Thread by @alexhillman

Back in 2007 I met @joshk for the first time. @indyhall was brand new and the philly tech scene was nascent but electrified.

I met Josh at his Conshohocken office for a quick chat about what I had been up to, but at the times I really just had one question on my mind. thread 👇

From the inside, the Philly tech community felt like it was undergoing tectonic shifts on a daily or weekly basis.

Everything felt MASSIVE and important and fresh and new.

But the community was actually quite small, and often, kinda echoey.

Meanwhile, Josh has been in Philly during the previous tech gold rush (and collapse) during the decade prior, so I wanted his long-view perspective.

How much of the 2006-07-08 experience was similar to what had happened in the late 90s? What was different. What could we learn?

I remember listening as Josh drew a number of correlations between the two time periods. Emergent players, growth patterns, the role of media, etc. Lots of similarities.

But one thing stuck out as notably different in 2007 compared to the previous cycle.

I’m paraphrasing but he essentially pointed out that during the previous generation’s boom, the landscape was largely steered by a small number of relatively large and clumsy institutions who spent more time *talking* about things than *doing* any of those things.

These were often pseudo-government orgs tied to funding or “masterplans.”

These orgs would sit *outside* of the community and decide what should happen within it.

I probably don’t have to tell you how well that worked (it didn’t)

What Josh told me (and again I’m paraphrasing a convo from 13 years ago) was different this time around was this:

He noticed that this time, the *community* was doing the work instead of waiting for the institutions to give us permission or do the work for us.

I remember this conversation pretty vividly and think about it often.

Within just a couple of years, the thesis was affirmed when a couple of those clueless institutions started showing up.

But every time they talked it felt like it was at us instead of with us.

I was initially annoyed, but shrugged it off.

The thing about these lumbering institutions is that they’re kinda like zombies. They have seemingly endless resources that allow them to be mediocre forever. They can and will spend BIG $$ simply to justify their existence.

That low level persistence turned out to be the institutions big advantage. They could flop around forever because somebody else was paying the bills, and that someone usually wanted control, credit, or both.

Meanwhile our grassroots community efforts moved fast and were resourceful and focused because we *had* to be.

Ownership mattered a lot less than the outcomes.

Was there some territorialism and disagreement? Of course! But the shared end game was a better Philly.

Institutions did stuff FOR people.

We were doing stuff WITH people. Together.

Details and resources aside, that was the cultural difference.

Things got weird in 2009 when one particular institution had lost most of their funding in the previous years (I guess it dries up eventually).

Their last ditch attempts to justify their existence turned into a very strange and very expensive event.

The event itself wasn’t inherently bad.

What was weird TO ME was how many of my community peers responded, and how their responses were different in public than they were behind closed doors.

This org was CLEARLY using their big expensive event to carefully position themselves, an org with zero impact or output of their own, as a peer of everyone who’d actually been doing the work during the previous 3 years.

I asked fellow community members and leaders, including ones who said yes to presenting at this event, “isn’t this whole thing kinda strange to you, dont you feel like they are taking advantage of us?”

Behind closed doors, most of them agreed it didn’t feel right to them either. to them.

BUT THEY DID IT ANYWAY. 🤯

Over the years I’ve learned that creating this illusion of buy-in is a remarkably common tactic to make things appear bigger than they really are.

So, the event happened. Nobody cared or remembered beyond whatever their PR machine had spun up around it.

Within 18 months the org was gone without fanfare.

The most frustrating thing for me was being inside this reality distortion field that an org created and feeling like, “uh, I can’t be the only one who sees this, right? Why isn’t anybody saying anything?”

I’ve seen this exact pattern play out several times in the decade since, each time ensnaring folks I know and love in the exploit.

It’s almost like watching folks get pulled into a Ponzi scheme or a cult. Every time it’s weird and I ask “why isn’t anybody saying anything!?”

Turns out, that’s part of the exploit.

Nobody wants to admit they’ve been exploited, because smart powerful people have a very hard time admitting they’ve been duped by their own ego.

And as a result, the exploiter wins the ability to recruit more people because “we’ll if SO AND SO is involved, this must be legit.”

Once you see this pattern, you cannot unsee it.

I’ve been writing this thread for an hour so I’ll close with these two thoughts:

1) history repeats itself.

find folks who’ve been in your field or community for longer and ask them how the last cycle compares to the current one. learn from the past, or be doomed to repeat it.

2) if something feels off, it probably is, and you’re probably not the only one who thinks/feels it so PLEASE don’t keep that feeling to yourself.

If you’re worried about the damage of speaking up, talk to someone you trust first.

Or talk to me [e-mail] always open.

And to that last point, if you consider yourself a community leader and fear that saying something out loud will put your “power” or position will be at risk, take a few minutes to reflect on what it means to be a leader.

Hillman out. Have a great Saturday, y’all.