> 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