Charles is a co-founder of Are.na, a visual organization tool designed to help you think and create.

Some call it the Pinterest for nerds, others an alternative social network that helps you collect and connect ideas with a community of like-minded visual researchers. Are.na has over 100,000 members today and more than 8,000 paying members that financially sustain the platform.

In August 2019, we had the chance to sit down with Charles at The Conference in Malmö to chat about topics such as:

- How Are.na grew from a group of artist friends in New York City to a global community of over 100,000 members today

- Subscription vs advertising: the importance of a business model that aligns the creators of a platform with their members

- The Internet as a public square: why we need to create more mindful spaces online to challenge the status quo

- Charles' advice to community builders: it's vital to consider yourself a participant of your own community, receive feedback and take your member's opinions seriously

Here is episode #24 of the co-matter podcast with Charles Broskoski.

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Follow Charles at @broskoski on Twitter and sign up to Are.na via www.are.na.

Hungry for more insights? Join our mailing list via co-matter.com/mailinglist for a monthly update from the co-matter network covering new episodes, insights, summits & more.

Charles Broskoski: The Story Behind Are.na

Pop-in calls are short, hands-on conversations where members of the co-matter community call in to share insights about a specific project they currently work on.

Today we're joined by the fantastic Kathryn Geels, director of the Engaged Journalism Accelerator based out of London, UK.

We talk about:

- The Engaged Journalism Accelerator and its mission to inspire, connect and support news organisations across Europe to empower communities and their conversations
     
- The shift in journalism to become more audience-focussed. Not just in terms of subscriptions / advertising revenue, but more in how readers can participate in all aspects of a news organization

- Germany's membership-based news platform Krautreporter.de and how they share their insights in their playbook for engaged journalism to help other news organizations break out of their silos
     
- Spain's Maldita.es that established an ambassador program called "Malditos" and an open CRM that allows its community to contribute to the organization
     
- How traditional news organizations can adapt to becoming more community-driven through opening up processes, decision making and letting people participate more

Follow Kathryn at @girlondon and @ejcnet.

A special shout-out goes to Kathryn's team Ben Whitelaw and Madalina Ciobanu who Kathryn chose to greet in her final remarks on the conversation. Hi Ben and Madalina!

Pop-In Call #2: What is Engaged Journalism? w/ Kathryn Geels

Scott is the founder of Meetup, the platform for people to host and join real-life meetups in their area.

Describing Meetup is almost like describing the social web: it's been around since 2002, connects millions of people and is often named in the same category as Facebook, Twitter and other global social networks.

Scott has been running Meetup for more than 16 years (he moved into a chairman role shortly after it got acquired by WeWork) and remains one of the most prominent advocates for community in the digital space.

It was therefore a special moment when we finally met at a WeWork in New York City in October 2019, sat on the floor and had a chat about the past, present and future of connecting people online. We talked about:

- The story of Meetup: how it started in the early days of the social web in 2002 and grew into a global platform used by millions

- What happens when people meet in real life. Why the stories that Meetup enables are more important to Scott than milestones achieved

- Sustainability: How Scott navigated Meetup over 16 years and sees sustainability as part of the fabric you engrain in your company

- The next 10 years of bringing people together. Why we need to deepen our connections, increase our sense of belonging and lean onto each other more

Here is episode #25 of the co-matter podcast with Scott Heiferman.

Follow Scott at @heif on Twitter. Host or join a Meetup via www.meetup.com

Hungry for more insights? Join our mailing list via co-matter.com/mailinglist for a monthly update from the co-matter network covering new episodes, insights, summits & more.

Scott Heiferman: The Story of Meetup

Amanda Michel is the Global Director and Senior Product Manager of Contributions at The Guardian.

That’s a very long title, so here’s our interpretation of what it means: ever since the Internet made free the new norm, publishers are trying to figure out how they can survive. Amanda’s job is to do that at The Guardian, one of the world’s biggest newspapers that was founded more than a hundred years ago.

In 2018 The Guardian announced that more than one million readers have financially contributed to the paper. In 2019 it broke even through the support of reader contributions - its first such profit in two decades and the culmination of one of the most significant turnarounds in recent British media history.

How did that happen exactly? We sat down with Amanda in Malmö this late summer to find out. We talked about:

- Amanda’s background as a political organizer and being part of the early team of the Huffington Post (that, in a way, re-invented citizen journalism) before joining The Guardian

- How Amanda and her team achieved that more than one million readers financially supported The Guardian, mostly through voluntary donations

- The purpose of paywalls, membership models and reader contributions to make journalism sustainable in a world where free became the new norm

- Values and honesty as the ultimate reason why people support The Guardian’s journalism today

Follow Amanda at @amichel on Twitter. Read and support The Guardian at www.theguardian.com

Hungry for more insights on the future of getting people involved? Join our mailing list for a monthly update from the co-matter network covering new podcast episodes, insights, summits & more.

Amanda Michel: Why Not Ask Readers to Contribute?

Pop-in calls are short, hands-on conversations where members of the co-matter community call in to share insights about a project they currently work on.

Today we're joined by the amazing Franziska Parschau who leads Adobe’s creative community and Creative Residency Program in Germany.

We talk about:

- Adobe’s Creative Residency: a global program that empowers creatives to spend a year focusing on a personal creative project, while sharing their experience and process with the creative community.

- The importance of creative mentorship & how the program expanded globally and into diverse areas of creativity (from photography and illustration to experiential and UI/UX design).

- Adobe’s strategy to focus on mid-sized cities and small, but high-quality IRL events to bring its community together.

Here is episode #3 of the co-matter pop-in calls with Franziska Parschau.

Pop-In Call: Adobe’s Creative Residency and Community Programs w/ Franziska Parschau

Yancey is a writer and entrepreneur most well-known for being a co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter; the website that pioneered crowdsourcing and enabled tens of thousands of people to get funding for their ideas.

Now, Yancey wrote a book.

It’s called “This Could be Our Future” and is a manifesto for a more generous world. In it, Yancey argues that Western society has been driven primarily by maximizing self-interest and wealth.  For too long, we’ve neglected other values in life; such as community, purpose, and sustainability.

Is there a way out? We sat down with Yancey in the Samsung NEXT Podcast Studio at Web Summit in Lisbon to find out. We talked about:

    What it was like leaving Kickstarter as a CEO after almost 10 years building the company.
     
    How Yancey explored what he wanted to do next and his vision behind writing a book
     
    The importance of values such as community, purpose and sustainability
     
    His proposal for building a society that looks beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living
     
Here is episode #27 of the co-matter podcast with Yancey Strickler.

Listen to the co-matter podcast anywhere by subscribing to iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher or your favorite podcasting app (search for "co-matter"). 

Follow Yancey at @ystrickler on Twitter. Buy his book “This Could be Our Future” at a book store you trust and want to support.

Check out bentoism.org to diver deeper into the philosophy of Bentoism.

More of this yes please? Join our mailing list via co-matter.com/mailinglist for a monthly update from the co-matter network covering new insights about the future of bringing people together.

Yancey Strickler: Could This Be Our Future?

The co-matter podcast is a series of conversations about the future of bringing people together. Hosted by Severin Matusek from co-matter, a global network exploring what makes communities thrive.

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