Everything has a rhythm. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a phrase one of my friends threw out, “rhythms and gatherings”. This was in relation to how people meet together for some goal.
Rhythm
Communities have some rhythm. There are routines that people perform. We check in with each other on some cadence. People tend to get things done at a certain pace. These are the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month things that happen. They are fairly natural, and do not need much governance.
Gatherings
Inside those rhythms there are gatherings. When people get together, they do so for some purpose. Fellowship or socialization, getting a task done, conducting planning, all these can happen in these gatherings.
These gatherings are part of the rhythm, but they also have a special role. They help to set the rhythms. Think about Agile and Scrum. So many meetings, gatherings, just to set the rhythms of the team. The gatherings become part of the rhythm, but they are also instrumental in directing the rhythms.
Technology should be focused on reinforcing and facilitating these rhythms or gatherings. This is why calendar and scheduling apps are so essential to our lives now.