Good morning everyone. 

I think I know many of you but for those I do not know I am founder of AQUS Cafe here in Petaluma. On the cafe's web page we have the following:

Aqus Café has been created to foster community; it is a watering hole, a gathering place, a conversation room, a wonderful example of a 3rd space. Here, our main purpose in creating social capital is to provide a space for people to meet, connect and get to know each other. 

We do this because we believe that to fix the fabric of society we have to first start by meeting, connecting and getting to know and trust each other.

I'll back up a moment and tell you a story about why we created AQUS.

I grew up in Dublin Ireland, the son of a publican. Now a publican is the owner of a Public House or a pub or as we say in Ireland, your "local".

Many of you have an idea of what an Irish pub is, you may even have been in one; it's about the family atmosphere, about the young and the old sitting and chatting and having fun together, about the married folk conversing with the single people; about the fact that pubs are not about getting smashed or trying to pick someone up; pubs are about getting to know your neighbor, it’s about getting to know your mail man or plumber or bank manager or meeting a potential baby-sitter for your kids.

It’s about something that all of you know about; it’s about creating community. It is the cultural and social center of the neighborhood, a place where the fabric of community is woven.

I started working in the family business when I was only 12 or 13 until I left Ireland at 21. What I saw during those years was something wonderful. I saw a community gathering space. I saw the parish priest have his weekly meeting there with his lay helpers, I saw the local school PTA have their monthly meeting, I saw kids soccer teams come there after every game on Sundays, I saw wakes, I saw first holy communion parties, I saw families, old and young, infants and grandparent gathering together celebrating life; I saw the mechanics of a thriving social community in action.

So when I arrived in the United States nearly 20 years ago I sought out those places. I wanted to find a place where I could meet people, integrate myself into the community; a place where my family and I could spend an evening eating and drinking in a multi-generational space and maybe listen to some music; a place where we could easily strike up a conversation and possibly create a stronger connection and even make friends.  Sure there were bars and restaurants and coffee shops; each, more or less geared to a very divided and segmented population.  But I couldn't find a place like my father's pub; where was that multi-generational gathering space?

I remember thinking "Where were we supposed to make friends?"  I would venture that most of us make friends either thru our kids, or thru our work place or thru our place of worship.  Now we hadn't any children when we arrived here; we didn't attend any church and I worked with 4 other computer programmers.....you can imagine how much fun that was.

Around the same time I started becoming interested in a concept called Social Capital. It’s defined variously as Civic Society or Cultural Capital but I prefer the definition by the social scientist Robert Putnam as "referring to the collective value of all 'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each others".

So what does that mean? It means placing actual value on the connectedness of a town or community. It means the value of having a community where people interact and connect with and know each other; where people are part of a club, or go out for a pint together to their local pub or take part in local politics or are involved in their kids’ schools or volunteer at a local charity.

I picked up a book on the subject called “Bowling Alone” by the social scientist, Robert Putnam. It’s about the decline of Social Capital in western society and America in particular; about how people are no longer part of clubs or organizations; it’s about how more and more of us are feeling alone and isolated from each other; it’s about the lack of a sense of community and it’s about the effect that this has on our health, our economy and most importantly, on our happiness. 

But it didn't offer any real hope, it didn't offer a solution. How were we supposed to recreate that place to make friends; a place to bring your family and socialize; a place to get to know your neighbors that place to created social capital?

Well as time moved on we had kids and then play dates and soccer and baseball and PTA and Survivor and Amercing idol.  We never felt busier. We made friends but I still knew something was missing. As we dedicated ourselves to our children Saturday night became "Honey, I'm off to the video store". I knew something had to change.

So one evening about 10 years ago when my wife and kids were away I found myself, alone; alone in front of the TV at 8pm on a Saturday night, flicking from channel to channel bored out of my mind.  And I remember wondering how many other people in my neighborhood were doing and feeling the same. And how many of us were wondering how to connect.

I phoned some of my friends to see if any might come out for a pint and everyone said, “Sorry we haven’t got a babysitter”, “Oh, we just turned on the DVD to watch a movie”.

That evening, sitting alone in my home, with only the TV for company, I knew I had to do something.

I wanted to go back to my local, that Irish Pub, to where I could bump into someone I knew and sit down for a chat or listen to some music. I wanted an open and welcoming sense of community. 

So as my wife and kids were away for 2 weeks I was going to make sure not to spend the next Saturday night the same way. I decided to organize the first Petaluma Pub Crawl. I sent email to all my friends telling them about it and I listed the itinerary for the evening in the email. We were to start in Volpi’s from 9 then over to Graziano’s at 10 and so on.

So the next Saturday night I waited in Volpi’s. I knew that I was pushing the envelope of social norms. After all what respectable 40 year old goes on something called a Pub Crawl.

