(@stevekrouse curious to hear your thoughts on all this since you’re running the show!)

I'll add to that: Steve, you originally never planned on a lot this (podcast, slack, community), but here we are now, and it's a great opportunity for you and everyone else involved. It seems you're probably not about promoting yourself so much as you are for promoting / furthering the kind of future many of us are pushing for. But you are in some sense at the center of getting/keeping that going, and drawing connections between big players in this space and making that accessible to everyone. What's your perspective on the role you're playing in the community / in this space? If you had it your way, where do you see it all going? If you were to have a more support (whatever that may mean), do you see yourself in a privileged position to influence the community / this space?

Here's one thing that could happen that might qualify as "more support": https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/C5T9GPWFL/p1564278934009000?thread_ts=1564268036.477400&cid=C5T9GPWFL

That was a fun conversation to read through! Thanks for the thought provoking questions. I do have thoughts here, but am mostly off the grid this week so I will let them percolate a bit more and get back to this convo early next week when I have time to sit down and write them...

Everyone needs a vacation. Take your time. 😎

Let me just say thanks again for all the positivitiy in these threads. It means the world to me. As far as how I see my role in this community, I see myself as a very efficient lighthouse: attracting people to a single place to find other people, for collaboration, link sharing, feedback, etc. What I like about this role is that it doesn't take that much time or money, but it can help make some really valuable connections. For this Slack, I see myself as tending to a garden. I don't know why it works as well as it does, so I don't want to disturb it too much. While I personally don't like Slack, I am suspicious that this group works precisely because of the parts of Slack I like least: its unstructured chatiness. So I want to let this Slack be what it wants to be, with subtle pushes towards positive directions when necessary. Maybe that's too idealistic or just justifying my laziness... All that said, I am really bullish on this broader community and school of thought and agree that community building here may be one of the most valuable things anyone can do. While I am happy with my current minimal level of community building activities (I still want to do research), I really welcome the help and energy of others here, and would gladly support other (even competing) efforts. I'd love to brainstorm ideas with anyone in this direction: piloting a new community in a platform better suited than Slack, setting up more online meetups or conferences, planning an in-person conference or meetup, setting up a "journal", etc. I've done brainstorming along these lines with @Aidan Cunniffe and @jonathoda. (There is a small voice in my head that whispers that I should drop my own research and do community organizing full time, but I am telling it to be quiet because I am excited about my own research at the moment. Maybe I will listen to it another day. I have fantasies of being a modern day Licklider, going around giving out grants to people like us, but we'd gotta find the money somehow. I also dream of a FoC in-person conference, but that seems like a TON of work. I don't really want to be a fundraiser and logistics person...)

With research: strike while the iron is hot.