Lessons from a life of building communities

*This is a speech I gave recently at a Go Open Data (GOOD) event on building community and fostering collaboration.

Hi everyone, it is exciting to be here, back amongst the community where in many ways I started my journey. Today, I want to take you on a bit of a journey — through some of the projects I’ve been part of — and share the lessons I’ve learned along the way about building communities. Hopefully this will help you with your own community work.

Story 1: The Cottage Shindig on Democracy

Back in my undergraduate degree, I knew I wanted to help improve the way government worked but I didn’t know where to start. So I just started asking people who were doing interesting work to improve government, out for coffee. To my surprise, many said yes.

But what really shocked me was that these amazing people — all working on similar things — didn’t know each other. That was the spark for what I called the Cottage Shindig on Democracy: a weekend at a cottage where we brought together interesting people working in the space to connect, share and learn. We had three key guiding principles:

• Be human — leave your titles at the door.

• Pick each other’s brains — there are brilliant minds here, so ask and share.

• Think like a system — see yourself as part of something bigger, a movement.

Lesson: Siloes are everywhere but people want to reach beyond them, they just need a nudge, an opportunity.

Story 2: Tamarack Institute & the Intention–Behaviour Gap

After graduating, I joined the Tamarack Institute. My job was to facilitate a national conversation on community in Canada — I ended up speaking with over 2,000 people across the country over two years from church groups to kids clubs.

Everyone wanted more community in their lives. And most people knew how to build it. But they couldn’t find a way to fit it into their lives. That’s what researchers call the intention–behaviour gap. We know what we want and how to get it, but we don’t act on it. Like eating healthy, or buying green products.

Curious, I ended up doing my Master's studying the Intention Behaviour Gap in community. What I learned is that most of our behaviour isn’t intention-driven at all — it’s habit-driven. We can have the best of intentions but if our habits don’t match this, over time, habits always win out.

Lesson: If you want people to collaborate or build community, don’t just appeal to their intentions. Build it into their habits, routines, and processes.

Story 3: Government of Canada — Electoral Reform

When I joined the Government of Canada, I led a national engagement strategy on electoral reform. I came in with a toolbox I had built at Tamarack: build trust, build relationships, build social capital.

But inside government, I realised — we didn’t have that social capital. We didn’t have the trust, and we didn’t have the time to build it. Instead, we had to lean on something else: political capital. The “draw” was access to a Minister, not trust in each other.

Lesson: The tools you use for collaboration depend on the context. Sometimes you have social capital. Sometimes political capital. Sometimes neither. You have to work with the assets you actually have.

Story 4: GCtools — Winning the grassroots but losing leadership

Next, I joined GCtools team, a government initiative to build an online platform where public servants could connect and collaborate. The need was clear: the tools people had reinforced silos, rather than breaking them down but inspired by platforms like Wikipedia and Facebook, we could build an alternative that did the opposite.

We had wins: people were excited, we had credibility as an official program, and doors opened. But here’s where we made a mistake: we didn’t pay enough attention to politics and power. We focused so much on the community that we neglected leadership buy-in. And in the end, we lost their support and our funding was cut, skuttling the project.

Lesson: Communities need both bottom-up energy and top-down support. Ignore the politics, and you risk being sidelined.

Story 5: Civic Tech Ottawa — The Power of Rhythm

Around the same time, I helped found Civic Tech Ottawa, a weekly meetup and hackathon for civic good. Every week, without fail, people met to work on projects, share ideas, and build relationships to improve our local community.

The weekly rhythm was like the heartbeat of the community (like the habits and routines I mentioned earlier). Over time, that routine deepened relationships and moved projects forward.

Lesson: Communities need rhythm and routine. And they need projects to work on together. Conversation is good, but collaboration happens through doing.

Story 6: OneTeamGov → Apolitical

Around this time, I also got involved with OneTeamGov, a grassroots global movement started by public servants in the UK. It was exciting — people all over the world coming together to reimagine government.

But it was entirely volunteer-driven. And that meant it ebbed and flowed with people’s capacity. It was hard to sustain or grow.

That realisation led me to Apolitical, a global platform for public servants. I thought: what if Apolitical could be the institutional backbone that grassroots movements like OneTeamGov needed?

Lesson: Grassroots energy is powerful, but to sustain and scale it, you need some kind of institutional support.

Story 7: Newspeak House & Crowdsourcing

When I moved to London, UK, I moved into a place called Newspeak House, also known as London’s School for Political Technology. The dean of the school is a brilliant man named Ed Saperia, who has a long history of building communities around projects going back to his days being involved with Wikipedia. He told me: "when you see a successful crowdsourced project, you only see the finished product. What you don’t see is the years of relationship-building and trust that made it possible."

I’ve seen the same thing myself: the people who step up most are often the people I already had relationships with. And crowdsourcing only really works when everyone benefits — when the outcome is open, shared, and usable.

Lesson: Crowdsourcing works best when built on trust and reciprocity, and when the results are shared openly for everyone to use.

Story 8: Apolitical — The Power of Experimentation

At Apolitical, I’ve spent the past few years building communities of practice for public servants worldwide. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s the power of experimentation.

We tried launching communities on different topics. Some took off in ways we didn’t expect — like neurodiversity. Others, like misinformation, fizzled. We learned to ride the waves of what worked, and let go of what didn’t.

We tried an honorarium program to fund thought leaders. But many of the people we wanted were too busy, and some of the best contributors didn’t even want the money.

Lesson: Community building is about trying things, learning quickly, and adapting. You can’t predict what will resonate — so experiment, and pay attention to the data.

Story 9: The Engagement Ladder

One of the things we’ve found is that engagement works best when you start light. Polls are a perfect example: low-barrier, easy, quick. Once people vote in a poll, they’re more likely to like a post. Once they like, they’re more likely to comment. Once they comment, they’re more likely to post themselves.

Lesson: Engagement is a ladder. Start small, then build momentum step by step.

Story 10: Community is Hard Work

Finally, I want to be honest: community work is hard. It’s rewarding, yes — the people, the relationships, the impact. But it’s also exhausting. Burnout is real.

I’ve felt it myself. Recently, I had to step away, even just for three days, to reset. And that reminded me: you can’t build sustainable communities if you don’t take care of yourself.

Lesson: Take care of yourself first. Build your own support systems. Step back when you need to. Only then can you sustain the work of supporting others.

So, ten stories, ten lessons.

1. Siloes are everywhere; be a silo buster.

2. Build for habits, not just intentions.

3. Adapt your tools to the context.

4. Balance community with politics and power.

5. Create rhythm and projects.

6. Pair grassroots energy with institutional backing.

7. Build trust for crowdsourcing.

8. Experiment, learn, adapt.

9. Use the engagement ladder.

10. Take care of yourself.

Community and collaboration aren’t side projects — they’re how we tackle the complexity of today’s world. And they start with small steps: a coffee, a poll, a weekly meetup, an experiment.

My hope is that each of you will take one of these lessons into your own work — and that together, we’ll keep building the communities that make change possible.

Thank you.