"So many structural elements of a community are designed to help people connect: Having a shared purpose; a curated invitation process; any shared experience. Learning and collaboration is often just an excuse to connect. Roles — just as my role to build the local Sandbox chapter — are an amazing excuse to proactively connect with people. And there are also smaller ways how we can bring in excuses to connect, for example:

• Introducing two people who will be at the same event to each other weeks before the event.
• Creating a buddy system.
• Creating smaller sub-groups of 4–5 people.
• Randomly introducing people to another member once a month via email."
                                                                                                       - Fabian Pfortmüller