talk about experiences you're not ready for high you may not know it but you're sitting in the middle of one of the most amazing and vibrant startup communities in the United States and it's not just tech startups every day in every corner of Portland people are rethinking reinventing and innovating on any number of products via apparel biking banking doughnuts you saw some doughnut innovation this morning donut inside of a donut pretty innovative education healthcare nonprofits we even have people innovating on how business can better collaborate with local government I try and track and promote as
much of this stuff as best I can but a lot of it is grassroots and hard to track so it makes sense that when people are looking to get involved in the startup community they wind up finding their way to me I'm Rick Taurasi and while helping Portland folks connect isn't in my job description it's the work I find myself doing every day I'm not alone there are a bunch of us working on this effort to build community it's not easy work and we have to do it anyone can do it literally anyone I know
that because I am probably the last person on earth anyone would choose to do this work not outgoing I'm not extroverted and meeting new people makes me exceedingly uncomfortable I think probably the best way to give you a glimpse into the personality that I have is to take you back and introduce you to my best friend from kindergarten every single day the first thing I do when I got to school was find my best friend as soon as we'd found one another we'd immediately go hide in this little tent in the corner of the classroom
just the two of us we're practically inseparable and we'd spend hours in that tent just me and my best friend golden walnut now this was Montessori school I get that parents can be a little creative with names but see golden walnut wasn't one of those creative kids names kind of think you see where I'm going here because my best friend in kindergarten was in fact a walnut solid friend though seriously back then we've referred to that type of behavior as being shy today we see it more as being introverted clearly pretty aggressively introverted no offense
walnut so right if someone who would rather hang out in a tent with a walnut can do this building community work fairly confident you can do this community work as well even if you're introverted like me because introverts are counter-intuitively actually really really good at this stuff I think it's because we become comfortable with being uncomfortable we've gotten used to being in awkward situations because for us every single interaction with another human fairly awkward so introvert or not I've found through my experience that it's easier for anyone to meet one-on-one face-to-face because it's not as
scary as a group of people it's not as scary as attending an event by the way hi to all the introverts watching the livestream right now I see you and I can now for the first time in history confirm that meeting one-on-one face-to-face is nowhere near as frightening as standing alone on stage talking to 3,000 people [Applause] [Music] I called these one-on-one meetings collecting dots in collecting dots I'm given the opportunity to meet new people with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives I'm able to step outside of my comfort zone and I'm better at best
of all I may be able to capture dots that have the potential to benefit other dots I've managed to collect now being introverted isn't the only reason people avoid connecting with the startup community sometimes it's because they think they don't do startups or they don't have anything valuable to add but the fact that you don't do startups is exactly what makes your insights valuable the startup community has added more than enough of our own echo chamber what's needed now are new opinions a diversity of ideas and people with new and new experiences and backgrounds not
more of the same because unfortunately I think it's pretty obvious where that more of the same behavior has gotten us collecting dots can be time-consuming but you can make it more efficient folks tend to open up around food you just had lunch you probably talked to a lot of folks around meals it's the family dinner dynamic or the watering hole effect and in my experience a cup of coffee is the smallest possible instantiation of that dynamic over the shortest period of time a cup of coffee helps people open up it helps us as humans to
connect and connect more quickly so building community collecting dots can happen simply and quickly over a cup of coffee and someone to have it with best of all it helps both of you collect the dot so efficient but still intimidating because a lot of folks worry about providing value during that short timeframe of the coffee meeting so let's be honest most everyone I've had a coffee meeting with tell you this I am completely useless in 99.9% of the coffee meetings I have I mean I listen I drink my coffee I ask a few questions and
sure every once in a while I have an insight or something that may be valuable but that's a rarity and that's okay because collecting the dots isn't even the most valuable part of building community for me it's the hardest part but not the most valuable the real value comes when I long after I've been jacked up on caffeine potentially days or weeks after I've had that meeting the real magic happens when I have the opportunity to step back and reflect on that dot upon reflection that dot gains context it gains connections it starts to provide
value to all of the other dots I see it stops being a single point of reference now you might say those connections aren't they common sense talking a lot about common sense here my perspective on common sense is common sense isn't common frankly it's only common to you so for me it makes perfect sense why I need to connect the former head of project management at a massive multinational corporation with the founder of a tiny local blockchain start-up for me I can see why I need to connect the dot that's wrestling with rethinking venture capital
to the dot who's successfully churning up wacky flavors of ice cream those connections are obvious to me and because of your unique experience because of what you focus on day in and day out because of your dots you're able to see connections that I can't see someone else is able to see connections that neither you nor I can but they're obvious to them this is how community is built by connecting the dots that only you can see but this doesn't just happen naturally if we leave it to nature it won't happen as quickly as we
need it to it might not happen at all building community is artificial there's absolutely nothing natural about this especially for an introvert like me and despite what we've been taught not everything artificial is bad sometimes humans come up with some pretty amazing things artificially like coffee and golden walnuts so enough of the talk and enough enough theory let's get tactical if this struck a chord and you're raring to go I don't know maybe you're an extrovert or something I don't get you but I get you all I'm asking you to do is just schedule a
coffee meeting with one new person just go collect one new dog but if that feels like too much trust me I get it all I'm asking is that you simply say yes to the next coffee invite you get just say yes and you'll still manage to collect too Don you both will that's all you have to do to build community the reflections and connections you'll figure that out I'm confident in fact I'm convinced that right now every single person in this audience with your existing dots knows someone that someone else should know and you're the
only person who can make that connection because you're the only person who can see that connection because to you it's common sense so let's use your common sense and your common sense and your common sense to collect and connect those dots and build a better more tightly knit community for all of us two cups of coffee at a time thank you
