Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
Welcome to Rediscovering Connection, a Podcast where you'll hear from innovative leaders, researchers, community builders, and facilitators, on the frontier of connection.
Through soulful conversations, we explore new ways to connect, on-and-offline, to support our social and digital wellbeing.
I hope this podcast inspires you to rediscover connection in your own life!
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Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
17. Rediscovering Connection in New York City (NYC) with Priya Rose and Shelley Doyle
Ever wondered how some people seem to effortlessly build community wherever they go? My latest podcast guest, Priya Rose, reveals the secret!
Priya Rose is the founder of Fractal NYC, a movement that emulates the community vibe of campus life in the city.
Priya and her husband are on a mission to grow Fractal NYC to a thousand members in Brooklyn and in this episode, we talk about creating a decentralized community in New York City, that hosts infinite events, the co living movement in San Francisco, and how you can get a community of friends started - that's a catalyst for positive change and bravery!
Could this be a remedy to urban loneliness?
Priya unveils plans for an upcoming book and how Fractal NYC is evolving to support the next generation.
This conversation was such a treat to be part of, and I hope it inspires you!
Find Priya Rose on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Prigoose
Discussed on this episode
- Haight St Commons https://haight-st-commons.org/
- Super Nuclear https://supernuclear.substack.com/p/introducing-supernuclear-a-guide-to-coliving-a6f407933b62
- The Neighborhood SF https://neighborhoodsf.com/
I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your own life! Subscribe now and let the magic unfold.
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I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your personal or professional life.
Subscribe now and let the magic unfold.
Love & sparkles,
✨Shelley
About Your Host
Hi, I'm Shelley Doyle, a Social Wealth Strategist and Connection Coach. I empower remote and nomadic founders and leaders who crave deeper connections to activate their social wealth, so they can feel trusted, supported, and truly connected—both online and offline—no matter where they are.
Discover More.
I combine cutting-edge research on social wealth, social wellbeing and social capital with two decades in corporate communications to deliver mind-shifting talks, workshops, and programs around the world.
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I feel like a weekly dinner party is essentially minimum viable community and the key thing is hosting weekly essentially Like the key thing is the consistency, and so the way you do it is you want to make hosting so easy that you can do it every week, and so I think a lot of times when people host they especially if they don't host too often it's kind of like you know they fully clean their house and they cook this amazing, you know four course meal, and so we would host a weekly dinner party but it was like super grungy.
Speaker 1:It was like, you know, we'd spend five minutes cleaning the forehand. We kind of developed a system for turning our apartment from like regular mode into party mode and then we actually would not cook. We would order Thai food, and Thai food I think is like an amazing party secret because it really accommodates a lot of dietary needs. So overall I think it's like the optimal party food and basically every week we would just order a bunch of Thai food. We would kind of like press a few buttons and transform our space and we'd spend five minutes cleaning up and then we welcome all our friends.
Speaker 2:This is Rediscovering Connection, and I'm your host, shelly Keridwen Doyle. This podcast is a chance for you to hear from people on the frontier of connection. These conversations are enriching my soul and helping me to serve as a connection coach and facilitator, empowering nomadic souls and people who feel disenchanted with social media to find new ways to connect with themselves and others so they can navigate the future with people who share their vibe without living on social media. Today's guest is Priya Rose, founder of Fractal NYC, a movement that emulates the community vibe of campus life in the city. Priya and her husband are on a mission to grow this community to 1,000 members in Brooklyn, and in this episode we talk about creating a decentralized community that hosts infinite events, the co-living movement in San Francisco, and how you can get a community of friends started. This conversation was such a treat to be part of and I hope it inspires you.
Speaker 2:After my experience living in an eco village just over a year ago, living with lots of different people, I am definitely drawn to the idea of living near people that I know, but not necessarily on top of people. Recently, I've come across Priya Rose, and she has brought together a bunch of friends who co-create projects together and live in the same building or very close by each other in Brooklyn. Welcome, priya Rose. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me. Let's start with where are you right now? How many people do you have in this community of people that you've brought together, and how is it working? How is it feeling?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So there's actually two fractals. The first fractal is the one that's been publicized a lot more and that has about 35 people all living in the same apartment building in Brooklyn and it's thriving. We launched something called Fractal University, so that's basically just like teaching classes to people both within the community and outside the community as well, and we offer things like painting and freestyle wrap and coding, but then that's outside of kind of that more formal organization. We also just host a ton of events, but it's totally decentralized, so basically like anyone in the community can host an event if they want to, and that results in like infinite events. Basically like every day of the week there's something going on.
