When we first started talking about Pannl many months ago, both halves of my brain activated to the potential.  First, as typical for me in entrepreneur mode, I recognized the aspects that resonated with me, personally.  Beyond simply being social, I love the energy that comes of meeting and talking with interesting people about interesting things.  It’s a “constructive high” – not simply exuberance from being stimulated intellectually, but energized by new understandings that I can leverage.

I’ll give you an example:  The other day, I participated in a meeting with the leaders of a new association called the Advanced Energy Economy.  While their pitch was interesting, what was compelling was the conversation that emerged as the group of Clean Tech entrepreneurs and business leaders around the table served up, knocked down, stretched out, chewed on, and passed around issues and ideas.  When we got up, everyone of us – whether we agreed with each other’s positions or not – were energized and had ideas for what else we could do.  Man, if you could only bottle this feeling. 

I’m not saying that Pannl has the magic formula for bottled euphoria – and certainly I’ve been in enough boring conversations to know that just pouring ostensibly smart people into a room isn’t a recipe for a great hour – but I do believe that the shared energy of interested people is a foundation we can build on.  And what we’ve seen and heard over the first two dozen or so pannls that have taken place around Los Angeles, and in our subsequent surveys with participants (and their posts on this blog and elsewhere), is confirmation that people see the value for themselves.

But that’s when the quant side of my brain got noisy:  Great, you’ve got qualitative reinforcement, but are people – you know, strangers, beyond your group of friends, peers, and echoing cohorts – really interested in moving offline, or has Google, Facebook, and the myriad other user-friendly faces of the Internet made the need to talk in-person superfluous, inefficient even? 

So I did what any quant guy would do:  I asked about 900 people what they thought.  Seventy percent of respondents to my survey (fielded online, last month, North Americans, aged 18 and up) agreed or strongly agreed that conversations with small groups are richer when they occur in-person than online.  That number goes up to 72 percent when talking about conversations with individuals.  (There are significant differences among different age brackets, but not as much as you’d expect.)  Taken with the mounting statistics about increasing perceptions of loneliness and societal disconnect, the numbers provide a compelling backdrop to Pannl as a network for real-world conversations.

There's an amazing thing that happens when you share a meal with strangers.  The intimacy of the situation quickly breaks down the usual social barriers, and you quickly make personal connections.  But Pannl's format kept us on topic and created a productive exchange of ideas.  You're making friends and business contacts at the same time.

I attended my first pannl on #gamification with fairly low expectations: I’d eat some lunch, meet a couple new people, maybe learn a thing or two.

I was pleasantly surprised to sit down with some extremely well-informed folks and engage in a fascinating conversation and share ideas about gamification: the pros and cons, current uses, user experiences, marketing application, what the future may hold. It was a casual and welcoming environment...no egos, know-it-alls, or pedants. I’ll definitely attend future pannls.

Silicon Beach is practically booming with regards to its ideas and the size of its community. I wanted to find a place that would allow me to not only network with these ambitious professionals but also get to connect with them on a deeper level. Pannl granted me that experience. There's just something about a welcoming atmosphere coupled by a fantastic moderator keeping the conversation flowing that really compels folks to own their experiences and contribute what they can to the discussion.

Fire.  

Fire is the reason.  

Fire is the reason I decided to devote my energies to co-founding, 

creating, building, 

Pannl.

Well actually campfires, to be more accurate.  

So, we are going to use web technology and mobile apps to enable people to convene, in-person, and conduct meaningful conversations on topics that matter to them. When I was first approached with this idea, I thought: Why?  Isn't technology already enabling the world to connect better than ever? What’s the point in creating an enterprise the premise of which is to pause, put down the gadgets, and face the hassle of actually traveling somewhere to congregate, all of that just to… talk?

So I began to ponder the idea.  I know darn well that, to have a chance out there, a startup must have an “unfair advantage,” something others are missing that will propel it to success. Sometimes the unfair advantage is a tangible asset, at other times, it is not.

As I pondered Pannl’s unfair advantage I eliminated the tangible assets first: technology? Nope.  Personnel? Nope (the team is truly extraordinary, in so many ways, but so are so many others).  Financing? Not yet.  

As I pondered the intangible I tried to visualize the product:  a conversation.  I thought about the meaningful conversations that I could remember. I thought about who was there, what was discussed, the frequency of those events.  Then I imagined town squares, cafes, living rooms, campfires.  I realized that there is something ingrained in us as social creatures that cherish gathering around something to simply talk.  To be in the moment, conversing, with others.  

I have a fire pit, so I conducted an unscientific experiment.  I contacted two friends and asked them to bring two friends over I did not know to discuss a pre-chosen topic.  The moment arrived, the conversation flowed, bonds were created euphoria was achieved.

Fire.  

Fire is the reason.  

Fire is the reason I decided to devote my energies to co-founding, creating, building, 

Pannl is great to simply have a high quality conversation experience. It's difficult to get like-minded people together in an intimate setting where you can actually learn, share and ask questions without being pitched or sold something unlike meetups and other formats. You get a different vibe from meeting with other pannlists. There's a nice balance of structure and flexibility from pannls that make going all the way to the other side of down in traffic worthwhile. I can't say that about most meetings that I have to attend, unfortunately.

I recently moved from Minsk, Belarus to Los Angeles.  I’m eager to meet people and make new friends.  A friend introduced me to Pannl and I thought that it was a great opportunity to meet new people.  I can also take advantage of speaking with others to improve my English. Overall, I had a great time at the pannl I went to.  The people I met were super nice. It was also the first time I tried dim sum.  The conversation was fun and it was easy to get to the restaurant.  I think Pannl is a great service to meet new people and have a fun conversation on things I like to talk about. I’m definitely going to recommend Pannl to my friends who recently moved to LA from Eastern Europe and get them to go to pannls with me.