Connecting in Real Time
Nancy Rosenbaum, Associate Producer
“If you’re ever having a bad day, go read some listener mail and it will make you feel better.” These are the paraphrased words of my colleague Colleen Scheck. And she’s right. Each week we receive inspiring, insightful messages from SOF fans. We do our best to write back. This is one of several ways we interact with you, through words and e-mail, albeit electronically and from a remove.
Lately we’ve heard that some of you have formed your own discussion groups — online and in real time — that delve into the content of the show. A listener in Arizona recently launched a group that meets each week at a local coffee shop, and she’s also getting a conversation going on her blog.
A Quaker listener in southern California is using our Repossessing Virtue series — interviews with people like Rachel Naomi Remen, Joan Chittister, and Parker Palmer — as a platform for discussion with the adult education group at his local Society of Friends. He wrote to us, “…people were grateful for the forum in which to share what was heavy on their hearts.”
Salon participants Muna Noor and Richard Scheele Shane Isaac speak after the event.
(photo: Trent Gilliss)
We’ve been taking our own steps to physically gather people together in a tangible space. After Krista interviewed Joshua DuBois at a live event in May, we organized a salon that brought 15 diverse listeners to our headquarters. They spoke with Krista about their reactions to the previous night’s conversation and shared about their own lives, concerns, and beliefs. You can watch a video of that event here.
Over the coming year, Krista will be speaking in selected cities across the U.S. as part of a live events series — providing yet another kind of forum where dialogue can happen in real time. As plans for these live events get firmed up, we’ll be sure to let you know the details.
All of this brings me to a question: I wonder about the conversations that you may be having in structured and informal settings that we never hear about. Have others started virtual or real-time discussion groups? If so, we’d love to learn more about how these are taking shape. Also, is there anything we can do to help — or ways you can support each other?
