free events free people

eXperience Potluck

Like a food potluck but for ... everything

❤️ free to attend 🧡 consent-centric 💛 participatory 💚 radically welcoming 💙 radically appreciative of each others' gifts 💜 no judgement 🤎 leaving no trace and nothing for the neighbors to complain about 🤍 Gifting only between participants + buying from venues to thank them = joycotting! ❤️

💞never💞the💞same💞twice💞

Register now!
Next event May 1

⬇️

2024 eXPo highlights: origami frog lessons, m-berries and hot sauce buffet, be-a-DJ, Alien Relaxation Escape Room, soft landing tea circle, guitar sing-a-long, friendship bracelets

May I, 2025 eXPo offerings: flow Jam, small vegan mouth surprise, Lindy Hop Beginner Lessons, Tactile Illusion, Try-not-to-laugh game (competitive), Speed Friending, Cook/Off contest, Tarot readings, Octomassage (platonic 8-handed massage), Cuddle Puddle (consent-forward), Maypole Dance Finale

May I
Register now

When?
May First already represents labor, loyalty, patriotism, equality, rebirth, and radical joy. Now, "May I" invite you to the Experience Potluck (eXPo) starting May Ist and add consent to the list of values we celebrate? Consent is essential to all eXperience Potluck events.Where?
Ethical, creative, and artistic public and semi-public spaces like community gardens and coffee shops with reputations for letting homeless people use the bathroom. Gifting only between participants, but buy direct from venues to support them. Tip well too... We're "joycotting" these amazing venues!In Philadelphia, we have a central indoor party hub space on Rittenhouse Square, then connect to additional locations around the city (including a bar), and culminate in a Maypole Dance...maybe! All ages welcome (except at the bar)!How to participate
What's your gift, for the rest of us to appreciate? Register your proposed contribution to get the starting time and location in your city. Can't think of anything? Offering to help is always a gift!Click here to register!

Philadelphia, PA, USA!

Check out a partial list of what Philly people have offered for May INo guarantee everyone will show, and some experiences might be weather dependent, but however it goes - it'll be a thing!

Art is the center of the real world.
Philadelphia is the center of the art world.
- Isaiah Zagar

Experience a tactile illusion

Something about your body will feel ... different ... unusual ... just a little ... maybe something you’ve never quite actually consciously experienced before .... Maybe your tongue. Maybe your arm. Maybe your nose. Maybe something else. Gentle platonic touch optional.

Gatsby/Gadsby

Andy Kaufman returns!? The performer will EITHER conduct a reading of The Great Gatsby OR cover a monologue by Hannah Gadsby. Performer's choice.

Speed Friending Host

Meet who else shows up, using a quick structure based on speed-dating. Find new friends (and/or who knows what else).Naturally, enthusiastic affirmative consent is expected prior to any non-platonic interaction.

Bluetooth Speaker

Bringing my large speaker ... This will let anyone connect at the event. I'll stay nearby to make sure it all keeps working.

Hot Chocolate

Just gifting hot chocolate. Till we're out. Bring your own cup.

Octomassage Floor

Five people per pod. Ten hands. Take turns giving and receiving a (platonic) 8-handed massage! We each describe what we like following all principles of consent.You have a body, don't you want to experience it?

Keepy Uppy

We will try to keep the balloon in the air for as long as possible. Once a balloon drops, it’s done. Three balloons per event: Green, Yellow, and Red. After the red drops, NO MORE BALLOONS.

Cuddle Puddle Facilitator

Platonic and consensual baseline: state your boundaries and snuggle up. Maybe instantly make some new friends.(Naturally, enthusiastic affirmative consent is expected prior to any non-platonic interaction.)

DIY Wire Statue Kits

Supplies to make your own...

Settle Your Dispute

You and your “friend,” or whoever, bring your quarrel. The person in the corner with the hat will adjudicate. Then go in peace.Whatever you do, don't laugh at the hat.

A Small Mouth Surprise

A vegan treat will be given to you in a way perhaps no vegan treat has ever been given to you before. Blindfold optional but recommended.

Reality IRL: Cook/Off

Three contestants will be provided with ingredients and a brief. Everyone else will be the judge. Share and enjoy!

