A ten point plan for getting off Facebook

1 Now we have made that crucial decision around closing our Facebook channel and finally leaving the platform, it feels truly liberating! If you value what we do and the sense of community we’re building around our own ethos and values, joining us on our Mighty Network space or getting active here are now really the only options (unless you wait for one of our real-world events. We’re about to announce a couple here)…

2 The move from Facebook to Mighty Networks is for the greater good and will also help us improve the way we grow this space of our own too. Not only do we leave behind Facebook’s advertising ‘surveillance capitalism’ model and data-mining algorithms, censorship and erm, metaverse, but we are now on a platform designed for community, where (for instance) you can actually message your members and where each member has considerable control over what they see (through filtering) and through notifications options. In short, it’s pretty much like having our own platform and way more independent and private than Facebook groups.

3 We believe that people value something more if they’ve invested in it. They have a stake in its success and a motivation to help make it a warm, vibrant hospitable space. We already have a paid community – our ‘pay what you feel’ model at our own website has been in operation for a few years now and we are bringing together a tribe of people, some whom have met in the real world which makes the move easier. We have various membership options available to us as well as a prominent ‘donate’ button. As Campfire is a non-profit organisation staffed by volunteers, your contributions as gifts means everything. We couldn’t continue without this.

As our Patron Brian Eno said when he first came to Campfire “This is the start of something big. It will involve engagement: not just tweets and likes and swipes, but thoughtful and creative social and political action too. It will involve realising that some things we’ve taken for granted – some semblance of truth in reporting, for example – can no longer be expected for free. If we want good reporting and good analysis, we’ll have to pay for it. That means MONEY: direct financial support for the publications and websites struggling to tell the non-corporate, non-establishment side of the story.

4 It’s easy to see the profound possibilities and impact that’s possible when you create a world dedicated to your topic that’s more than just a group. We are still learning about the Mighty Networks community and how it operates and by making the move to MN, you are joining a dynamic platform that is in the ascendant, as people are generally leaving Facebook groups behind and moving onto new pastures. You can easily able to ‘toggle’ between communities on their app. Some of our recommendations to check out include Charles Eisenstein’s ‘A New and Ancient Story’ group, Dan Astin-Gregory’s ‘Elev
ate’ community and Alik Ko’s ‘warriors4elements’ space.

5 Elegant design has always been at the heart of everything we do so we were so excited to stumble upon MN, which feels much more spacious and is a joy to use. It’s not difficult to see how we can harness the MN platform to achieve our goals and create a great experience for our members. Posting is flexible – we add our own photos, videos and interesting copy to make it fun, simple and welcoming. We can go beyond the ‘status update’ and create blog-style articles, with inbuilt tagging around our community’s key topics, hyperlinks, video and photo embeds.

6 Its features are rich and we can learn from each other. The exciting potential of growing a community with paid online courses, subscriptions to ‘mastermind’ groups that are tailored to a specific segment of our members, ticket sales to meetups as well as virtual conferences, and so much more. We’re learning and improving, listening to members and responding to what we feel is and isn’t working. We’re learning that small, bite-sized chunks of content can work best via ‘quick posts’ though articles have a lot going for them. We are also able to highlight key features of the main Campfireconvention.net site, such as radio, events pages and our upcoming chat module. We’re planning to create tip videos to help new members become familiar with the platform and it’s easy to access the regular Zooms via our Events page to ensure that we can grow the community together and hear your feedback directly.

7 Polls and questions are a good feature and help to get those not normally comfortable to engage with us and others

8 We are looking to do a monthly content calendar with a different theme each month where we plan our content and events for the month (our Topics are Community Connection; Music and the Arts; Sex, Gender and Relationships; Spirituality and Wellbeing; Transhumanism, Frugality; Footloose; Re-Skilling Revolution; Our Relationship With Death; Food & Drink; Word Up; Covid 19 Responses; Ecology & Environment; Re-enchantment of the Everyday; Learning & Sharing; New Models and Transitions; Campfire Radio; Campfire Gatherings, Lighting Beacons; Local Groups; Technology)

9 Our community is deliberately starting small, learning and growing together on this journey and we like it that way. Like our events, we believe less is more to build strong connections. From our official launch, we are a paid community and this generally means that those that join are committed.

10 We think we have an inviting landing page which articulates our vision.

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  1. I’m not sure Campfire is intended for people like me, but how could it be because I don’t think there are people like me. My own mother, when I was about 18, told me she couldn’t believe how I’d turned out given the catastophic nature of my origins. Like her I was possessed with the creative madness, in my case embedded in cosmic rather than human society. I’ve reached age 80 with nothing but State Pension and a fantastic but utterly unhuman history of writing, of which a mere million words appear on Amazon in the form of ten long stories, and a personal history of dreaming. In 2008 I joined the International Association for the Study of Dreams and presented at 12 or 13 of their conferences, so I judge there must be some concurrence between my original path and their more scientific approach. A place where only the untutored mad know too little not to go. It is basically that everything is infinite (or some more suitable word meaning totality or totalities) and a being like us partakes of that nature, is that nature fundamentally, is ‘G*d’ as itself just as it is, not a part or a reflection in a broken mirror. It is G*d just as oneself, not something we need to be improved from unless we are moved to be. It is more god than God in the sense that it is total reality and it can feel like nothing. Which is where the idea that it doesn’t exist comes from. Ultimately it is our choice to be God, but it is a tricky business. A word like Elevate could be right but there could be 8,000,000,000 ways for it not to be. On a good day, with a good listener, I could tell you something surprising and true and real, which I learned a very hard way and, like inventing a wheel with square corners, you may really not need to hear. Which is why I offer the Social Dreaming Matrix which covers the same ground whatever we think.
    Which is a long way of saying I can offer only a very little money and my thoughts on dreams and dreaming and how important they are.