Good People: Our Founding Principles
Established in San Francisco in 2012
Good People is a community built around meaningful conversations and delicious feasts, a moveable social club for those who value authenticity, a better way to connect with each other.
This publication here on Medium will now serve the writers of our GP community.
Please feel free to submit stories of regenerative agriculture and farm to table food, its cultivation, harvesting, preparation and serving, as well as stories of vulnerable and risky conversations you’ve had across substantive differences. These may cover religion, politics, sexuality, race or really any topic that people care deeply about. Do your best not to pitch your business or organization, but feel free to link to it. Here are the evolving guidelines for submissions.
If accepted, you’ll hear from us and we’ll offer an edit before publication, so please submit your story as a draft first.
Our in person gatherings are on pause for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to connect on Medium and other places online.
Our Founding Principles
- Refuge A fulfilling human life is balanced between time spent problem solving, focused on goals, and time spent exploring and discovering. Good People is a refuge from our relentless pursuit of our own ambitions. We come together to wander across the landscape of ideas with no destination, but full of novelty, the joys of unexpected learning.
- Connection Community and friendship are vital human needs. Most modern cultures do a poor job meeting those needs. Good People builds connection between strangers through vulnerable and sincere conversations about a wide range of important and timely ideas.
- You Be You What you may own or what you may have achieved isn’t that important to us. With luck, we leave condescension and hierarchies at the door. We are interested in the contents of your character, in the opinions you carry and in sharing them in a spirit of civility. All kinds of people from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnicities, sexual and gender identities, political and religious ideologies are welcome at our table.
- Curiosity We ask that you temporarily put down the things you are most ardently pursuing. Through curiosity, we build trust and rapport. When you come together with other good people, we ask that you let go of your agenda, listen and offer what you sincerely think and feel. Whatever you want most, from a romance to an investor or donor, to hiring or getting hired, is not why we’re here. You can pick that up again tomorrow.
- Civil Discourse Our community is built on inquiry. Civil discourse across real differences is vital to a thriving civilization. Our societies will remain resilient and peaceful only if we can find ways to break bread and disagree with friends across the table. Community does not require us all to hold identical views or even reconcile our differences of opinion. At our gatherings we express strong opinions lightly held and our tone is one of respect.
- Freedom of Expression Feel free to express your thoughts and understanding. What is shared at our gatherings and in our Good People Home will be kept in confidence. Nothing revealed here may be broadcast for the general public, at least not without explicit permission from the person who opened up.
- Food and Drink All people eat. Amazing feasts are a timeless way to connect with those we don’t know, to move people quickly from strangers to friends. Food and drink can connect us in ways few other shared activities can. We give our chefs a lot of creative freedom, but ask them to accommodate your dietary needs. Most of them work with small, local and organic producers whenever possible. This results in family style meals, innovative seasonal menus that express an evolving mixture of culinary traditions.
- Welcome Home Our philosophy of hospitality breaks with conventions; we are not a restaurant, hotel, cafe or social club as you’ve known these things. We don’t have waiters. Our host pours drinks. We all help a little with passing around food at meals and with tidying up. At our GP gatherings, please help yourself and be at home, as you would in the kitchen of family or a good friend.
What are GP Dinners all about?
So far, thousands of locals and visitors have attended our dinners, overnights and retreats, at more than 200 gatherings and counting. We come together to temporarily put down our agendas, let go of networking and delve into the topics that fundamentally shape our world.
Our community was born from a simple insight: Most of the enjoyment we gain from an experience has more to do with who we’re with, and the quality of that interaction, than what we’re doing. Even the most lavish event, when surrounded by the wrong people, poor chemistry, can feel unbearable. And the simplest inexpensive meal, connecting with warm-hearted and inspiring friends, can alter the course of our entire lives.
From 2012 to 2020, we hosted about two to six events per month at various venues around the Bay Area, including Culinary Artistas, Naked Kitchen, Hands on Gourmet and large private homes. Most of our dinners are for 30 to 40 people at a time, with a family style meal prepared by a professional chef. Each also includes a speaker on a particular topic of wide ranging interest.
Who are good people? They are our best selves, when we rise above tribalism and explore big ideas. Join us for incredible food, meaningful conversations and lots of laughter.
To learn more, receive our newsletter, updates and invitations once we begin gathering again, please register at www.goodpeopledinners.com