Tarot

A reading. Unique to you.

Try Not to Laugh

We all start with straight faces. Whoever laughs gets a yellow card. Second time, you’re out! - but you can stay and keep trying to make others laugh. We continue until we have a winner.Winner of each round gets a free drink. Lighten up!

Advice

Ask your question. Get an answer. From a professional (currently-publishing) advice columnist.

Let's do it together!

DIY or host!

Anyone can make an Experience Potluck happen, with any number of people greater than one!It doesn't need to be an "official event" - it's a fun way to do a thing. Call your birthday party an "Experience Potluck" and see what your friends and family bring!

Whether you are hosting your own personal gathering or running an open event, here are some tips and tricks to be aware of and help make go well (all optional, of course):

  • If you are responsible for the space, find out what people are thinking about bringing. This can let you arrange the space, pre-plan who might go where, etc.

  • Consider a whiteboard or other informal schedule, to list experiences that need a group's attention for a set time.

  • Help attendees be aware of what experiences are on offer and how to access or appreciate them - keep a public list that can point folks in the right direction. ("Sign in with your name and experience, so people can find you!")

  • Be nametag-friendly, and let names and pronouns be freely chosen. Nametags help newcomers (and prosopagnosics) participate, and it can be a liberating experience to choose what to go by.

  • Promote a culture of consent, where this means care and attention to the question moreso than any particular formal answer to what consent looks like. Offer micro-trainings, and let participation depend on opt-in to consent norms. Maybe offer bracelets, pins, or nametag borders that mean or say, "I'm open to being asked if you're open to hearing no."

  • Greet people! Folks might not know what to expect entering the scene. You are now their first step into a larger world. Consider "welcome friend," "welcome home"; perform an ask-to-hug. ("Would you like a hug? Yes or no will do.") Can I show you around? Let your attitude permeate: Either way is okay.

If you'd like some more people to maybe come, you can register your event below, so we can list it here and you get access to the schedule for other upcoming events.We will list it if:

  • The event is free at the door for whoever shows up.

  • Nothing is for sale or barter at the event - gifting only. (Exception: If the venue is an existing restaurant/bar/shop, they can sell their stuff. If so, you can choose places that deserve some support, and let them know why we're joycotting them!)

  • The event is held in a public or semi-public location (a park, lobby, event space, bar, back room of a restaurant, etc.) - i.e., someplace people go sometimes anyway, not in an a private apartment or house

  • Participants are given guidelines and expectations that the community is radically accepting and inclusive and consent-centric, e.g. "go by whatever name and pronoun you choose and respect other people in this way."

  • Feel free to promote your event yourself! Hosts might monetize by charging to inform newcomers of the time and place, suggested donations, 100% refundable no-show deposit, or other creative means that keep the event free to attend.

    You the host manage and collect all money related to your specific event (and manage any liability) - it's your event.

  • For Experience Potluck to continue listing or promoting your events, make sure that participants can and do send feedback to ExperiencePotluck.com that the event was suitable free, inclusive, and consent-centric

Types of events that might get listed

  • Open House: Everyone brings something for others to experience. Individual hosts set themes or other rules.

  • Gift Event: No need to bring anything but a good attitude. The host provides the experience, but may still set ground rules.

  • Build-a-thing: The host enables a group to meet to help build sustainable solutions to problems worth solving. Builds may be group or solo, online or offline.

  • Flash Mob for Good (FMFG): We show up to do the thing the host is proposing. Because we can.

Additional how-to-host resources are available in advance of hosting. Just reach out - and happy to talk!

Work together

Are you an entrepreneur, artist, or experience creator?Let's bring Experience Potluck to new people, new cities, new countries ... (new planets??)Read through the Roadmap and make sure this sounds good.

Sponsor

Ready to be associated? Are your values and interests aligned?You can pay to provide messaging or give free branded stuff to participants and get your name alongside a clear note of appreciation for the sponsored content or branded freebies.The cost? Barely noticeable - to you. Sponsorship levels from $100 - >$100k depending on the extent to which you are a multinational conglomerate who won't even notice the cost.

