Hey all! So last week I held the first ever Robs10kFriends Reunion. It was a small informal gathering attended by about 30 people at a local bar called National Mechanics in the Old City District of Philadelphia.

I had no idea how many people would show up, but I wanted to provide the opportunity for everyone that I’ve met to meet each other so I could start building the community of my city alongside my friendships.

For a few weeks leading up to the reunion I posted this iPhone note to my Instagram story to invite both friends from the project and anyone else who wanted to join:

I joked with everyone I told about the event leading up to it saying, “If nothing else, I’ll be there at the bar drinking, so if you’re the only person that shows up then congrats, we get to hang again!” It really didn’t matter to me how many people showed up because, like my meetings, there was no transaction to it. I wasn’t raising money for anything. I wasn’t blocking off any particular part of the bar. I was simply going out for drinks and inviting my friends the same way any of us do on a weekend night.

What I did care about was people meeting other people that they otherwise wouldn’t have had a reason or opportunity to come across. And that happened! So I consider the event a great success and even saw some proof of it on Instagram afterwards:

Maggie (#209) and Danielle (#630) in the picture are already friends and this was the first time I had seen both of them since we had initially met. Danielle actually found out about my project through Maggie. Jade (#601), however, did not know them beforehand so seeing the fact that they connected made me feel great!

I know there are other informal connections that were made so I feel good about these types of reunions going forward. My plan is to host them monthly to give people the opportunity to become more and more comfortable with each other the more they see each other. Personally, I’ve found that the people I’ve become closest with from my project are the people I bump into most frequently and I think I might be able to help recreate that experience for others!

So that’s basically it for tonight. I just wanted to capture my thoughts on having people from the project meet each other. All good things! And on a side note, my DMs have, for the first time today, hit the 99+ mark so it seems like people’s interest in meeting for the project is continuing to pick up!

Have a great week everyone!

Rob