The Wonder Lab

Our inaugural event is on Feb 7th. Spots are limited. 🐾
Sign up here: https://luma.com/qhq7m5xh

Community is about people coming together. It is about creating space for witnessing. It’s a room of echoes that help us reflect different sides of us – better sides, even. Community can seem like the most natural yet elusive thing. Everyone clamors about it, everyone wants it. Brands always talk about the gains a robust community brings.

“True communities are simply groups of people who keep coming together over what they care about. The most vibrant communities offer members a chance to act on their passions with one another.”
– Get together

Glia cares about community, too. But luckily for us, we are in business for people’s authentic and meaningful transformations. Our ulterior motive is to witness people grow into their fuller selves and embark on journeys that embrace courage and change.

This is an invitation to Glia’s London-based offline community, The Wonder Lab. So, who are “we”? And what do we gather around for?

We are curious type-II fun-ers who are serious about passion projects. All great things start from a tiny hunch ensued by big, gritty making. This is how Glia started – back when I was working overtime at my full time job as an UI/UX lead, I poured every drop of my free time into Glia until it became too important to ignore. I’ve found my life’s work, I remember thinking. During this process, friction is the norm, uncertainty is the default state. But thanks to my community, even during the lowest lows, I never felt alone. We need people who understand this exploration-filled creative journey to be our sounding board.

We gather for biweekly creative deep work followed by a quick critique + demo session. Once on the weekend, once on a weekday evening. The Wonder Lab holds space for routined tinkering that blossoms into progress and learning alongside a community of thoughtful minds. Drinks & refreshments are on us, of course.

As for our choice of timing, I’d like to take stock of something a friend, a passion-project-loving AI researcher, said when I surveyed him about his preferred time:

“After work is not enough time because you really need to set aside at least half a day on a weekend.”

“But weekends are precious. What if people don’t want to show up?” I pushed back.

“People who don’t want to work on weekends also won’t be doing cool side projects,” he rightfully points out.

Here are some logistics to make it fun and simple:

• We use Luma to publish our events: https://luma.com/glia?k=c

• We have a notion wiki page where people can learn about each other and share cool things: https://gliahq.notion.site/Wonder-Lab-2e46723b0f7380408239c71635479861?source=copy_link

  • more to add!

• Bring: whatever you’re working on: a creative project, writing, side hustle, research rabbit hole, or something you just want to explore. Solo or collaborative, digital or analog, finished or just starting.

Come meet people you’ll look forward to seeing and make progress and memories along your journey of creativity.