June 24, 2025: the long and the short of it

People are enjoying longer experiences, according to Ted Gioia, who has a keen eye for the trends in culture that are shaping our world and experiences. And while this is true for the individual consumption of cultural products.

BUT. As a person who spends time creating collaborative environments where people engage and co-create within organizations and communities I can attest that experiences of creating community together are becoming harder and harder, because people want to spend less and less time together. Clients who regularly asked for three-day -ong retreats now wonder if we can do the same amount of work in only one and a half. “Everyone is so busy” goes the line. But everyone is not busy. Everyone is retreating into individual immersive experiences. Even Taylor Swift shows, despite the fact that a fantastic community vibe emerges from her art and her fandom, is still a consumption experience. I worry that co-creative community activities are fading away, and have been for a long time. . The trends in consuming arts may be changing, but the trend in collaborative community is still fading away.

Spending time in deep community building activities matters. My friend Bob Stilger is championing Regenerative Responders, which is an initiative to build resilience in community from the ground up before crisis and emergency hits, so community can be ready to respond, not simply wait to receive help. The impetus for his work is in the stories he heard and witnessed from Japan after the March 11, 2011 Triple Disaster. Longform community practice develops the resilience needed for the times when it’s too late to do so. Movements like this exist all over the world, and I’ve written about Sarvodaya before, who came to my attention when they were first on the scene in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, long before the Red Cross arrived.

It shows up in sports too. My buddy Will Cromack posts today about how footballers are being deprived the immersive experience of just playing the game, long days spent kicking a ball around, training sessions that are just play, honing your craft becasue you have an endless horizon of the joy of co-creation stretching out before you. As he puts it:

Forgo the showcase tournament.
Go hit the ball against a wall.
Better yet, play 2v2 with friends.
More joy. More touches. More learning.

The player’s work is to learn where to place their time and attention, and to seek challenges that invite growth. They must learn to welcome difficulty as a necessary step on the journey toward mastery, whatever mastery means to them.

There is no meaningful progress on the gentle slope with soft ground. The journey demands friction. And through that friction, players fall in love with the process.

I can get behind that: More joy. More touches. More learning. Consume good art. But create something too.