Speaker 1:And then we have a third space which is kind of just like a place you can co-work or host in, and so essentially that's where I am right now. I'm kind of on the bottom floor of the co-working space and you can just show up anytime, you can do your work and kind of like chit chat when you want to take a break. And then we have Fractal 2. Fractal 2 is like brand new. I've actually barely spoken about it, so this is like a breaking news.
Speaker 1:But Fractal 2 is essentially another neighborhood in Brooklyn and it's a result of I'm expecting my first child my husband and I are and we decided to start kind of a similar thing as Fractal, except in a more child friendly neighborhood, and it's a little bit more of a child friendly setup, I would say so it's more of the concept of living within walking distance, like a 10 minute walk, of a bunch of our closest friends, as opposed to all being in the same apartment building, which was a blast but is definitely, I think, maybe more of a blast when you're younger and then, as you kind of like meet, a little bit more of your own space. It's been really nice to kind of like have our own house, although we live with a handful of close friends, but then to have a lot of friends nearby who I also spend a lot of time with, co-work with, hang out with, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Exciting and I know I watched a video of you before and you were talking about your plans to have children and how you wanted that to be part of it and I think at the time, because it was a theory, friends were like, yeah, but you don't have them yet. So I don't know if I can buy into this idea. Now that this has evolved, have more people come forward that have got families or thinking about having families.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so, our new neighborhood. We already lived within the 10 minute walk of two friends who have families. They have one has two kids, one has one kid and then we live within like a short subway ride of a couple of other people who are expecting. And I think one thing we learned was we, when we chose the neighborhood we were, you know, there's like a lot of different factors to consider and it's not the most family friendly neighborhood and I think we thought we could kind of overcome that. But really, like, when you have kids, you have certain needs.
Speaker 1:A lot of people want to be near parks, they want to be obviously near good schools, they want to be near grocery stores and you want to be in a neighborhood that feels, you know, clean and safe and calm and Frackle One is a blast. But it's in like this kind of a kind of grungy industrial neighborhood. It's a very hip, it's got great coffee shops and a lot of art, but definitely it is a neighborhood that's kind of built for young people. And I think the longer I've stayed in New York, the more I've understood that there's like kind of neighborhoods for different life stages and actually I've kind of seen our whole friend group and seeing kind of shift as they move through their different life stages.
Speaker 2:So you've already moved, yes, and how have you felt that shift from this building of people that you've co-created together and brought together?
Speaker 1:Are you still spending some time in that kind of co-working space and yeah, so today I'm back in Frackle One just hanging out here and, yeah, I love to come back. I mean, I think it's definitely at this point much more dynamic than our second in Frackle, just because it's larger and it's been around a lot longer. So coming back here feels like entering chaos mode in the best way I always. I don't know. You could just ever predict what's gonna happen, who you're gonna talk to and where that will lead.
Speaker 1:I was just having a conversation with a friend who is apparently looking for a job and so we were like talking for a while and I was like you know, I actually think my other friend is hiring for something that you'd be really good at and then I ended up putting them in a group chat and that's going forward and so, yeah, it kind of feels like just there's a lot of dynamism, of bringing a lot of people together and having like all these kind of spontaneous interactions Beautiful.
Speaker 2:And this thing about hooking people up and inspiring each other to be brave and bold, and this is a theme that I love in my life. My partner and I have emigrated from the UK to Canada. We've taken some like big, brave, bold risks, and one of the examples that I loved was about a guy who was a poet and just mentioned that he was a poet and he wasn't really doing anything with it, and then do you want to just tell the story about what someone encouraged him to do and what that led to him doing with his poetry?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's still one of my favorite practical stories. So essentially we used to always host these weekly dinners, and at weekly dinner we would have something called lightning talks, where you could just stand and speak in front of the crowd and you could really say anything you wanted. The floor was yours for, let's say, three minutes and our friend stood up and he said I'm a poet, but I don't know what that means. And basically he had been writing poetry for himself for years I don't know, maybe his whole life. He had been writing poetry for himself, but he had been too shy to share it and it's not what he was doing in his day-to-day life. And he kind of wanted to step into that more.
Speaker 1:And so basically audience members raised their hands and, kind of like, asked him questions and gave him advice. And one person raised their hand and said you should go to Central Park with a typewriter and then you should put up a sign that says donation-based poetry and then you should just spontaneously write poems for people. And the crazy thing is that he ended up doing it later that week and then he came back to dinner the next week and he basically told us from, I think, maybe one or two days writing poetry in the park. He said I've made enough money to pay my rent, I've made enough money to pay back money that I owed my ex-girlfriend and I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to become a full-time park poet.
