This will be short and sweet.
Tldr: Edge Esmeralda 2026 was awesome; lots of lovely, dynamic, holistic people working on important things, many of them focused on new culture, new governance, and health. I played sports or danced w friends most days. I learned to vibe code way better. I was challenged most by the tension between listening and building. I was affirmed and inspired in my own work, and feel committed to weaving this community more fully.
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It was a month and a half ago that I landed at edge Esmeralda in Healdsburg, CA. Before I even arrived, I carpooled another edger, Charlie. He's working on cryptographic liquid democracy, which is one of the most exciting innovations in governance, I think. One could call it ‘liquid d’. Lots of edgers were circling around the concept of liquid d… Its something I thought I’d be working on more, but its out of my scope technically, and I dont want to reinvent the wheel.
I paid $800 for a week at edge - week 2 for governance and ai. I mostly expected to be gifted a full month ticket, but was ready to find any creative way to continue my attendance. On the last day of my paid week, an extra ticket found me.
When I arrived, the front desk attendee asked me my interests and recommended a few events and people to talk to. It was a warm welcome. When I turned away to get in line for the blood draw for the full panel metabolite assessment or whatever, the campground coordinator i had been put in touch with walked up to me and apologized for leaving me on read for two weeks. She offered to drive me to the tree-net weaving workshop at the campground later that day, and show me the ropes. She really did..
We dropped into quite a deep connection that day, and continued to deepen that connection almost every day for the next 3 weeks. The connection felt serendipitous; too synchronistic, too fast, seemingly too unlikely. And that, perhaps, is the most important story about my Edge-ing.
Many edgers are trying to engineer serendipity better. One of them is even named Seren. She's great, and her project is called Index Network (a user intent matching ai agent protocol).
The first week, I drifted between projects and talks, trying to soak up all I could, get my bearings, sense the scene for optimal alignment potentials.
I felt minimally productive.
I organized one workshop where I led a meditation, followed by emergent connection and dialogue. One participant told me that my guided meditation brought him the most relaxation he had felt for as long as he could remember. That same participant urged me to start using claude code and codex, whereas I had been only copy-pasting code from standard chat-dialogues before then. I had been planning to soon start using these proprietary frontier models to code, but Steve pushed me to just send it ASAP. And it was well worth it. $120/month for a high-level and blindingly fast software engineer. Its a no brainer.
The temporary (“pop-up”) city/conference in nor cal felt special in many ways.
So much overlapping work. So much play. So much flow.
I remembered how much I’ve missed intentional community. I remembered how much I’ve missed intimate lovership. I remembered how much I miss sports.
How much I love all those things. And how much I want to facilitate more of these high quality experiences and connections for more people. Better user matching. Better inter/personal values /philosophical exploration. Better hands-on learning by doing. Better real world discovery.
During edge, I made lots of new friends. Met Mark Zuckerbergs sister. Developed many crushes. Learned to be much more sex positive. Had my first highly successful three way (three way contact dance, I mean..). I met people working on the same things as I am, equally excited to work on building a new world. I discovered Artizen.fund and got 9k in initial funding. I rebuilt my website ( www.posits.earth ), and started loading many new to-dos into my almost-mostly-automated agent pipeline.
I stayed up, on average, ~5 hours past my bedtime. It was always worth it. Still, sometimes more than others.
I had some of the most serene moments I'd ever had.
There's another edge city in October, in Goa, in southern india. Right next to Kerala, the socialist indian state. Which is right next to tamil nadu, where the biggest ecovillage in the world lives. A spiritual ecovillage, no less.
Maybe see you there? Or in France afterwards, for a pop-up relational-practice deep dive community gathering? It will be based in large part on IFS, NVC, circling, and possibility management (a good stack!).
Let me know..
https://regenera.community/residencies/phase-iii/
Next posts in queue:
a review of Life since Edge: the 250th independence of the “free world” anniversary/tea party 2.0/new constitution shenanigans, a final hotspring adventure; whiteboard shibari playtime; dancing with a hundred thousand crows; and an emergent world tour.
“Why be vulnerable” — an exploration of the value of mixing public and private, work and play, quantity and quality.
“Philosophy and my interpersonal relating stack”
“Monism vs nondualism vs dualism vs trinitarianism vs infinity”
an interview w me about my life and work
- - In progress
- - Faze
P.s. I also learned that simply eating saliva leaves can get you in touch with the collective subconscious of gaia. Pretty cool!