Adore the clouds? There’s a community for that, too. ☁ Gavin Pretor-Pinney of The Cloud Appreciation Society
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EPISODE AT A GLANCE:
GUEST: Gavin Pretor-Pinney
COMMUNITY: Cloud Appreciation Society
HOSTS: Bailey Richardson & Kevin Huynh
Show Notes
In 2004, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, an English graphic-designer, inadvertently started a Cloud Appreciation Society while giving a talk a literary festival in Cornwall.
He went home and built a website — complete with a manifesto and a photo gallery. Members could pay $15 to join in exchange for a badge and certificate with their member number (I’m #46,504).
Within a few months, more than 2,000 people had paid to join the society. Today, The Cloud Appreciation Society has over 45,000 members around the world. These members gather for Sky Holidays, share cloud-related music, art, and poetry with one another, and have even joined forces to identify a new type of cloud: the asperitas.
How did Gavin build something so special?
We called him at his home in Somerset, England, to find out.
Three Takeaways from Gavin
1. Put your purpose front-and-center so people can choose if your community is for them.
The name itself, and later Gavin’s prominent manifesto (“We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.”), have all made the The Cloud Appreciation Society’s purpose easy to glean for all who might be interested.
2. If well articulated, passionate members will share your story for you.
Gavin has never done any advertising for the society. “If an idea is something that people want to tell other people about, then you don’t need to do any marketing,” he told us. “Fortunately, it’s very easy for members to explain the society to someone else. The name says it all.”
3. To make sure your community grows and evolves, you’ll have to pass the torch.
Gavin’s in the progress of figuring out how to work with leaders in his community to build the community. “The society can be so much more if everything didn’t have to go through me,” Gavin told us. “I’ve done everything. I’ve designed the stuff we sell in the shop. I’ve written a book so I’ve been on the TV programs and done the talks. That’s all very well up to a point and then it just go any further.” To make sure a community sustains and evolves over the long term, you’ll have to delegate responsibility to members.
👋🏻SAY HI TO Gavin AND LEARN MORE ABOUT the Cloud Appreciation Society.
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