Speaker 2:Amazing, Amazing. And just having that camaraderie of people to say do it. And also the accountability to know that he was going to be returning the following week to see the same people who might say, hey, did you do anything with that advice?
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think part of it is that it makes it much like less scary to fail, because there is a counterfactual that maybe he went and tried to write poems in the park and it just actually wasn't quite the right fit for him and maybe, you know, he floundered and people didn't donate very much, and then he could still come back the next week and I think it could just be like a fun story to share with us instead of feeling like a deep failure. But it turns out he's like actually really, really good at writing spontaneous poetry and it all worked out so good.
Speaker 2:So let's take a step back, like to suddenly go from creating this incredible community Like where did you get the inspiration from? And I know you started in a different area in the States and I'd love to know if community building has been a theme through your life or if it really started with co-living that you started doing over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. So I used to live in San Francisco and in San Francisco there's like this huge co-living scene, like there's hundreds and hundreds of co-living houses, and I've actually always been curious to understand the history and I don't totally understand it. But I think some of it goes all the way back to the hippies. Like hippies were sharing houses together. Also, san Francisco and New York just have quite high rent and so young people often have to have roommates, and so I think there's kind of a desire of like okay, if we're going to have roommates, then we might as well make this really fun. But basically what happened is I was just living in San Francisco, totally unaware of this. I kind of just met somebody at a party and we hit it off and he was like oh, you should come over to my house for you know some other event, and so I went to his house and it was like this I don't know, 25 person co-living house. That was like a grand mansion and through really crazy events, and I just started going somewhat regularly and that was my introduction to the co-living scene. And then I decided to, well, I wanted to join a co-living house. But actually the compliant demand of co-living is strange in that I think people like get introduced to co-living and they're like wow, this is like such a fun way to live. And so, even though there's hundreds of co-living houses in San Francisco, getting into a co-living house can be a little bit hard.
Speaker 1:And so I had like reached out to my favorite co-living houses and I was like I would love to live there. And basically they were all like well, we don't have a room open. And at the time I was actually trying to get a room with me and my now husband but then boyfriend, and they were like oh, we're wary about taking couples because you guys might break up and I don't know. Basically everyone was giving us all these soft nose and we're very impatient people. And so we were just like you know what, we're going to start our own.
Speaker 1:And then we did, and that was kind of the beginning of my co-living journey. But to your question of how I always built community, I think, looking back, like we could tell a story that I did, but I don't think that's really the case. I mean, I led some clubs in college and so maybe it's like I took on leadership roles, so to speak. And you know, some of that involves bringing people together. But I don't think it was like clear in previous years that that was kind of a direction I was going to go in.
Speaker 2:So then you run this kind of co-living space in San Francisco and then you shifted to New York, and then was it kind of a natural evolution, so you had your space in New York and then, I understand, a space came up across the hall.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, so actually. So we were living in San Francisco when COVID hit and we were running this co-living house and that was like slightly traumatic.
Speaker 1:It was like actually very difficult to be in a co-living house during COVID, because people had very different ideas of how much they wanted to self isolate and some people were very worried and were spraying down all their groceries and other people wanted to see their friends, and so it was fun in many ways, but also it was difficult and essentially by the time that lease ended we decided like, okay, we need a break from co-living. And also the world was a little bit shut down and we ended up kind of wandering around the States and ending up in New York. And so when we were in New York we just got an apartment, just it was three bedroom apartment. We lived with some friends but we intended to just live like a normal life, no co-living. But then, yeah, the apartment across the hall opened up and at the time, like we had a number of friends trying to move to New York and so we basically asked one of our friends if they wanted to sign a lease on that apartment. And then suddenly, and that was a four bedroom apartment, so suddenly, like three bedrooms and four bedrooms Plus my partner and I were sharing a room, so there were eight of us, which is basically, you know, the size of a good co-living house and it was very cool.
Speaker 1:It's like, I mean, it's basically out of friends that come, and I think a lot of sitcoms are kind of structured like that.
Speaker 1:It's basically like you know a bunch of friends in New York City who have apartments near each other and get to hang out a lot because it's very convenient, and from there we realized that this is kind of not just my better model of co-living, but just like a different model of co-living with different trade-offs that I think we preferred, which is, nobody has to take on like the responsibility of like a big lease or the responsibility of filling like a ton of rooms.
Speaker 1:Instead you encourage your friends to sign other apartments in the building. It also means that you kind of have your own private space. You get to decide, you know how you want to decorate your living room and kind of what cleanliness norms you want, and you only deeply need to be able to live with, let's say, two or three other people if you were to have a multi-bedroom apartment as opposed to you know infinite. So now we've been able to say we have over 35 people. But you know some of those people. I think if they were living in the same apartment or the same house even might be at odds, because some people are messier and some people are louder and some people go to bed later, but instead there's a lot less conflict, I think, here than in a lot of co-living situations.
