Building a Community That Gets Taken Seriously

For twenty-six events, Bloom ran with invited speakers. This time we invited nobody. No agenda, no sessions. We asked four months of members where this community should go next. We opened twenty seats and thirty-five people came.

The conversation started before the event did

The moment we announced it on Discord, replies started arriving. One member who could not attend suggested we look past program satisfaction and ask about belonging instead. Citing research on sports fandom, they argued fans connect deeply not because they consume the game but because it becomes a medium for relationships and shared emotion. The question that stayed with us: when does someone start to feel they are part of Bloom, not just attending it.

Another early member offered to contribute directly, suggesting an open source style structure where experts pitch in. They had burned out running a community alone before, and argued sustainability only comes from building together. Days later, the first member returned with a concrete case study of a collaborative creative community, with one sharp point: before asking people what they can contribute, show them the running projects and the units of contribution they can grab.

Introductions took half the night

We went around the room with names and fun facts, and that alone filled half the evening. A job seeker who has attended more than ten times this year made a semifinal in an AX competition she found through someone she met here. A builder at a US law firm confessed that working with AI made working with people feel cumbersome. A big-company regular said he usually attends events once and never returns, but somehow kept coming back, because the people he meets here accumulate. The highlight: a member who moved to a US startup through a community. She described herself as someone who gave a lot to communities and received even more back.

Four months in numbers

Then we opened the slides and walked through four months together, twenty-six events since April. Three in April, five in May, then eight, then ten. None of it was planned. And honestly, the first event flopped. Two thousand and fifty-seven people applied, we approved a hundred and seventy, and I filled two hours with back-to-back talks because I did not yet know that people come to connect, not to listen. The group chats flooded. What saved the next event was a member company offering us their new office, no strings attached.

People come because there is nowhere else to go

What surprised me in the data was not the big tech names. It was everyone else: law firm partners, entertainment companies, public sector people. Engineers have communities. But for people on the business side, a community usually means a sales floor, business cards and cold emails. In AI there was no room like this for them. So they come.

The feedback we asked for, unfiltered

Then came the real point of the night. One member said it flat out: I do not care about the speakers, and I do not care about the talks. What I want is the roundtable, so focus there. Another explained why mixing sessions and mingling is structurally hard: expensive speakers have no reason to stay and mingle, so communities split into session-driven ones that start charging, and mingling-driven ones that run on venue fees. A third pointed out that seven to nine in the evening is simply too short, because Q&A always eats the networking hour.

Who is Bloom

The question that stayed longest: before defining what Bloom is, am I Bloom? Is joining the Discord enough? Attending once? Any organization, one member argued, hardens into an inner circle within six months whether you design it or not, and the newcomer at the door can feel it immediately. So the membership line needs to exist before it draws itself.

What we will do

We already knew operations had to be shared with members. What we lacked was the how, and the room supplied it: select a small crew rather than open the stage to anyone, let them run formats, review what worked, then widen. Not yet, though. Four months in, the routine needs to settle first. Ideas poured out anyway, lightning talks, a parents-and-AI gathering, and the most practical one: next time, skip the presentations and just have a beer together.

The conversation did not end

The most striking thing was not what was said but that it refused to stop. A question invented on the spot, about the direction of this community, was answered with written reports and briefings from people who had met an hour earlier. The talk moved from the sixth floor to the fourth to the first. If a community wants to be taken seriously, who gathers is everything, and this night confirmed the answer is already in the room.

Dinner that night was covered by Crycheeseburger, who read the announcement and reached out first, asking for nothing in return. Thanks also to d.camp for the space.

Join Bloom

Bloom builds offline rooms where people and technology meet. We run them in Seoul, and now beyond it.

• 💬 Discord community, where events are announced first
• ▶️ YouTube, full talks from past events
• 📸 Instagram, photos from our events
• 🎟️ Upcoming events