this is how i've decided to package myself up right now. in the unlikely case that you've never heard the term: otaku is japanese for a geek or nerd around some topic. since ~2023 i've been an otaku for all things community: how to design/build/weave it, how to show up as a member in it, how it forms in different sociocultural contexts around the world, how it can go incredibly well and incredibly wrong, etc etc. i can't exactly remember how i came across it, but this article by Joe Lightfoot ([*Of Pods, Squads, Crews & Gangs: Small Group Experiments In Radical Belonging*](https://www.joelightfoot.org/post/of-pods-squads-crews-gangs-small-group-experiments-in-radical-belonging)) woke me up to the wide landscape of possibilities of how we can do this community thing better in the modern world. from this article, i also came to know cool initiatives like [microsolidarity](https://www.microsolidarity.cc/), and, without fully realising it, was set on a path to find the sense of belonging that i'd been craving since i moved abroad. I’ve co-stewarded a steadily growing social group in tokyo called [kizuna collective](https://www.instagram.com/kizunacollective/) for over 2.5 years, in which we host cozy events and help form university-esque social clubs around shared interests. adjacent to kizuna, i’ve been playing around with all kinds of communal and social experiments, both as part of my grad research and as a hobby. gatherings are the fundamental unit of community. as someone who grew up quite introverted and afraid of social settings and had to consciously learn how to play the social game, i've become fascinated by how we humans gather, and what we gather for. so many gatherings suck! i'm eager to continue learning how to host things that don't suck, and that, on the contrary, help people step more into their aliveness.