Speaker 2:And is there anything like regular that brings people together like weekly or monthly, that invites everybody to come together to really kind of keep that community spirit?
Speaker 1:So in the beginning there was in the beginning, for the first year we used to run a dinner every Sunday and it wasn't just for us, it was pretty open to all of our friends and so it was all the people who lived there plus, like we had a big community of other friends who didn't move in for whatever reason but, you know, really loved coming and kind of felt like part of the community At this point.
Speaker 1:No, there's no event like that, but there are also infinite events. So it's a little bit less cohesive. But also the goal is, if you move in here, you should either have or make three to five close friends who live in the building and then maybe have 10 or more friends who are kind of like one layer out, who you still are hanging out with and collaborating with, and then kind of you have this community around you. So that's kind of my goal. It's like meant to not necessarily be one cohesive thing, because I think that can I don't know it can in some ways it can be fun, but in some ways I think it can add a lot of stress.
Speaker 2:So yeah, this is really curious, because this is this was what I was thinking as well when I saw your past video and it was saying that you were looking to scale even to like a thousand people and I was like that sounds like a lot. And in my research I came across something called Dunbar's number. I don't know if that's something that's been on your radar before, but his, his theory is that our brains can only maintain 150 social connections and then there's different spheres and that closest, closest sphere is three to five, 12 to 15, and it goes out to 50, then 150. So, yeah, just thinking about that, just making it feel manageable and and, like you said, like you don't have to be best friends with everybody, but so long as you can find your interests and find subgroups within the whole that are going to speak to you, then then it, then it works.
Speaker 2:And I love the idea of self management, part of my master's research. I read a book called Reinventing Organizations by Frederick Lalu and this was all about self managing teams and the sizes again of self managing teams. I think he said between 12 and 15 people is a really nice number for self managing teams. So I guess in those subgroups I'd be curious to know what, what sizes they tend to be. And then Robin Dunbar said again. He said there's the number 40, as soon as groups get bigger than 40, becomes very hard for them to manage themselves without some kind of leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, I like. I think the best metaphor for what I intend to practical to be is a campus like a college campus, and you know, college campus can have thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people, and the goal is not you know all of those people or your friends with all of those people, or anything like that. It's more just like you're bringing together a lot of people who are in the same life stage, who are often open to connections and friends and who also just get to live within a close walk of each other. And so I think that's why so many people have like these beautiful memories of college, because when you do make friends.
Speaker 1:They're all really close to you and so you get to hang out with them as much as you want and you get to grow with them, and you get to take classes with them, and so that's kind of the goal is just to kind of like, be a beacon, to bring a lot of people together and then you kind of create your own social world within that.
Speaker 2:And loneliness is something that I've been researching a lot, and cities can be the loneliest places to live. Even though there's thousands of people all around you, you can feel completely isolated and actually not see anyone if you don't really put yourself out there. So I think this sounds like it's such a beautiful initiative to to bring people together and let them know, you know, let them put events on that other people put events on. And having that space you know, finding affordable space to host events, even if you want to, can be really challenging. So having that space dedicated for members of the fractals to put on whatever events they want to, that sounds like such a blessing. And what kind of feedback have you had from, like, new members? And do people tend to stay? Or is there like, is that do people stay for a certain amount of time and then they move on, or do they just stay?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay, new members are often like very enchanted and and yeah, we get this like gushing feedback really like people who are just like, wow, I'm so happy I found this. You know, they they're making friends so quickly, they're having really stimulating conversations and they're like, I think, deeply surprised that something like this exists. And and then over the course of the next couple of months, oftentimes people take big risks, like our friend Charlie, who became a poet, so they'll like quit their job or just make some other major life decision. It's really fun to watch. There are a lot of people who stay long term and when I started the community, I really, really wanted it to be a long term community and in fact, I was like slightly resentful of, like the short term people, because I think there's like there's a lot of flabbyness in my generation and no madism, which I think can be very healthy, but also there's kind of this phenomenal people will show up to your community, they'll like have a great time and then they'll leave, and if you are a long term person, it can make your life feel much more unstable, where you, you know you make a really, really good friendship and then suddenly your friend is gone and then it feels like you're constantly cycling through friends, and so I wanted to find the right balance of having long term people and short term people.
Speaker 1:I think I have realized that the that short term people are kind of out of a lot as well. I think a lot of the kind of dynamism of here is that, like, when you come in short term, the people who come here short term sometimes end up socializing like absolutely. They wake up in the morning, they're like social all day, even if they're working. They're like in the co working space, and so they're kind of like socializing as they work in a way and they just have infinite energy towards the community versus. I don't think that's actually super sustainable long term.
