Open Circle Principle – leave room for new people

I’ll be speaking at That Conference next week and since it’s been a while (for many of us, but definitely me) since we’ve been at in-person conferences.. it got me thinking about some of the conference skills I’ve picked up over the years. Here’s the Open Circle Principle in a nutshell:

You’re walking around the conference and you see someone you want to talk to, pretty soon another person joins the conversation, and then another.. pretty soon you have a circle formed having a great conversation! (probably one of the best parts of any conference) From above you sort of look like this:

Except I need to update this since we’re in a post-covid world, so it’s more like this:

Anyways.. you get the idea, you’re a group of people – gathered around. Sharing fun stories, past victories and defeats; you’re having the time of your life and you’re thinking – yep THIS is why I come to these things! Huzzah!!

Only, you missed something important. Something so critically small and easy to do, that it’s easy to over look.

Create space

Someone in your group needs to spread out a little and create space for a new person to join the group. I know, I know – your group is friendly, and inviting (inclusivity might even be in your charter and mission), but unless you actually have a space ready for people to step in to… from the outside, nothing will seem inviting. From the outside, people will need to tap, push, request to join, interrupting the flow of the group. By intentionally creating space for a new person to join, you are intentionally being inclusive and inviting. Lowering that barrier of entry – opening yourself up to even more participation and ideas.

and what do you do when another person joins the group? You guessed it, create more space, and so on..

I remember reading about this years ago (in the before times) and it’s impacted me at every conference since. It might have been a blog post, or a tweet, I can’t find the original source now – If you know who coined this concept originally, please add it to the comments, I’d love to provide credit.

Applying this to other areas:

The more I think about this principle, the more I realize how many areas and spaces it applies to.

Whenever you’re invested in a space, it’s easy and natural to become protective of that space. Maybe it’s church (us four and no more!) or a volunteer leadership group, corporate community. Always think of the people who might join church, company or group after you… are you creating space for the new people?

In my current role at Charles Schwab – I’m partially focused on how developers get started and get started well. Thinking about the open-circles-principle made me think about the ways we can be inviting as an organization, our internal developer communities and processes. Happy to say we’re doing a really good job at that already (of course I would say that 😉), and I’m excited for the new ways we’re taking this on in the future!

Let’s keep those circles open – hope to see you at THAT conference next week!