I have a habit, as many of us do without realising it. I tend to people-watch. I might not say it out loud, but that’s exactly what it is. During this year’s Frappeverse Mumbai, too, I often found myself at the tea counter or at the back of the auditorium, just watching how people talk to each other. It feels like watching a story unfold, you can tell who’s animated or who is listening and learning. And you can definitely tell that someone came looking for one person only to end up in a completely different conversation, happily.

A usual sight at Frappeverse

Watching all that this year, I sat backstage with one thought. That if we had to define it, our ecosystem runs on conversation (I remember bringing this up while talking to someone). Not on roadmaps, proposals and not even on the talks at the event. The main keynote ends up being people talking to each other.

Internally, this isn’t news to me. We have at least three conversations a week that are, on paper, disagreements. Someone pushing back on an idea, someone questioning the process, or someone just thinking out loud until those thoughts turn into decisions. It’s built into how we work. Frappeverse has that same habit, scaled up and let loose in a room for two days.

What I see at Frappeverse is, that people fly in from other continents for this. Not for the talks alone, those you can watch on a computer. People come because two days in the same room somehow does things that countless video calls don’t. There have been community members who I’d only spoken to on a screen who I’ve finally met in person, and it’s a different kind of knowing someone after that.

For example, some highlights from conversations this year included complaints about what’s wrong with our marketing. I mean that as a compliment. Hearing feedback face to face, watching someone mean what they say is something an email or a form could never carry.

Partner meetup

This doesn’t mean that online conversations are less effective. Things get done, and done well. Plenty of what goes into an event like this happens over a call or a thread. The bottom line doesn’t change, but I think the process somewhere does. But there’s some movement that only happens in person. The urge that makes someone book a flight instead of watching a livestream.

It reminds me of the essence of human interaction, at the end of the day it’s just that. Two humans talking (at least until AI starts encapsulating the emotions we do). I think that’s also why the exchange of ideas through conversation is just as good as learning them through information consumption. Learning from someone’s mistake through reading is one thing. But when they tell you in person and you can see the wince on their face, it ends up being a better example.

Sharing of experiences in the best way

The western idea of business is usually told as a formal transaction. Big boardrooms, endless paper trails with numbers and a factual pitch. But working here, I’ve watched a different version of business run, mostly on conversation. Maybe the portrayal I’ve seen isn’t accurate and maybe that’s just how Indian SMBs work. Formalities are an afterthought. But the kind of trust I’ve seen partners build with customers, or with each other, or even that Frappe has built with its contributors over the years isn’t something that’s done over a feature list.

All these thoughts bring me back to another question. What happens after? Romanticising a conversation is all flowers and rainbows. But does anything actually move, or did we all just have a good time talking.

I don’t have an answer to that, but this year I watched an example unfold.

Every Frappeverse ends with an open discussion, it’s a tradition we’ve kept for all our events. This time, it came up that maybe Frappe should not host Frappeverse alone anymore. Maybe it’s time for the community to step in. Changes of cities (BLR), formats, processes, were thrown around.

A curiously worried me during the Frappeverse change discussion

It was 13 years of consistency for our flagship event changed up without so much as a written agenda. People in the room were excited and doubtful; I was the latter. But retrospectively, Frappe has never been a company to do things conventionally, so I wasn’t entirely surprised on how it started.

I’m not sure how it’ll turn out, but that doesn’t change the point this post might make. A simple conversation did something. This change could’ve been a proposal but our community chose to talk about it out loud. Knowing me, I’ll only be able to fully believe it once we’re in Bangalore.

For now, I’m just glad I was in the room to hear the conversation happen.

Cheers to Frappeverse