Speaker 1:So, like a lot of the long term residents have lives that probably look a lot more kind of like normal, where they spend a lot of time by themselves and spend a lot of time outside of the community as well and also, you know, come to events and have friends here and love living here. So it's a big mix. I'm curious. We're only less than two years in, so I'm not really sure like what, what the really long term looks like. I can speak for myself that I basically lived here for two years and then, essentially, once I found out I was pregnant, I was like, okay, I think, like I want to create the next fractal. I think I I love living here, but it's not actually the place that I would want to raise my baby, and so, yeah, I'm curious to see as everyone kind of progresses and their lives evolve like what what that looks like.
Speaker 2:So if someone that's watching this was like really curious and like could they come and experience it for a month, Is that something that?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and in fact that is one of the benefits of living here as a long term resident is New York is like really expensive rent is really expensive here, and what we do is we have this like sub letters form and I think the link later so you can put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:But essentially we have the sub letters form and because a lot of people know about us, there's like lots and lots of people who fill out the sub letters form and what that means is that anytime you travel, you can fill your room with somebody and and there's somewhat pre vetted and you might, you know, do an interview with them or something like that. So, because we want to make sure we bring in people to the community will contribute back. But but what's cool is it almost makes you feel like going on vacation is free, because if your rent is covered and New York rent is so expensive it's that kind of covers your flights and covers your Airbnb sometimes and stuff like that and so I actually think a lot of people come here and end up traveling more than they did before because, it just feels like it's more accessible.
Speaker 2:Yes, intriguing, very cool and okay. So let's let's talk a little bit about parenting in this lifestyle. I know I've had like different ideas. I'm like, during the summers, rather than getting my kids into kids club, like why don't I collaborate with a bunch of other parents? We all have a day and then we look after each other's kids and then we'll teach them whatever we're good at, we can kind of do classes with them. I'm intrigued to know what you've thought of in terms of potentially some alternative parenting ideas, with community at the heart of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've definitely daydreamed about this stuff and I'm very curious, still feel like a two far away from it to really know what would work and what is really just a daydream. There are people in history who have done this. My favorite is Marie Curie. Marie Curie basically worked with like all the other professors at her college to start like schooling each other, and so there's like all these little kids who learned science from Marie Curie, which is kind of wild, and the only thing is that lasted maybe like two years or something, and I think the reason was, you know, all these professors are already hard at work and and have a lot on our plate, and so it seems like, just from reading about it, that it went well for the kids, but it was not necessarily sustainable for the parents and I think that's kind of a hard part is that you you either need you know a lot of people who have like a lot of flexibility in their work or who aren't working in their full time stay at home parents.
Speaker 1:I suspect I will school my kids through like a bit of a mix of sometimes kind of more traditional school, not traditional schooling necessarily.
Speaker 1:I'm really into Montessori schooling. My husband used to work for Montessori school and I would feel pretty confident sending my kids to like a really good Montessori school, and I also think probably there will be years where they'll just be schooled at home and maybe schooled in community with our friends. I'm also very, very excited about my kids being able to learn from my friends, especially since they all live so close and since they're also involved in our lives. So you know, I have friends, have so many skills, but one thing I've been thinking about is how a lot of them speak languages that I don't speak like. One of my best friends speaks German. He also lives in the same house as me, and so I told him, like you should just be talking to my daughter in German, like for the first couple of years, because kids just like, so that stuff up, and so it would be very cool for her to you know, naturally have some sense of German as she, as she grows older.
Speaker 2:And I think just having those consistent grownups in your life especially when you're living away from your own family and childhood friends, like I'm finding that, and I and I feel like it is really important so that your children feel safe, they've got extra people around them, familiar faces that are constant in their lives. I think this is a real gift that we can give to our children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely yeah when I look back at my childhood, I don't feel like there were many adults that I was very close to. I had a couple of neighbors who were very sweet, but none of them that I really you know deeply trusted. And I remember being in like my early 20s and having a conversation with my best friend where we were kind of like, okay, we're each other's like adults now, even though we still felt like kids at the time and and yeah, there was some kind of sense I had of a lack of community growing up.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of what we've spoken about is kind of physical. The physical community, the people that are in the different spaces, Is there. Is there a digital part of this, this mix? Is there a digital hub that members can use that they have their profiles on, and how, how are they connected when they're not seeing one another?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a Discord server and the Discord server can be joined by anyone within our broader network, and so there's like 400 people in there or something like that. But then we also have certain channels that are kind of gatecapped, based on, like, if you live here or, you know, if you're participating in certain classes, things like that. So, yeah, that's probably our main, our main kind of digital hub. And yeah, I have considered like, okay, what would it look like if we had more of like a social media or something like that, like a profile in a way that you can kind of look up other people? I don't know, I, yeah, maybe we'll pursue something like that at some point.
