Name: Garden Party Pop-up GEO 2026

Location: Geo conference in Boston (in a hallway outside the ballroom)

Price: Tablecloths ($120), t-shirts ($240), zines ($28)

 

When we germinated it: June 2025, GV<>GF retreat then we reached out to GEO, July 31, 2025

When we planted it: June 2026 at GEO conference

When we harvested it: It’s not necessarily a fruit-bearing plant, maybe just a playful pollinator, eg butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii). We set an intention that it didn’t need a business case, didn’t need to be paid work, didn’t need to have direct and immediate payoff.

Started from seed or plant? This was a seedling based on a similar project GF had attended in Chicago years ago, called "Ask Me".

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What it needs to grow:

• This practice doesn’t just grow on its own from a set of scattered seeds. In order for it to grow, it needs: 1) some visibility/sunshine and 2) other folks to join in as co-creators/gardeners instead of just as an audience. 

• Our existing networks, and the trust we have built with colleagues and peers in the sector, were what made it possible to invite folks into the experiment with us.

• We invite people in as learners all the time, but this time we barely facilitated them. It was entirely about the container.

• It was as much about what we didn’t add than what we did. Although we were hosting an event with colleagues from the philanthropic field, our businesses took a back seat.

• In order to grow in new directions and feel relatively risk-free, this party needed to focus on topics that we weren't attached to in our professional identities.

• We were really intentional about the level of effort we put in so that even if it “failed” we wouldn’t have felt like we put in too much. If it was going to feel like an experiment, it needed to be just “good enough for an experiment” . That also made it more adaptable.

• People needed to develop their own stake in it - have the time to think about it a bit. It's not clear that this could just grow on the spot. 

• This particular practice - which was meant to cultivate curiosity - had to feel non-instrumental, like a party, a dalliance, not something that generates "results".

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Notes for next season:

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• We were probably too loose around the specific place we planted this practice, and so the final location was not ideal. It would do better as a fully outdoor practice. We just didn’t realize how important location would be so we need to get clearer next time about the specific conditions.

• We would like more people to circulate through more of the question/answers, rather than staying put in one place. Locating it in the right spot might better allow for this kind of movement/wandering where curiosity could also be more embodied.

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