I do not mean this as a rhetorical question: I mean it literally. Tell us what’s stopping you! I don’t want to invalidate you, but the opposite. I’m sure people here would love to help if it’s possible. Post away!
Personally, I think Covid and the general amount of work everyone does are the two biggest obstacles to community building. Not just for me, but everybody I know. It’s nearly impossible to build a community when nobody has the energy to even play a video game together, and actually meeting up in person can literally kill you. There are definitely solutions, but we need to realize them as problems first to find them. If you have suggestions, please share them! Same goes for the issues everyone else shares (if they’re ok with help, of course).
I'm working on creating digital and sorta technological infrastructure. I was part of a local org. I did not disagree with them with regards to theory in anyway, and they were all much more well read and knowledgeable in ML than I was (and am).
They did not know very much about contemporary technology and the potential uses it could have. Fine. They did not want to use social media (in the broadest sense of the term, even for an internal intranet). Fine. However, I've been wracking my brain around and I can't for the life of me get how they could not conceive, if they were to look at it dialectically, that there are things that they don't know and that they don't know that they don't know.
I guess I'd like to do the plumbing and logistics of stuff. I was never given an opportunity. I asked, I was not allowed to do it in my free time. I was not listened to. And then some comrades were kinda mean to me too. I didn't like that very much. I also did not like that comrades spoke for members of other marginzised groups (e.g. women). The executives (student group FYI) knew I had issues with anxiety and mental health.
In the mean time I want to improve my technical prowess and memorize more marxist and classical (e.g. Aristotle's Organon, al-Farabi's islamic neoplatonism, darwin, Malthus, Roseau, Hayek) so that I can talk like I know theory too without practical consideration. I have a sense that if I quote the right people and don't focus on empirical stuff ALL the time as I felt comrades in the org did, I'd establish enough good will for them to listen to the immediately material things I';d suggest and am confident enough now to admit that I know of (not 'know' just know of).