Speaker 2:If a big thing about the work that you do is about it being decentralized to take the pressure off, then yeah, I guess it will weigh up like nice to be able to see someone's profile. But then who's going to be the manager of of that, or can people manage their own channels?
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. I think if we did it, it would be like I know there's all these kind of Twitter offshoots, like I don't know masted on and stuff like that. I'm not totally sure how they work, but I think some of them you can create communities within them. So it would definitely be like using some sort of platform that just like enables us to have a community that's kind of closed but also doesn't need top down management.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one that they used at the eco village that we're at is called Mighty Networks, and I think they use those at quite a lot of communities and actually Mighty, mighty Networks like I would create my own profile on that, so maybe that is a bit more self-managed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll check it out. That's awesome yeah.
Speaker 2:You mentioned about Marie Curie before. Is there anyone else or any other communities who've inspired your journey and kind of supported you to really have the impact that Fractal is having on so many people and doing amazingly well by the sounds of it, bearing in mind it's only been going for two years? It's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there are many, and they're almost all based in San Francisco, where I used to live. So there's one community, there's okay, I don't exactly know how to describe it so there's something called Hate Street Commons, which is like an umbrella organization for co-living houses in San Francisco, but it's run by an anarchist and it's very like super, super decentralized and very illegible. But they kind of provide you a lot of tools, so they have, example, lease agreements and they have house documentation and stuff like that. So if you're trying to start a house, they have a lot of helpful tools for you. And we were our house was part of it in San Francisco and then, kind of under that organization, there were a lot of co-living houses in San Francisco that had, like, reached iconic status and were doing really, really interesting work. One of my favorite was actually this house that was for ex-cons, I think it was for people who had life in prison, sentences and then came out on parole, and so it's just very inspiring to see, like what could co-living in the future look like?
Speaker 1:And so in this case I mean it was really, really impactful for people who essentially don't usually have a way to reintegrate into society and often come out and can't find jobs and are depressed and maybe are estranged from friends and family, and so, yeah, it's really, really fun to kind of read about those stories. Also, there's an amazing publication called Super Nuclear that is edited by two friends of mine and they just write a lot of articles about how to run co-living houses and we have a guest post on there. Basically, a lot of co-living houses will write guest posts there as well about how their houses work, so then you can get a lot of inspiration from other houses.
Speaker 1:Then there's also an amazing project in San Francisco that started after I left, but it's called the Neighborhood San Francisco and that goal is essentially creating a campus with a lot of people living within walking distance of one another and they have, like this amazing third space. And that was for us, actually really the main inspiration for Fractal is we said, okay, we should basically bring that model here to New York. So, yeah, those are probably my top three influences, although there are many Amazing.
Speaker 2:Amazing. And do you have kind of fractal values or do you have anything that when new members are interested, you are able to know that they are going to be the right fit for the community?
Speaker 1:That's a great question, I would say, with value, curiosity and playfulness and open-mindedness, but I think it's very hard to put a vibe into words basically, and so I don't know. I really strongly believe in this concept of eligibility, which is like it's really there's something that breaks when you try to like, really like carefully, denote like this person is, you know, a fractal person and this person is not. Yeah, mostly I want them to be like community oriented enough to kind of like contribute to the community, to like be like a positive some force. But within that I would love there to be like a lot of diversity and interest and even just the way people approach life.
Speaker 2:Nice and just all about reciprocity. By the sounds of things like money, money just hasn't come up in anything that I've read about you and your work. Does money play a part in any of this, or do you try and not let that dictate what goes on at Fractal?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we try for it to play a relatively small role. We definitely are not a commune, we don't want to combine finances or anything like that. And what's cool is that because because people sign for their own apartment units, essentially you're kind of just transacting with a landlord who's pretty much unrelated to us and even like if you lived anywhere else in New York City, you also would essentially have to have a lease somewhere with a landlord. So there's there's no added real economic, you know, portion to Fractal. We have a third space and the third space so far has just been open to everyone. They have something called an open collective which is similar to a Patreon, so you can sign up and kind of donate to them monthly, but it's not required and it's not even expected really. I mean, I think kind of a subset of people at Fractal contribute to that and so, yeah, it's mostly just people kind of posting events because they want to and it brings joy to their life and and connecting with each other because they want to. And yeah, we I mean so we also run Fractal University and that's very interesting in that we those are classes and those are often paid classes.
