Buddhist Geeks Community now open

I prefer hanging out in coffee shops...

I actually really like the semi-live features of hangouts and skype sessions. I think a lot of very intensive and good teaching can get done in those contexts, often better than in writing back and forth on email or in forums. I've been having a lot of minor technical problems with skype lately and have started using hangouts as a replacement, even just for talking to my mom or other social conversations.

I'm going to join for a month or two and check it out.

I think there was some discussion about the finances of Buddhist Geeks earlier in this thread. I just came across this Tricycle interview with Vince, and saw this in the comments (written by Vince) which I found interesting:

Our organizational practice around money is this... we like transparency. We will be publishing a 3rd party verified, full financial transparency report this year to members of our community, and they can see for themselves how much we make, from where, and how we spend it. One small piece of information that will be on that report is that there are four full-time working members on the Buddhist Geeks team (including myself) and that together we make an average of $3,000/mo each.

www.tricycle.com/special-section/buddhist-geek

Oh, yeah!

I've tried out the BG-community since it started.
It is an ambitious initiative and well executed. Of course they have to take a fee for it...
It can become really good...

Unfortunately the best part is the hangouts, and most of them take place in the middle of my night.
And the rest of the community is facebook-like, with not many interesting discussions. Forums like this is superior in that respect and I think they need one.
(Also with G+ notifications on I get flooded with mails. And with notifications off I miss the "official" info.)

I don't think I will continue my membership, mainly because of the time-zone problem.

/Pejn

I've been on the BG community for about 3 weeks now. I love it.
Here's why:
#1: Hangouts. I have two other people I talk to about dharma and practice in my "real" life (as in - non-web forum), one is a friend via email and the other is my wife. Both are delightful people and I've learned a lot from those interactions but where the BG community really shines is in providing the opportunity to meet and talk with (live in real time) other practitioners. For those of us who do not have this accessibility in real life, it's a pretty big deal, as dharma practice can be horribly lonely.

#2: Open Practice. I've volunteered to host a few of these, which are basically hangouts where up to ten people can do silent practice together at scheduled times. For me personally this has been a huge motivator to practice and again, an opportunity to share my practice.

3#: Content and Live Streaming Conference. There's a pretty fair amount of content (videos and such) already available that are of varying quality. Being able to see the all the speakers from the conference live and in their entirely was AWESOME. I've been wanting to go to the conference every year but have not been able to make it happen, so for me this was HUGE.

With all that said, I don't know that the BG community would have a great benefit to persons who already have a wide network of dharma friends, but for someone like me who is fairly isolated, it is a massive opportunity to create such a network and share experiences in a live and real time format. As for the "pay wall"... I get it, I don't love paying for dharma.. but I get it, and for me it is worth the service.

...and personally I don't feel like it's lacking a forum such as this. They are developing a "knowledge base" which may be similar to a wiki, but I see BGC as doing something completely different from what is being done here and at other similar forums such as DhO. Certainly not to downplay the value of this and other forums as there is an enormous wealth of information, but I just see BGC as something completely different.

Take care:)

bump

I was poking around and just noticed that the BG Community requires a minimum donation of $5/month, which is a lot more interesting to me than $20/month.