xChange: What is the future of community?

In our July 14th xChange we explored the future of community with a fantastic panel including Carrie Melissa Jones, author of Building Brand Communities, Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, and Dr Lauren Vargas, communities expert and researcher. The xChange was hosted by Célia Pronto, Managing Director of Love Home Swap, and Robbie Hearn, Co-founder of Standing on Giants.

In the xChange we also had the pleasure of hearing from Katie Upton, Marketing Manager for Recycling Lives, which is a great charity that is building stronger communities and that we'll be working with in our July 30th Coffee with a Cause.

The session started with the history of communities, covered the relationships between businesses, brands and the communities that they serve and lead and looked forward to what we need to do to create the kinds of community that we desire as we emerge from the pandemic.

Some favourite quotes from the session include:

‘You have to rub your members together until they get stickier.’ - Douglas Atkin

‘As humans we're hard wired for convenience and we're hard wired for community. And yet, building community is one of the least convenient things.’ - Carrie Melissa Jones

‘We need to design for dissension.’ - Dr Lauren Vargas