Speaker 1:A teacher can decide like, do I want to charge for this class or not. But yeah, that's paid classes and so some people can make money basically via teaching classes. And so I just taught a class last semester and I actually made like $1,000, which was really fun for me because to me it felt like just like a free $1,000, because I was teaching this class about how to live with your friends and that's just like a subject I love talking about, I love teaching about and like through teaching that class I made a number of friends. So to me it doesn't really feel like work and so it's kind of fun that there's this extra kind of economic component to it. But overall it's, it doesn't involve money very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but saying that, like, you've obviously invested quite a lot of your time and energy creating this, so it seems sensible that you should have some kind of financial remuneration. And I know we're both connected with Richard Bartlett and I had him on my podcast in the summer and that was one of the things that he said that community builders just don't really get paid for the amazing and invaluable work that they do to bring people together. That you can't. It's very hard to charge and at the same time you're you're working while everyone else is having a good time a lot, a lot of the time as well. I guess not so much if other people are putting on the events. You can kind of go and enjoy them. Yeah, I don't know if you've got any any thoughts in that area of community builders actually having having a sustainable way to continue their efforts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to me I feel like there's like a budding new role of kind of community builder and obviously we've had community builders for centuries. But one way I think about it is I actually think that a lot of the role I'm taking on was similar to the role that pastors used to take on, which is basically like you are kind of like I don't know, you're bringing people together, you're kind of aware of lots of different people's needs. Sometimes you can be somebody's confidant, things like that. And so the way we used to fund that is essentially people would often give donations to the church, and so yeah, I'm very curious to see, like how that plays out going forward. Like will there be more kind of social clubs where people are kind of just donating and then that's being funneled to people who are doing social work? But I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case, but like that's necessarily where the world should go or will go.
Speaker 1:I think the way I think about it is I think of myself almost like an indie hacker, and so I suspect that most of the money I make will be kind of through indie projects.
Speaker 1:I'm actually about to start writing a book called how to Live New your Friends, an e-book and so, and I've managed to make money in various ways in the last year through kind of like strange side projects, and so, yeah, I think long-term, I'll probably find some sort of path that is helped by the community work I do and is relevant to it and kind of helps push it forward, but isn't necessarily being paid directly for what I'm doing. That said, we actually, like we have had multiple people offer to fund what we're doing, although we have never accepted it because it's never quite been the terms we want. But, yeah, there's like a lot of interest around this stuff and there are people out there who want to support you, and so, yeah, definitely, I feel like I'm at the frontier of something and we're all trying to figure out, okay, what does this look like sustainably long-term? But also, it doesn't worry me very much.
Speaker 1:I feel confident, in kind of like, where it's all going, and I should say so if I trade I'm a software engineer, as is my husband, and we've been on sabbatical for a while but we also have the ability to kind of make money when and if we need it.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. That's a nice feeling to have and something that just come up when you're talking about almost having the role of a pastor and understanding different people's needs and a good friend of mine who is a community builder. Some conflict that she has in her own life is that because she's always the one creating the events and she's always present, but people then assume if we think back to Dunbar's number and the different spheres, they then assume that she's in their kind of inner spheres in Dunbar's number, whereas for her they wouldn't necessarily be in her inner spheres and she's not able to kind of speak openly and honestly about her life with these people. Is that, has that come up? Or is there anything that you do to kind of protect yourself and have healthy boundaries in place to kind of manage your energy as someone that is very present and facilitating all of this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I struggled with that a little bit, although it doesn't feel like a present struggle for me. So one thing is I do say no a lot, and luckily. I actually think living in New York people are really used to being told no, like New York is just a very interesting place. There's like a ton of social abundance here actually, compared to most places, and just like you can be very active living here and so for any given event that you're invited to, you kind of expect that people will often just be like, oh, I can't come or I don't wanna come or whatever. And so, yeah, I try to just like tune into myself and be like, okay, do I wanna hang out with this person? Do I wanna go to this event? I will say it has.
