Holy Shit.
Four years ago today, I sent OrgOrg's first email (subject: “test”. body: “test”. very creative). It went to a group of approximately two people. By the end of our first month, there were six members (all within a few block radius in SOMA), and six email threads (very interesting).
Today, we have an archive of over 4,100 email threads (I don’t even want to try to count how many total emails!) from over 900 members around the world. We’ve grown faster than I ever imagined we would - and all because you felt the love and spread the word. Clearly, we’re on to something here.
Four years ago today, I sent OrgOrg's first email (subject: “test”. body: “test”. very creative). It went to a group of approximately two people. By the end of our first month, there were six members (all within a few block radius in SOMA), and six email threads (very interesting).
Today, we have an archive of over 4,100 email threads (I don’t even want to try to count how many total emails!) from over 900 members around the world. We’ve grown faster than I ever imagined we would - and all because you felt the love and spread the word. Clearly, we’re on to something here.
membership growth by year: a chart
We get a lot of questions like, “Is OrgOrg a secret?” “Why isn’t there any PR?” “Can I publicize the group to my clients?” And the answers so far have been, “Not really” “erhmmm” and “Oh god please not yet”. Why? Because we literally can’t handle it. Many folks know that we are 100% run by volunteers (nobody works for OrgOrg as their full time job). On the one hand, it’s awesome - it means that everyone working to build OrgOrg on the backend *really* understands the community. OrgOrg has always been by members, for members, and I hope that we will always stay that way. But that does mean some challenges when it comes to finding the time and the resources to build the tools this community needs, and supporting chapter growth in new cities. We are all over the world, and we want to support the community in a meaningful way!
(This chart is highly unscientific, based on data collected from only February 2014 onward. Note also that there are two “Other” categories - green is people who just said “other”, grey is all cities with only 1 person)
I know OrgOrg can sometimes seem noisy, especially if you’re not in San Francisco. We’re working to fix that by creating location-based and interest-based groups, and have a few compelling platforms that we’ve started testing. But know that in the meantime, you can adjust your email frequency (or turn email off altogether) and still have access to the online archives.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. We’ve hit some technical roadblocks as we’ve tried to build a more effective tool for discussion. We’ve explored partnerships that didn’t seem like the right fit. We’ve hosted events that nobody knew about. But I’m confident that we’ll get there.
Thank you all for your continued support, and most of all, for helping to make this community great. OrgOrg would not exist without you.
<3
Kim Rohrer
Co-founder and CEO
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