[Podcast] How to Make Friends Where You Live

An interview with Ziqi Deng

When Ziqi moved to a new neighborhood, far from her other friends, she was scared of living alone. She decided to create a WhatsApp group for her new home, a skyscraper in downtown Brooklyn. The group grew to 443 people.

Members spawned 20 clubs, including a book club, movie club, chess club, and basketball club. The group chat is constantly active. People advertise events, donate unused items, and ask for advice.

Through the group, Ziqi has made close friends in her building. Many others have befriended each other too. In fact, one pair met on the group chat and are now opening a coffee shop together.

I've often heard it said that friendships emerge from:

1. proximity

2. repeated, unplanned interactions, and

3. a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other

If you live in a city you already have hundreds of people nearby (1). By helping people coordinate through a WhatsApp group, you enable repeat interactions (2). And hopefully some people in the group have the hosting skills to create a safe and playful setting (3). Like a retired professor in Ziqi's group; she organizes a monthly event welcoming new tenants, and a social cocktail club.

If you'd like to make friends where you live, consider starting a group chat.

"My perspective is you can actually create a community very easily within wherever you live.” - Ziqi Deng

I interviewed Ziqi at The Social Fabric Unconference, a conference for community builders. The audio and transcript are below. Hope you enjoy!

Audio

Transcript

[00:00:00] Priya: Ziqi has an incredible story where she created a WhatsApp group for her skyscraper in downtown Brooklyn, and now it's thriving. My first question is: What is the origin story and where is it now? ​

[00:00:19] Ziqi: Even though I'm a founder trying to actively create a community in the fashion space, this building community just grew uncertainly without any effort. So in taoism it says it's according to the universe. So it's very easy. This is not my full-time job. I'm just here to chatting about my experiences of creating and growing my building group.

And I guess for many of you, I know some of you were talking and this is really your big passion and you're living, breathing in the community you live in, but for most of us, we're just living a building somewhere or a house in New York City. And my perspective is you can actually create a community very easily, wherever you live. Because that is something people really want.

And I'll talk more about how I discovered that through my experience. So your original question was: How did it start? So it was the end of 2020. I just ended a relationship and I was also moving to my new building, also living by myself for the first time, in a one bedroom. So I was like, it's probably good that I try to find some friends in this neighborhood, because I didn’t know any friends living in downtown Brooklyn. I was moving from Williamsburg and prior to that point I always had roommates and I always was best friends with my roommate, so I was a little bit scared of living by myself.

So I was like, I'm moving to a building. It's a new building too. There were only a few dozens of people who already moved in, it would be a good time to get to know these people. So I posted on the building, internal bulletin. They have bulletin boards where you can post stuff where people oftentimes post about things they wanna sell or sometimes people try to get coffee with each other.

But I just posted an experiment that I'm moving in, I'm creating a group, a WhatsApp group. Here's my number if you wanna be part of it. Text me. So from that day I started to get messages and every day after that I will get a few messages. That has been the case for probably the first one or two years that I moved in.

And it's very naturally and organically grown. And right now I just check. We have 443 people in our WhatsApp group and we have 20 subgroups that people have created. Now of my business, there are people that created basketball group. I actually been a list. There's book club. Racket. Sports, cats and Guinea pig and rabbits.

Social club, movie club, wine club, lasagna, lover and chess. No idea what's happening there. I was not part of it. Basketball Craft club engineer and tech poker. Pride. Ooh, not sure what that is. Pilates and parents. Wow. So people self created all of these groups. And I was also just to give you guys an idea of what's happening prior to coming here I looked at their group chat cuz I barely checked these days.

It's too active. So the past six threads of conversation was Jake was posting about this champion league final that's happening tonight, asking people to join him. Justine is telling everyone about the Brooklyn Fort Green Movie Night, asking people if anyone wants to join.

Shivani was asking if anyone knows about the basement pool availability because people make reservations but they don't go. And John was like, I was just there, nobody's there, you should go.

And Robert was giving out his dog’s wee-wee pad and Mark tagged Gina saying you should claim it. And Asia came in to claim it and Gina was like, I'm a new puppy parent. Please give it to me. And Asia was like, Okay, you need it more. I'll give it to you. And Robert is like, whatever you guys decide, take it. And Asia is like okay, we'll split it.

And then Mike was posting a long shot asking if anyone has a camera snake that he can borrow tomorrow. He hasn't gotten any response yet. And Ashley was a newbie asking how to register for class. So basically that's a vibe of what's happening in this main group chat.