Speaker 1:I think there was a time where the stress was kind of building when I was still living in fractal, one where I would almost like run into too many people per day, and I think I have other friends in fractal who didn't really struggle with this because I think there's I think yeah, because I play this particularly central role there's like a lot of people who I don't know maybe might wanna talk to me, or especially guests, actually, a lot of times people are just hanging out around our community and they're like really excited about it, and so then they're also like really excited about me, because they're like, oh wow, how did you build this? And they have all of these infinite questions for me, and that can be kind of fun, but it can kind of feel like too much sometimes and so, yeah, for me I think actually moving to this new house, which is much smaller and we have people within walking distance, but I feel like a little bit more of the ability to kind of like choose who I'm spending time with when, has been helpful definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear you. I hear you Moving out of the eco village and back to modern life and we now live close to where we used to live, so we have people around us. But I remember when we first moved here and it was such a relief to kind of have that privacy again and know that I can walk out and I'm not gonna see people straight away, like you can choose when you hang out with people. So I hear you, and something that I heard a little bit earlier is about how you got started and those regular Sunday gatherings and maybe, as we wrap up, just talking about this for people that really love the idea of this and how you got started and how they may want to get started by hosting these regular dinners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I feel like a weekly dinner party is essentially minimum viable community and the key thing is hosting weekly essentially, like, the key thing is the consistency, and so the way you do it is you want to make hosting so easy that you can do it every week, and so I think a lot of times when people host especially if they don't host too often it's kind of like they fully clean their house and they cook this amazing four course meal, and so we would host a weekly dinner party, but it was like super grungy, it was like we'd spend five minutes cleaning beforehand. We kind of developed a system for like turning our apartment from like regular mode into party mode, and so, for example, we had like those colored light bulbs where we could change them from like a normal lighting to like pink lighting and blue lighting, and we had these little remote controls and so we could literally just press a button and kind of like turn on party mode in our apartment. And we had a couple other little tricks. Like we had this projector that we would sometimes use to watch movies, but for parties I would basically just like look on YouTube for something like psychedelic visuals and we would kind of project these visuals on the wall, so, but all of those things, you know, they still take like one minute to set up, so we would do that and then we actually would not cook.
Speaker 1:We would order Thai food, and Thai food, I think, is like an amazing party secret because it really accommodates a lot of dietary needs. There's a lot of vegan Thai food, just not ordering from a special place, just ordering from a normal Thai place. There's a lot of vegetable dishes that you can ask and they're often vegan. There's a lot of like gluten-free and lactose-free Thai food. Like most Thai food is gluten and lactose-free and probably near you where there's like a relatively cheap Thai plate. So overall I think it's like the optimal party food and basically every week we would just order a bunch of Thai food. We would kind of like press a few buttons and transform our space and we'd spend five minutes cleaning up and then we welcome all our friends.
Speaker 2:And then with the friends like bring their own drinks or whatever, to make that really easy for you guys.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean. So in the invite we basically asked for donations, except if you want to contribute towards the Thai food, then you know just Venmomi. And then you know, a handful of people would end up showing up with drinks each week, but it was probably in the minority. Honestly, I just wouldn't worry about it. It's like I don't know. People can drink water. We had a sink with water and people could go drink water. You know if they were opinionated about what they wanted to drink, especially because there's, you know, a regular party, so people would come back week after week. You know they kind of they knew the deal and they could. They could bring their own stuff they wanted to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just trust that it's, that it's all going to work out and not putting too much pressure on yourself or other people and just allowing them to bring what feels good for them Exactly. So weekly is really important, the regularity. And what about size of space? Like, do you think something might be thinking, oh, I just haven't got my space isn't big enough, or how many people? How many people is too many? How many people is too small?
Speaker 1:If you've got kind of numbers that you would suggest, yeah, so so I live in New York City, so our apartments are relatively small. I live in Brooklyn and in fact we kind of chose to put the community just far enough out in Brooklyn that the apartments are kind of big enough to host in my opinion.
Speaker 1:But essentially we would cap attendance at 30 people, and even at 30, it could feel pretty overwhelming, it could be, you know, a standing room only you're eating your Thai food, standing up, you're chatting and it could be loud and yeah, I mean I think you can do it at any size. When we first started, like our very first Sunday dinner was six people and that was awesome. And then basically what happens is if you start hosting every week, then people will often ask like, oh, can I bring my friend, can I bring my sister? And eventually it just grows and grows and eventually it grew to the point where it was like, okay, we actually cannot welcome this many people in our home. And that was kind of awkward to kind of work that out, because we had a lot of people who were really excited to come every week. But yeah, I think like four or five people on upwards is going to be fun.
Speaker 2:Amazing and who arose. I'm so excited for everything that you share today and I'm so excited to follow your journey to see what happens when the baby comes along and how that chapter evolves, and I'll be watching out for your book when that's going to be released. Is that likely to be this year, in 2024? That's my goal. Yeah, our best of luck bringing that to light. Thank you, and where's the best present? We will include some links below, but is there kind of one dedicated place where people generally come to find you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm most active on Twitter, so my Twitter is pre-goose, pri-goose.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you for interviewing me. This was great. Have a great year.
