully run by the assistant organizers.

   Now I'm back from my sabbatical and participating in the groups actively once again and very refreshed. Although one of my groups might hold as many as five events each month, I personally only go to about one or two myself. Each community is very large and stable without me. I'm a participant and organizer, but I DO NOT NEED to do EVERYTHING for EVERY EVENT!

   So, my advice: ENLIST AND TRAIN ASSISTANTS WHO FEEL THAT HELPING OUT WITH THE GROUP FITS WELL WITH THEIR OWN GOALS FOR THEMSELVES. Then sit back, and watch in amazement as the little community you seeded becomes stable and autonomous without you having to keep everything together.

   
   

   
   

4. As I mentioned in your intro, you've recently come to join us on the inside of Meetup.com. Care to share a bit about how this came about and what your impressions are now that you're behind the curtain?
   
   
   

   Meetup, the company, aims to do a GREAT job staying in touch with the PEOPLE who use the web-site. They're very engaged with soliciting feedback from organizers as well as members of Meetup groups.

   To that end, Meetup employees (who are based in Manhattan) regularly go out and drop in on local NY-area Meetup events, and invite some of the organizers of those events to a company lunch at the Meetup office. The lunches are an opportunity for the Meetup staff to hear from actual organizers, and for the organizers to meet the people behind the scenes and to voice their questions, concerns or (in my case) praise.

   I was invited to one of these lunches: Some Meetuppers crashed one of my Musicians Group networking events that (I discovered) was held just a couple blocks away from the Meetup office. I attended the lunch and shared my great enthusiasm for the company with them and described my three successful Meetup groups. Also, in introducing myself, I mentioned that my day job was as a software consultant, "helping big companies build web-sites...". They happened to be looking for web-developers, so after the lunch, the conversation quickly turned to the possibility of me coming to work for the company.

   From Meetup's perspective, I imagine it was a huge plus to consider me as a job applicant who comes with a lot of experience and perspective as an enthusiastic Meetup organizer. It's a passionate company which is extremely focused on the primary goal of empowering people everywhere to form groups on whatever genuinely fulfills their needs. I appeared to them as someone who not only has the technical skills, but who shares in that passion, so it was a very good fit.

   I started working here just about a week ago and so far I find it very exciting-- it's the first day job I've had where I actually look forward to going to work, and I believe that's because I'm emotionally connected to what the company does. As a company, of course, Meetup has to care about such things as money and technology and logistics, etc... But what feels great about working at Meetup is that those concerns are peripheral to the primary motivation which is literally a passion to help the world's people organize themselves into groups that are meaningful to them.

   There's a lot of earnest idealism here, and I feel like I'm helping to enable the kinds of positive experiences that I and my members have experienced ourselves, for many more people.

   
   

5. We're fortunate to have your unique impressions as a long-time Meetup Organizer on the team make Meetup.com even better. Which team are you working with and where do you see yourself focused?
   
   
   

   My title is Senior Software Engineer, meaning I help out with the programming and technical aspects involved in making the web-site work and to keep developing and adding new features to the site. My experience also qualifies me to take on a leadership role on the technology team, so as the tech team continues to grow and gets split up into smaller teams, part of the plan for me at the company is to take on leadership of one of the smaller teams.

   Beyond my job description, however, is that at a company like Meetup, EVERYONE participates in idea generation and contributing to the process of creating an effective service. It's the kind of office where anyone, in any position, can walk right up to the CEO the idea would actually get listened to and considered.

   A portion of everyone's work week consists of participating in 'idea meetings' in which business types, customer support types, techie types, etc... sit together as peers and brainstorm together. I suspect that a lot of what I have to offer (from my experience organizing groups) will come out of my participating in meetings like that, maybe even more so than my technical skills.

   It's really the kind of company where everyone is valued as being creative, and anyone can contribute an idea about anything at any time, regardless of where they fit into the company, and if the idea has merit it will be recognized, valued and pushed forward.

   
   

6. Mythology is an unusual Meetup topic. When did your interest in legend, lore and mythicism begin?
   
   
   

   I can't remember a time when I wasn't in love with Mythology. I hesitate to use the word 'interest' as that implies something intellectual (eg. I'm not 'interested' in mythology any more than I'm 'interested' in being in love or in becoming inspired by great poetry or in getting up on stage and playing my songs for a receptive audience). It'd be more accurate to say that Mythology is nourishing to the deep core of my soul and also that it provides a context for the deep feeling of truth that transcends the rational mind.

   When I was a young child, the bedtime stories my mother would read to me were the Greek myths. I would sit in rapt attention as the horizons of my imagination were consistently expanded by these vivid stories which seemed to contain eternal human truths.

   When I was a little older, I loved the Star Wars movies and was astonished to realize that those movies had captured the imagination of an entire generation of children around the world as fully as they had. What fueled the imagination of the maker of those movies that they could create such seismic ripples across the culture? How were they able to have so much power to speak so strongly to so many people? I was so eager to learn more that I read every interview with George Lucas that I could find. I discovered that Lucas had based the character archetypes and story lines on universal motifs that recur throughout mythologies of the world.

   In fact, Lucas shaped the films based on the universal mythic story structure delineated by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 masterpiece, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell's argument is that all cultures everywhere ultimately express universal deep human truths, wrapped in a set of symbolic stories and images that are meaningful to members of that
   particular culture. However, if we look beyond the surface of the symbols to what they represent, we may penetrate to the core universal ideas represented by those symbols, which all cultures share in common.