I remember thinking to myself “Oh God, I hope at least just one person shows up.  Everyone did and everyone had so much fun that we created these ever growing events every 3 month or so. 

Now it was never about drinking. It is about connecting, having conversations and getting to know each other.

We have always had themes, just to help the conversations get started. We change them around a bit but my favorite theme is to bring a book that changed your life and give it away.  It gives everyone in the room, and these things are big, sometimes up to 300 people, an invitation to walk up to someone new and start a conversation, "Hi my name is John and I brought this book".  Once you start the conversation you learn that there are so many connections to be made, especially in a small town like Petaluma.

We are social beings but we're not very good at it. Sometimes we need a little help breaking the ice. Well this Pub Crawl has changed people's lives, countless relationships have been formed, from friends to lovers, from business contacts to marriages, people have found jobs, babysitters, and places to live, one woman wrote thanking me to say that she had connected with another woman who later became the surrogate mother for her child. It has helped create a fabric, a foundation on which to build, to grow and to thrive.

So when we have created a truly connected and socially vibrant community what next?

It is becoming more and more generally accepted that we are more than what the eye sees, or what the ear hears or what our hands touch.  We know that there is an indescribably yet palpable energy that lives in us and between us.  We are not quite sure what it is yet but it is ever more evident that this energy that is manifesting itself in our consciousness.

We have arrived at the upward slope of a tipping point, a tipping point that may even have already happened.  More and more of us are realizing that this energy is part of us and is binding us together.  There is a sense that we are going thru a new renaissance, a re-awakening. We are not sure what is on the other side but we know it is something happening.

I am an optimist. Not because I have to be in light of the terrible things that are happening in our world but because I feel it and you feel it.  I am thrilled and excited to be alive now because I know that sometime soon, sometime over the next 5 or 10 years we will look back and see that enormous change happened.  I think people like us, who are awake to this change, are an integral part of what is happening.

I think we all feel the sense of urgency.  Our world is facing some incredible challenges and we sometimes feel that we as individuals are powerless. I know that we are not.  We feel sometimes feel that we do not know which way to turn; there are so many organization and causes that it can be overwhelming. 

But there is one thing that we can do that is basic to cloth of community.

What would you feel if your neighbor knocked on your door and asked to borrow a pound of sugar or your lawn mower?  I think you'd feel honored.  Honored that your neighbor knows and trusts you well enough to do something that not long ago was considered perfectly normal.  We must connect.

We have been sold the idea that we must be independent – to not have to depend on anyone else for help. This creates isolation, distrust and a closed heart. I know that it is far, far better to be inter-dependent; inter-dependent on each other; to ask for help and to give help.

I said at the beginning that we created AQUS cafe with the goal of re-weaving the fabric of our society.  I know what we are doing is becoming evident, People understand what and why we are doing this and understand that it is making a difference and creating value. 

We have taken the best part of a Californian coffee shop, the best parts of European cafe and the best parts of an Irish pub and blended them together to create AQUS Cafe.  I look at it as an extension of my living room but I also want the people who come there to look at it as an extension of their living room. 

But we don't just provide a space. We create opportunities for connecting with others.  Apart from the music which is a wonderful social glue we have events that are designed to get people together such as our trivia nights, our German, Irish and Italian conversations groups,. We have a men's group and women's group. We have "Dinner with the Mayor".  We have a pagan gathering, and the latest thing we have created is a speed networking evening - I was on the phone to my mother recently in Ireland, she get the cafe emails, and she says "Oh I hear you've got speed mating at the cafe".  No mom, not speed mating, or speed dating. It's speed networking.

Now this event, we called it AQUS Connections is not just for business people.  It is designed and intended for people who understand the benefits of having a more connected community.  We're all actually going to try a little experiment here in a moment to demonstrate the power a small conversation. We're going to see how, by extending our own comfort zones; we can create an even more connected group of people.

This is just going to take 8 minutes.  So, please, if you would pick up your chairs and create groups of 4 people.  Please choose people that you do not know very well.

When you have settled, I would like you to take turns, opening your hearts and speaking about community.  So introduce yourself first and then speak about a time in your life where you didn't have community and how it felt and then speak about where you have found community and what it means.  Joyce will sound the bell after 2 minutes.  And when you hear it please wrap up and let the next person start.

....exercise....

The exercise you have just done is integral to what AQUS Cafe is about. It's about opening our hearts and creating connections.  We are the ones who create the space we live in and we have to power to shape it.

If we are isolated how do we connect, if we are not connected how do we trust, if we do not trust how do we open our hearts and if we do not open our hearts to each other how do we let spirit blossom in us.

There is a common path; we are only just beginning.              Thank you.