I realize I’ve gotten at least as much pleasure from working together to create these meals as I have from eating them. Sometimes producing things is more gratifying—and more conducive to building community—than consuming them, I decide. … there’s something special about the camaraderie of the kitchen crew.

Michael Pollan reflecting on his 36-hour food adventure.

There’s a new “creative class” in town. Or, more accurately, out of town. Increasingly, young entrepreneurs, activists, and small-business owners are trying to make lives that blend the wildness of the city with the wellness of the country.

I’ve been away from a city for a couple of years now and I don’t miss it like I thought I would. I love to travel and when I travel I go to cities. I need a balance of both urban and rural. I get that now and wouldn’t change a thing.

scenius – the unusual pockets of group creativity and invention that emerge in certain intellectual or artistic scenes

Rather than just buy locally a community is now investing locally.

A business owner submits a business plan, references, and a request in a specific amount, and LION distributes the application to residents who want to invest. From there, the business and the investor figure out the details of an equity investment or a loan. (…) When an investor helps a neighborhood business grow, the profits and jobs stay local as well. Investing in a corporation headquartered elsewhere, by contrast, merely increases profits in some far-flung corner office or helps open a new store in another part of the country.

Read the whole article for an interesting bit about how the community is “working around” the SEC.

Pie Lab is an amazing concept: part design studio, part pie shop. This sort of thing excites me. It’s got all the things I love: design, community, conversation, and pie.

PieLab from PieLab on Vimeo.

I love the idea of curated maps. The New York Times is pretty close to what I want to see with its Coffee Bar map. Foursquare is close to what I want. But this is at a closer level of what I’m after. Soon enough we’ll see the curated map down to a level of demographics (for lack of a better word) where I can go to places that similar-minded people have curated and recommended previously. I hope to have something built with that for men soon. Essentially, I’m after a city guide that has been curated by a group of similar-minded individuals.

When I read an interview like this one with Matt Haughey, I get excited. It’s rather obvious to say “he gets it”, but it’s the truth. Metafilter is an amazing community and as I study how to best build communities, I imagine I will be using MF as a case study. I never realized how MF setup its revenue model (combine it with the bit about ‘exclusivity’).

Me: Do you have streams of revenue besides the signup-fee and advertising?
Matt: That’s pretty much it…The $5 signup fee isn’t subscription revenue [since it's a one-time thing]. It’s mostly just putting a huge hurdle in front of having to deal with new users. ‘Cause it’s such a pain. The last ten years have shown that any time there’s press, like the New York Times writes something about us, 300 people sign up and then wreak havoc for a while, and then go away. [Without barriers to entry] it would just be a nightmare.

So it’s really ad-based. It’s not something I ever set out to establish. I lucked into it, being in the right place at the right time.

Me: So what does your ad revenue look like?
Matt: It’s been really successful. I’m really lucky with the way Ask Metafilter works. Every question’s about a topic that’s easy to match ads to.

The other weird thing is, ads aren’t even shown to members. Members asking about what kind of digital cameras they should get want honest answers. But non-members searching for digital cameras online get [to Ask Metafilter] in that search.