About Experience Potluck

Anyone can do this

What is Experience Potluck?

Life - the world - can be an Experience Potluck. Give and receive gifts. Receive and give appreciation. Active participants get more out of it, incentivizing some effort.Friends meeting and appreciating and loving each other. This is how we each used to be, sometimes - with our friends; at camp; in school; at extended family gatherings. Having fun together, looking out for each other, finding out the world together, assuming each other to hold untold depths, giving and receiving feedback, learning each other.Experience Potluck events are based on a proven framework to be this way again, with more and new people.Free, participatory, radically welcoming, consent-centric intentional relationships where people share and enjoy each others' gifts

It's like a "food potluck," but for gifts more broadly, gifts of experiences: people offer each other free art, activities, ideas, games, performances, skills, and more - maybe even some food still.

Active participants (hosts, volunteers, project builders, etc.) can receive advanced detailed schedule notice for new free events, making it easier to be present for other peoples' giftings. This structure of indirect asynchronous probabilistic reciprocity mitigates freeloading and promotes freedom and friendships. Give freely; receive without obligation.Like how good things are sometimes, or used to be; but now also by design at Experience Potluck events.

Types of Experience Potluck events

🎭 Open House – Everyone brings something for others to experience. Hosts set themes or other creative constraints or rules.
🎁 Gift Event – No need to bring anything but a good attitude. The host provides the experience, but may still set ground rules.
🛠 Build-a-Thing – Group brainstorming & creation.
🎉 Flash Mob for Good (FMFG) – We show up. We do the thing. Because we can.

Who can host?

Anyone! Just pick a spot, invite people to bring gifts for each other, and help make it free, inclusive, and consent-based.

Anyone can do this themselves!For protips or to get your event listed out, find out more and register your event here.

Creative co-creation of a better world

What if we could reach a kinder, gentler world by having good experiences? What if a better world could be attained as a side-effect or byproduct of selfish fun?

We're a geographically distributed community, and Experience Potlucks events work great in the most convenient locations.

So our common building projects are not amazing sculpture art in the desert.Instead, to the extent there is excess creative energy - people who desire to hackathon something - people who desire to lead contests and enjoy the outputs from creative contestants - we can aim for the following creative goal: let's bring the floor level of quality of life up to the current (2025) median so that all people (not just the upper half of humanity have the following:

  • Freedom from hunger

  • Clean water, shelter, and sanitation

  • Medical care available

  • Education available

  • Opportunity pathways to contribute in meaningful ways

  • Transportation available to access to whatever public resources exist

  • Some time not working to think, enjoy, and create, in safety and without fear, including freedom to create and participate in free and radically inclusive Experience Potluck events!

  • General societal concern activated to resolve specific situations that cause people feelings of anguish, injustice, or deep unfairness

  • Good wifi, some good TV and entertainment available

Bringing the floor up to the current median is a natural political coordination point for defining a popular world to be for (rather than against) because

  • Half of people (the poorest half) would have a direct benefit

  • Many even among the current better-off half would gain a relevant safety net

  • Plenty of the richer folks would rather live in a more equitable world, and understand the trickle-up economics that "all flourishing is mutual." Even their ceiling rises, if the floor is not so very low.

  • The fewest of the richer folks - who already have everything on the list, of course - are left to complain about ensuring "other people" also have these basics.

Bringing the floor up to the median is not left or right politics, it's just the least common denominator for a meaningfully better world.

You can call us "Floorists" because we want the floor for humans to be not dirt but a garden, an intentionally designed safety net. Most (but not all) people are Floorists.After we succeed, then we can look at the new median and repeat, if we want.🌿🌺🌸🌼🌷🌻🌹💐🌱🍀🌾🌵🌳🌲

Floorist 🔥Joycotts🔥

Here is an initial set of Floorist project seeds that anyone can build on, organized into joycott campaigns to support people who support people.We're not boycotting, we're joycotting!Let's see how the world responds to knowing how many of us will personally support, choose, or pay more for:

  • 🌱 Responsibly sourced materials from new forests planted to remedy past deforestation

  • ☕ Coffee from coffee shops that let homeless people use the bathroom

  • 🌍 Exports from countries that lose their dictatorships or institute better human rights

  • 🏝️ Vacations in countries that naturalize refugees. Products from ex-refugee startups or companies that employ ex-refugees. Joycotters can make the taking-in of refugees come out as an economic benefit to whoever does it.

