How the diaspora chapter is rewiring who we call our people, one long weekend at a time.
For most of the diaspora, “home” isn’t a place anymore. It’s a group chat. A thread that never sleeps, spanning time zones and continents, where someone’s always awake to answer the question you can’t ask anyone else.
But group chats have limits. You can share memes and voice notes and the occasional existential crisis, but you can’t share a meal. You can’t dance together. You can’t look someone in the eye and say, “I see you,” and mean it.
That’s where UnwindFest comes in.
We started the diaspora chapter two years ago with a simple premise: what if we turned the group chat into a long weekend? What if we gave people permission to show up as their full selves—not the LinkedIn version, not the family reunion version, but the version that exists in the group chat at 2 AM when someone asks, “Does anyone else feel like they’re living between worlds?”
The first year, we had sixty people. Last year, we had two hundred. This year, we’re capping it at three hundred because we’ve learned that intimacy doesn’t scale infinitely.
What happens at UnwindFest is hard to explain to people who haven’t been. It’s part reunion, part conference, part family gathering for a family you chose. It’s the place where the group chat becomes three-dimensional.
We’ve watched people meet their co-founders here. We’ve seen friendships form that span continents. We’ve witnessed the quiet magic of being in a room where everyone understands the specific loneliness of being from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Home is still a group chat. But once a year, for one long weekend, it’s also a place. And that place is wherever we decide to gather.