On Sunday, October 13, 2002, at 01:16 AM, Ryan Sorensen wrote: > Talking to someone who was at the legendary cypherpunks anniversary > bbq. > He brought up the fact that someone there was talking about "private > hedonistic cells" (any errors are mine, not his, and whoever talked > about this, if they have any more thoughts on the matter, please feel > free to email me.)
That was Eric Hughes. His notion, briefly, is that many effective groups operate with about 20-40 known-to-each-other local cells and with about 10 times that many overall members. While there are many mega-organizations with tens of thousands or even tens of millions of members (AARP, Sierra Club, Democrats, etc.), the effective size for actual communication and action tends to be a lot smaller. We all noted that most Cypherpunks physical meetings are in about this range, of 20 to 30 attendees, and that the mailing list has ranged from a few hundred to about 500 distinct, real subscribers for most of the list's existence. Profound or obvious? I guess you had to be there. --Tim May