  • 🗳️ Political candidates or parties who offer to base some or all of their in-office actions on the best available polling data, thus transparently representing their constituents and removing some special interests and party politics from the democratic loop

  • 💰 Businesses and partners who accept GlobalChange Cryptocurrency

  • 📈 Generally speaking, products and projects that raise the floor level of human quality of life

We might call this overall approach selfish ladder meta-capitalism: each step is creatively designed to be selfishly beneficial to whoever takes it, while the result of the selfish activity elevates the world to a better place. The Earth is reforested (while whoever planted the trees profits; okay). Refugees have a home (because each community receiving them got a payout). And so on.Have fun, be creative, show off, make a splash, all aimed in a good direction - to improve the lot of half of humanity, including making the world safe for people to freely give and receive and appreciate each other.Wondering what to have fun building together with our DIY creativity, our spare time and money and know-how? Alone or in groups, for selfish or selfless reasons?⬆️ this is what we build.

Universal feedback Form

  • a question

  • a problem

  • a concern

  • an unfulfilled desire

  • a pet peeve

  • an idea

  • a solution

  • a proposal

  • a suggestion

And then we can see what emerges.It's the Universal Feedback Form!Any and all feedback may be made public, so don't post anything you wouldn't post to any other public internet forum!

From problems, questions, and ideas
to actionable solutions:
Jump to Build-a-thing

Build-a-thing

Build up anything on the list below ...

  • for its own sake

  • for your own sake (spin it off and monetize it for yourself if you like)

  • to have something to do with other Experience Potluck participants!

  • Good ideas get lost in the shuffle. So come complain and solve for fun and profit: gamified brainstorming shares back to players future equity from real-world implementations to profitable solutions to problems worth solving.

  • Private Profit Collective contracts can connect people across industries to share and redistribute salary amongst themselves, including paying bonuses for group-beneficial activities like resume assistance or spawning startups.

  • Determine basic science priorities by collecting and publishing the questions of curiosity of children and students, especially when the asker is not fully satisfied by your answer! Some researchers don't have a particular other idea what to think about or work on, save maybe following what is popular or maybe what is fundable, or their own personal whim. But for basic science, humanity's curiosity can lead the way!

  • Universal degrees: Validated tests proving mastery comparable to college and post-graduate degrees at various tiers of schools. "GEDs" for anything open opportunities to more people.

  • Mosquito-borne illness is the main cause of death for humans. So we're designing mosquito feeders to reduce human bites and interrupt the lifecycle of mosquito-vector parasites (without crashing the mosquito population or encouraging the evolution of resistance to control.)

  • Revieuber: fast for-profit peer-review publication connecting proposed journal papers with qualified vetted reviewers with validated equivalence in judgment ability to journal reviewers. It's Uber for peer review! Noting that the biomedical industry is well-funded and leverages peer review for its industry processes. ("Notification: You have a request to review a paper. Can you begin by this afternoon, for $N?")

  • Time Capsule including Civilization Restart Button: an approachable repository of information, how-to guides, etc. Maybe we send rockets to space programmed to return after N-thousand years. What goes in those rockets? All should be usable after The Disaster. You know ... just in case ...

  • Culteur: an organization that exists for the sake of its employees associates. Ideal company culture; what it makes or sells is secondary. Start with how we want to live, and see if we can make it from there!

  • Decentralized Risk Analysis for Future Tech Proposals: A hyperloop pneumatic tube around the world connecting all countries could revolutionize international transportation and bring food, water, and electricity wherever it is needed. What are the downsides? For this and other world-spanning new technology, let's drive towards decisions responsibly using known risk analysis methods, including open and systematic risk enumeration, mitigation, disposal, and open-eyed decision-making.

