Which leads to the question: what makes one of these work? I’ve been a part of several groups and have tried to stand up many myself and I find the same patterns repeating across all the good ones. The best ones are a “forever dinner party” – good friends and conversation happening in perpetuity. They often share the below.

• Gardener, not carpenter

• Cooling rods and nuclear reactors

• The n-1 group

• Dinner party alchemy

• Gravitational pull of a few topics

• Size and Pruning

• Shared rituals