hello campfire!
i’m happy to be sharing that the community is getting a new home over on Telegram and we will be leaving Mighty Networks, which has served us for the last couple of years, behind. this decision came after a lot of thought and consultation with the community and we believe this new era will allow us to create a thriving community that offers the support, advice, and accompaniment needed on your journey—whatever it is.
for a little more details, here are two things that triggered our need for an alternative and to start this new chapter:
❌ Mighty Networks no longer serves our need
in the post-pandemic world and with zoom fatigue taking over, the live conversations that had been a staple for mighty networks decreased to a halt and the community needed a different way of relating that was asynchronous and text-based. so, earlier this year we experimented a lot with topic-driven group chats where folks from all walks of life came together to discuss ideas, give advice, and find community. these group chats were highly active and Telegram, the platform we used for them, was a perfect match for what we wanted to do.
unfortunately, the group chat feature provided by Mighty Networks remains primitive and buggy, so we could not make use of it—and the other uses which justified the platform also disappeared. All in all, the limitations of the platform became a wall holding us back from walking towards the true goal of campfire: to allow for life-changing and important discussions to take place and for knowledge to be shared.
🎯 we want to focus on what we do best
campfire started with the mission of providing a safe space that helps folks with complex identities build deeper connections with every person in their life through topic-driven discussions. we want the community to focus back on the folks who make it what it is, without the external noise, and amplify their voices through the group chats.
we believe our members carry a significant amount of knowledge that needs to be shared and used to help others like them—wherever they are on their journey. this shared knowledge and experiences will help us move forward as a society, together. we don’t underestimate the power of like-minded people coming together to form an alliance and we want to focus back on it rather than attempt to cover multiple grounds to no avail—which we have been doing with Mighty Networks.
as we advance, we encourage you to take charge as a member of the community and show up for your fellow members when they need it—as they will show up for you. we want to create an environment that thrives on accountability and active exchange and involvement. as always, you are the community and the community is what you make of it.
by this time, every vetted members—past and present—should have received an email with a link to join us on the private channel. if you haven’t, please dm us (@teamcampfire) with your email and we will help you out.
see you there!