The Reliants Project #38
How networks shape our lives
Thanks for signing up to all the new readers! Hope those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving had a family-filled holiday. This will be the last newsletter of 2021. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season and look forward to kicking things off again in early January. In the meantime, here are some nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours.
Wellbeing
Rarely do we think about the ROI of relationships and community in a business or economic sense. Squad Wealth provides a fascinating take on the rise of what Other Internet calls “squads” and the economic impact of these small, tightly knit groups of people in society.
“The group is the basic user class for the tools we need today as a society, yet few pieces of software allow the squad as a whole to produce cooperatively and generate wealth together…Squads will be as important as companies in the years to come. And as the micro-structure of our social and economic fabric changes, strong vibes and sustainability will become the new metric of success.”
Relationships
So excited to share that Billy No-Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem will be published in July 2022. You might remember that Max Dickins, the author, was on my podcast earlier this year talking about his experience of male friendship. You can listen to our thought-provoking conversation here.
Community
Came across this signed manifesto for society centered design. It’s an evolution of what us designers used to call user centered design and similar to what is sometimes referred to as relationship centered design. I thought it was great that so many of the principles aligned with the ideas behind social capital:
Earn trust
Empower collective agency
Reimagine public value
Create compassion at scale
Curious to see whether this language takes off!
Like what you read? There’s plenty more where that came from. You can check out my best performing newsletters here:
About The Reliants Project
Reliant is my word for a person that someone depends on, an essential component of our social networks. With each edition, I’ll share useful nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships, and community to help you actively cultivate yours. Whether you want to make better introductions, build better social products and services, or activate networks to make an impact in the world, let me help you reach your goals.
You can find more about The Reliants Project here.