  • Universal feedback form: A place to log ideas, problems worth solving, complaints, errors and mistakes, major issues, minor resentments... Maybe someone has a solution to your problem; maybe you are not alone. This could just be by hashtag coding, messages to an existing system. Let's not lose what's on our minds!

Ready to contribute to something here? Build, brainstorm, fund, find a team ...Feel free!

joycotter

Declarations of support backing the world we want

A joycott is opposite an ad or boycott

  • Ad: I made this and put it in front of you. Will you buy it?

  • Boycott: I will not buy the thing you made.

  • Joycott: If you make this and put it in front of me, I will buy it!

Meta-capitalism
Joycotts can guide capitalism
towards efficiency and decency

What if we just publicly offered our own personal and agreeable versions of the following:

"I will choose coffee shops that advertise that homeless people can use the bathroom"

  • Coffee shop gets more business from people like me

  • Homeless people who have nowhere else to go gain some dignity

  • I feel good about where I shop and spend my time in community

If our government doesn't provide adequate resources, people can still organize to make good public works happen

"If Citizen's Bank Park offers more vegan food options, I will buy that food - and also season tickets to the Phillies"

  • Citizen's Bank Park is now aware of a new market, and can choose to offer more vegan food (or not)

  • I'll go to more baseball games, which I enjoy, and which I'll especially enjoy with delicious new vegan foods

Sometimes the marketplace just doesn't know what folks would buy if only it were available. The #joycott hashtag can act like a petition and let people speak up.

"I will pay 15% more for products that come from new forests planted to counter deforestation"

"I will visit as an ecotourist new forests planted to counter deforestation"

  • Reforestation efforts get a boost expecting new sources of income

  • I get to ecotour something I helped create!

Not everyone needs to pitch in, for good outcomes to be realized. Even just those of us who care to contribute in some way can be enough to get it done!

"I will vote for a 'Votester' politician who runs in my district promising to base all of their in-office activity on third party polling"

"If I am elected, I will base all of my in-office activity on the best polls that I find; I will collect and point to them throughout my term"

  • Representative democracies become more like direct democracies

  • Special interests and entrenched political parties lose some people; the decentralized people gain some power

We don't need a revolution, we can all just take a few easy steps within the current system to let things go well. Letting politicians know we would vote for them if gives aspiring candidates some direction. And in this example, we see that a good candidate to vote for in a democracy ... is one who represents their people.

"I will newly go out of my way to buy exports from and plan vacations to any country that naturalizes refugees, assuming that the former refugees actually now have equal rights and freedom of expression"

"I will support companies that hire former refugees and startups by former refugees"

  • We the decentralized people of the world can make it an economic benefit for places to accept refugees

  • Local people around the world can see the economic benefit to themselves if their governments take in refugees. ("My hotel will get new business as soon as they are let in!")

  • We can also make sure former refugees are personally supported

Peer-to-peer joycotts can create incentives between far-flung people, who can then help ensure that their governments take the peaceful and decent actions that the people would like to see.

It can even get more personal and specific, as individuals reach out and essentially sponsor each other peer-to-peer. Consider this pair of two individuals connecting across the world:

"My name is Luca. I am a UN-registered refugee, UN ID#422532. I would like to live in Spain, or perhaps Brazil or Argentina. #joycott"
+
"If Spain, Brazil, or Argentina naturalize Luca, then - pending identity verification to my own satisfaction including the UN processing a change of refugee status for a Luca ID#422532 - I will buy exports from that country to the maximum extent possible for 1 year. #joycott"

Joycotts help guide the free market,
efficiently telegraphing what we will buy
incentivizing good

Join a decentralized #joycott campaign or start your ownJust post on your social media
(and live up to whatever you offer)

We're not boycotting ...
we're joycotting!

undermine a slumlord

Help buy houses from landlords threatening to evict tenants at risk of homelessness, support tenants while taking (slightly) less profit.Want in? Get in touch!

votester

Votester poll aggregator: Political candidates promise to base in-office actions on polling data (pre-specified votes of conscience excepted). Making representative democracies more like direct democracies.See the potential and want to get in on it? Get in touch now!

relatable
Gamified Brainstorming

The relatable game shares back to players future equity from real-world implementations of profitable solutions to problems worth solving. Brainstorm worthy problems and solutions to get points and share profit (should solutions be implemented and actually work!)Sign up now to find out how to enter the next round of play.

