Agora Events

When DEF originally created local groups they were envisioned to follow the Greek Agora model, namely a place for everyone to gather and have a voice (in stark contrast to how the national security community often interacts).

As time went on, it became clear that, while the ethos remained strong, the term “Agora” was often confusing to explain to people not familiar with DEF, which caused some to want to avoid using it altogether. In order to provide flexibility, the current approach is twofold.

Anyone is welcome to refer to their local DEF group as an Agora, but formal DEF marketing materials (be they website posts or Eventbrite/Facebook events) will refer to these entities as “DEF ____” (where the latter part is the name of the city or base in proximity to the local group). You can see how this is described at the Agora page on the DEF website.

In addition, certain features of branding (like inclusion of the DEF logo) are being applied across the board to any DEF event or local group. The reason for this is to ensure there is clarity for those who are new and may be interested in learning more about DEF writ large versus just the local group. Visual cues (like the DEF logo and a consistent look & feel for images) and a central event listing (via Eventbrite, which populates Facebook and the website) ensure that people who are looking to join DEF have a clear understanding of what they are getting into.

The easier you make events on yourself, the less complicated you start, the greater your chance of successfully building a community. If you try and get 100 people together every time and have catered food and fancy drinks, well, more power to you... but you're likely to run out of steam and, instead of going to more simple events, end up just not doing anything at all.

Start simply, scale up. Experiment, learn, reinvest.

There's no one way to get it right (or screw it up), but if you keep Dodgeball in mind, you'll tend to do pretty well.