   In other words, Campbell would argue, that the same process that was occurring in ancient Greece which gave rise to what we now consider 'Greek Mythology' is the very same process which occurred a couple thousand years ago which has given rise to what we now consider 'Christianity'. The Greeks expressed their sense of the world through stories that made sense to them at that point in history; just as the early Christians expressed their sense of the world through stories that made sense to them thousands of years later. The details of the stories are different of course, but the constant elements of the human experience which inform each set of stories remain the same.

   In that sense, reflecting on Mythology provides one with a context to appreciate how our shared cultural heritage of symbolic stories holds value for us if we can see past the surface details of the symbol, through to the underlying universal truths expressed.

   The other thread to this is that I had been raised with a very rigid, fundamentalist style of Christianity which was very psychologically stressful for me to feel compelled to agree with as a young person. Reflecting on mythology and seeing my own culture's traditions within the context of all cultures actually provided me with a perspective in which I was able to feel comfortable reflecting on spiritual and psychological aspects of the human experience. So, mythology has been EXTREMELY useful to me in that regard.

   In fact, to use the word mythology to describe the topic probably evokes too narrow a picture: one imagines a bunch of people sitting around telling those old Greek stories of Zeus and Hercules. Well, it is that, but it's also more: 'Mythology' is also synonymous with 'Comparative religion and appreciation for the human imagination which ceaselessly creates stories and images which symbolically express the deep psychologial and spiritual truths of humanity.'

   So, as you can see, my involvement with mythology transcends interest. It's nourishment and company for the soul, and a true resource on my human journey.

   
   

   
   

7. Where do you see your groups headed in the months and years to come?
   
   
   

   Each group has been growing and opening up many doors of opportunity for myself and for my members-- far beyond what was originally imagined. I see no reason to believe that that wouldn't simply continue.

   The NY Mythology Group has become officially endorsed by the Joseph Campbell Foundation as its official New York chapter, and as such, they promote our events on an international scene and connect us to many incredible opportunities within the mythology community: illustrious guest speakers and performers regularly come to New York and let us hold special events around their activities, and this benefits both our members and the community at large.

   The NY Musicians Group has become a powerful collective of musicians with relationships with many venues such as performance and recording spaces, recording studios, record labels, etc. Many bands, etc. have formed out of our community and many musicians have launched successful NY performing careers in that we've all supported each other by attending each other's gigs and collaborating, etc...

   The NY Culture Circle has proved to be a very popular and successful format for creating strong and supportive communities for creative, passionate folk, and there have been residents of other localities who've expressed an interest in starting similar-style groups in their own towns.

   A dream would be to have a culture circle in every town! Localities organize such things as Little League, for example, so that its residents can participate in recreational athletics; why not implement a context in which residents of different localities can participate in recreational creativity as well?

   I see each of the three groups continuing to grow and connecting to similar groups from other cities in larger networks in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

   Also, locally, I see communities such as these starting to work together in synergistic ways to provide true opportunities, resources and support to the participants of each. This benefits the general community as well, as more people are empowered to bring the fruits of their creative labor to fruition.

   If you have enough people gathered together around an inspired idea, no vision is unachievable.

   
   

8. Finally, for the fledging Organizer and/or Organizer thinking of starting more than one Meetup group...any words of advice to impart?
   
   
   

   First, see my answer to question 3 above. Basically, running multiple meetups is a TREMENDOUS amount of work so make sure you find good people who are willing to share the work with you. People are naturally motivated when it is clear to them that they are working for their own best interests, so it's important to find people who are as passionate about the group idea as you are.

   Second, it's HARD to run a large group. But it's EASY to encourage the members of the group to become self-sufficient and just to steer it a little bit so that it can effectively run itself...!

   Third, no two groups are the same. As you can imagine, my mythology events are very different than my culture circle events which are very different from my musicians events. Don't necessarily assume that the same format will work successfully across different group topics. Some ideas translate directly (eg. it's always a good idea to send a personalized welcome e-mail to members who sign up for a group, no matter what the topic). Other ideas do NOT translate directly, so be prepared to let each group become an entirely different creature with an entirely different culture and ways of doing things.

   Finally, Meetups are like anything else: you get out of it what you put into it. It takes a lot of time and energy to build a stable, steady group into a community with some enthusiasm and cohesion to it. If you don't genuinely enjoy organizing and participating in the type of group
   you imagine, you're probably better off not starting it. For example, I've sacrificed a lot of social time in order to run the three groups that I organize. I don't mind that, because participating in my group feels like fun socializing in itself: it's a bit more focused as each group is comprised of people with similar interests, yet over the months I've become deeply satisfied to have my social life start to revolve more around the communities that have grown out of these groups, with people who are sort of a cross between 'friend' and 'activity partner' and 'person who's passionate about the same things that I am'.

   If you can imagine that being satisfying to you, then PROCEED COURAGEOUSLY
   FORWARD!

   Be earnest, sincere, open, warm and follow your passions, and people with similar passions will recognize the vitality of what you're doing, and they will add their own to it. Then it will all snowball and become bigger than you initially imagined...!

   
   

Be sure to share you congrats with Phil in the Organizer's Forum!