Profit Collectives

A Profit Collective is a private, contractual venture connecting full-time workers to share and redistribute salary amongst themselves, for example paying bonuses for group-beneficial activities like resume assistance or spawning startups.Collectives are quite decentralized, bound by their own agreement with no other superstructure needed.

Why not privatize some of your own taxation? If you think people should be treated like so, and you are willing to pay towards it, it doesn't totally matter if not everyone on Earth joins in - find some like-minded people and start living now more the way you think we should.

Want to find out more or find a group to join? Be in touch!

Globalchange Cryptocurrency

Digital money with provably honest face values and unique NFT artwork, mined by giving gifts to independent nonprofits.Online or offline! Hybrid NFTs. Upconvert your own USD today!

Anyone can input this bill's serial number (27678824) into a blockchain explorer (search the "memo" field) and see that donations referencing this bill were made to 5 nonprofits:

Allowing the bill to take on a new digital life including unique NFT art representing the recipient organization, which can be visualized like this!

Artists supporting nonprofits can offer rare art to attach at random to new GC bills.Anyone can upconvert their own dollar bills, and see what art they catch!Anyone can also accept GC as payment, adding the value in GC to the dollar value of the bill itself.GC can also live solely online, without a physical bill to attach to, as an NFT.

Face values manage inflation: 1 GC = 1/300 CPI (consumer price index) basket.

Give independent nonprofits enough to buy 1 fixed basket of stuff - whatever that fixed basket happens to cost these days - and get 300 GC.At the moment, 1 GC costs approximately $1 USD to mine.

In the future, GC might cost more or less to mine in terms of USD (due to USD inflation or deflation), but the cost to mine 1GC will stably equate to the same amount of real-world buying power. Give nonprofits the power to buy 1 fixed basket of stuff, and get 300 GC.To avoid nonprofits "self-minting," gifts during mining are split among at least 5 nonprofits of your choice.Go completely digital or upconvert USD dollar bills into GlobalChange!

Register individual bills' serial number on the blockchain along with a gift to 5 nonprofits! Then anyone can check a bill's serial number and confirm it is properly generated and backed GC.Works across blockchains.Mine your own today!

After you've registered ...

If you are in Philadelphia, on May I, around 6-9pm, you can visit the Time & Space Atlas at the Ethical Society Auditorium on Rittenhouse Square to find out everything that has been gifted and where to go from there.🤔 Do you want to know more, sooner? See everything that has been offered? Get detailed schedules in advance? Make sure not to miss an experience you are looking forward to?People who have a stake in eXperience Potluck get advanced detailed schedule access. If you want it, help it grow, so more people want it and help it grow!Get early schedule access by taking at least one voluntary world building action from the list below.

  1. Host or offer to host an Experience Potluck event! Let us know about it using the form below.

  2. Pay! Easy. Go to our Patreon and pay any amount you choose, minimum $1/month. Pay however much you hope Experience Potluck will be good! Cancel anytime. This is neither a sale (see below) nor a tax-deductable "donation," this is a voluntary gift that can help keep the community growing and moving forward.

  3. Join one of the following Experience Potluck joycott campaigns: Reforestation 🌳 Votester ✅ Homeless bathroom access 🚽 Refugee assistance 🏠 Then use the form below to point us to your post or some other way you participated. Then you get the schedule access!

  4. Make some progress on a Build-a-thing. Use the form below to tell us about it. Then you get the schedule access!

  5. Do nothing. Use the form below to request free access and explain why. Choosing this option may not help build the community, but having this option on the list and available to reject does (see below for more on this).

In general, as a principle, more-active participants gain better access. Indirect probabilistic reciprocity mitigates freeloading and gives us mutual support to build the world we like.Note: The "free access" option #5 proves that participatory actions #1-#4 are truly voluntary. Most likely, #5 is not a popular choice! If too many people choose it, it might have to go away. In the meantime, its existence helps define uniquely free participation. There is no exchange happening here even though people contribute and then as a result receive better access.And that's how it works!