Weekly peer-run gatherings, refined through a year and a half of cohorts in Chicago, New York, Princeton, and Los Angeles.
Each Sunday in Chicago, a recurring cohort of ten to twelve regulars gathers in someone's home for a two-to-three-hour session in one of three formats: play (sharing of personal pursuits), pause (reflection), and resolve (intention-setting).
Hosting rotates: each week a different member opens their home and chooses the format. There is no permanent facilitator. Sessions are free to attend; no one is asked to pay or to perform.
Five-minute timer per person, both the floor and the ceiling. Each person shares the questions they've been thinking about this week — not biographies or resumes, just what's actively on their mind. Followed by open response and dialogue. The discipline is to listen.
Solo reflection time. Reading, writing, journaling, or drawing. Phones in do-not-disturb. The only rule is no algorithmically-manufactured feeds. Tea and snacks. The intention is undistracted presence, not productivity.
Three-minute round circle: each person speaks one intention for the coming week into the room. Accountability and witness, in equal measure.
Members carry the protocol into the week through a shared spreadsheet. Each person sets a value, designs a tiny weekly experiment in service of that value, logs the habits that stuck, and writes a short post-mortem at the end of the week.
The spreadsheet is the foundation's measurement layer. It lets members see their own pattern over months and lets the cohort see one another's. It is, in practice, the difference between a Sunday morning that felt good and a Sunday morning that actually changed the week that followed.
Cohorts have run in New York (Lower East Side, Williamsburg), Princeton, and Los Angeles. Each cohort is a small, self-organizing test of the format — a way to see what travels and what depends on the room.
We document each session. Over time, the goal is an open protocol that a group of friends in any city can run themselves, without needing anyone from the foundation in the room.
stay in touch
tony@scalejoy.org