School of the Possible 2024 Annual Report

Reflecting on the year that was, and where we go next.

Hello all,

As we close out 2024, I thought I would share some thoughts about the School of the Possible — Where we are today, what we have achieved this year, and where we are going next — in the form of an annual report to you, my friends, co-creators, and community. You make it possible, thank you!

If you’re pressed for time, scroll to the bottom of this email to check out the 2025 program.

What are we doing here?

My goal hasn’t changed since day one: to re-create the magic I felt when I first went to Art School, that Harry-Potterish moment when I first felt a sense of true belonging. My dream for the School of the Possible is to nurture and develop a community of creative explorers who mentor and support each other in exploring creative possibilities and figuring out their best next step in life and work.

I still consider the School of the Possible a working prototype, a creative community, a “sketch of a school” for exploring creative possibilities. I see it as a school in two senses:

First, a learning community focused on exploring possibilities through experiments and creative projects.

Second, a school of thought, a philosophy, focused on the Art of the Possible, and a center of gravity for the emerging Possibilitarian community.

2024 year in review.

In January I committed to the School of the Possible as my full-time job, launching the official membership, at $20/month, $200/year. On January 1st we had 16 members, and today we have 102.

I’m convinced that any community requires some kind of recurring contact between members, a drumbeat of regular gatherings that weaves seamlessly into members’ lives, so people know what to expect and when, and can layer the community in alongside all of their other daily and weekly rhythms.

We established a rhythm for 2024, which had three main elements: A weekly Monday memo by email, a live Friday campfire call, and twice-monthly collaboratories, where we would gather in real time for workshops, where special guests would offer a provocation and an activity to boost our creativity.

That rhythm is going to change for 2025. Scroll to the bottom if you’re impatient to know more!

In October we shook things up a bit, moving our online social network from Discord to Mighty Networks, which has a cleaner, simpler, more Facebook-like interface, and launching project studio, a 6-week session for members to focus on starting, finishing, and shipping one creative project in six weeks.

I really feel like we leveled up and hit a new stride with project studio, and I want to double-down on that energy and carry that momentum forward in 2025.

So, how are we doing?

2024 by the numbers.

At the beginning of the year we had 16 paid members, and I set a goal to reach 100 members. I felt that new member sign-ups was the simplest and most unambiguous way to know if we were creating real value or just spinning our wheels. I’m happy to say that we crossed that line in December, and as of this writing we now have 102 official members. That’s a 5X improvement, something to celebrate!

Free subscriptions are another useful metric that shows how many people are interested, curious, and at some level following our work. I’m happy to report that for the second year in a row we more than doubled our free subscribers, from 1,126 to 2,384.

We hosted 52 campfire calls, one each week. I wasn’t counting heads, but I looked back and at the beginning of the year about a dozen people were showing up to the campfire calls, and now they average more than double that, about 30 people per call.

We repeated our successful Course Creation Course from 2023, taught by Dom Goucher, and Mike Parker ran three cohorts of his popular Liminal Explorations course.

We hosted 19 collaboratories, participatory workshops, co-created with special guests, who offered ideas, provocations, activities, and experiments.

We published 52 Monday memos, each with a simple possibility experiment you can try for yourself.

We published 9 Art of the Possible podcasts and have a few more in the hopper, just waiting for me to get around to editing them (yes, believe it or not, they’re edited!).

And for 6 weeks we ran a project studio where we worked together to complete and ship creative projects in six weeks.

What’s next?

So where do we go from here? Based on overwhelming positive feedback, project studio will be the backbone of our work together in 2025. The rhythm will shift a bit based on what we learned together last year.

We will keep the same time slot (Wednesdays, from 9 to 10:30 am Pacific). But instead of twice-monthly collaboratories, we will meet every week during the school year. We will have two 15-week semesters, one in the spring and one in the fall. This will leave some space for reflection, rest, relaxation and rejuvenation during winter and summer breaks.

2025 program

The campfire calls will continue to happen every Friday.

The spring semester will kick off on Wednesday, January 15th, and run through May 14th (We will have a spring break for three weeks from March 27th to April 8th). If you want to add placeholders to your calendar you can add to your Google or Outlook calendar (or just block out 9-10:30 am Pacific on Wednesdays and Fridays!).

On January 15, the price for new members will go up to $30/month, $300/year. So if you want to take advantage of the 2024 membership price of $20/month, $200/year, sign up before the 15th and you will lock in the current rate.

To become a member, simply upgrade your Substack subscription to paid. It’s a great way to spend any end-of year dollars that are still available in your budget!

If you’re already a paid member of this Substack, thank you!

Thank you!

I’d like to close with a heartfelt thank you for being here and supporting this journey. Without you, there would not be a School of the Possible. You make it possible! Thank you.

Until next time,