Priya: Has there been any conflict within the chat?

Ziqi: I think actually very rarely because it's more low key, like people don't actually live together. So I think it's a nice. Boundary distance, but also a good place for people to connect. The only conflict I would say is cuz my building is a buyer's building.

So many people they actually purchased, but there are also people who are renting. So there's buyer and renter. And at beginning I remember people were complaining about things that don't work. And then some people start to private message me and they're like as buyers we would like to hold this information private so that they don't harm the building’s value and then we created the owners group that is more centered around complaints.

[00:05:14] Priya: Very cool. I know I saw a story about how two people who met in your group were starting a coffee shop. I would love to hear more either about that story or about maybe about other relationships. Yeah.

[00:05:22] Ziqi: Actually, I don't know the details, but one day I was taking elevator. Sometimes I chat with people, especially when I first moved in, in order to get more people in the group chat. Sometimes I would be in elevator asking if they're in a group chat, if they're not and I add them.

But from this conversation I became acquaintance level friend with this guy. And then we were talking the other day, I was asking, how is things going? And then he started telling me that he actually is now quitting his job and starting a coffee shop, like some restaurant coffee shop alongside someone in the building.

And I was like, how'd you guys meet? He's initially we were both added to the building, so we started chatting and became friends. Yeah it's very easy to became good friends, it turns out; I also found my best friend through my building. (She’s now moved to LA and I help her take care of the sublease she has with the renter in her building).

[00:06:20] Priya: You run a fashion startup, and you seem pretty busy, and you travel a fair amount for it. How has that interacted with running this group?

[00:06:28] Ziqi: To be honest, I'm not really running this group. I just, as I said, I think it's like one of, it's like finding the perfect product market fit, where you do nothing, just grow itself.

I think this building is the only time I actually experienced that. In my own startup, I try so hard always to sell and always try to. Create new feature. It never feel like this easy. I just pull this out and do nothing and people just come to me and it grew very fast, very steadily, and you never need to maintain it.

You never need to do any yeah. Maintenance work or add any feature. The people just do that themselves. Yeah. Awesome.

So in my experience with large WhatsApp chat groups, a lot of times there's just too much happening. A lot of people decide to meet the group.

Yeah. So that really hurts momentum.

Audience Member: Were there any special conditions here, or anything you did that you think made it more scalable?

Ziqi: Yeah, so to be honest I really didn't do anything. I muted the group because it's too much conversation happening.

There is one woman in my building who actually did so much more than me, even though I was the person who created this. She's a retired professor and it became her full-time devotion and commitment and passion, our building.

Like she self organized movie night book club. Like she, I think she taught literature, so she would actually lead people to read. And we also have a Welcome Newbies Wednesday where every month, a Wednesday there's an event where she organized all the people who just moved in. Got there and get to know each other. It's also a social cocktail club where she actually organized, like one per three people actually volunteer to host every month and 20 people would rotate.

So we have, for example, I hosted once and alongside two other hosts and the 20 families who sign up would visit the three units one by one. And each of the units has a host. And they just also see how people decorate their place. Cool. Chat. Yeah. Like she does a lot of work. Maybe that there's something to that.

And she always respond like immediately, whoever ask any question. Yeah. Maybe that's what made the difference. But my feeling is this is something everybody likes and everybody wants. In Chinese we have a saying that routinely meaning that: farther apart family is not as good as your neighbor.

And I think it, it's really true that even for me, whoever lives I, my best friends are always in Brooklyn. It's very hard to maintain a friendship when it's across a bridge even. So instead of, try to join some community, you can very easily create a community within your space. And the chances are people also want it.

[00:09:32] Audience Member: Were there any attempts by like the building a condo association or building managers to try to formalize your group or co-op?

[00:09:33] Ziqi: No, I feel like this group is increasing the building value; because these days when people try to sell, when they try to rent, they talk about this building group.

But tenant organizing, it's anything. I feel like it's decentralized cuz I really don't do anything except helping adding people to a group and yeah it's very self-organized. Everything they do it's very low maintenance.

Audience Member: Is there a formal building like association as well?

Ziqi: There is. There is. They are two separate things. So our building has a board and we select one person to actually represent all of us. And that per, like, when that was happening, people would also talk about themself in a group. Yeah. But that's more formal. That's much more formal.

Never tried to launch a competing group. No, not yet. But I think after that person is elected, He constantly would come to group to seek people's opinion and asking them for certain advice, and when there's an incident, they would all come to ask him to report back to the building.

Priya: Thank you so much.