Magazine Club – Real Review
One of the special things about Stack is that every month we deliver the same magazine to thouands of people around the world. That means we essentially have the first part of a gigantic book club, with everyone reading the same thing and thinking about it on their own. I wanted to see if we could also add in the second part, by bringing some of those people together to talk about what they had read.
We held our first Stack Magazine Club on Thursday 23rd June, with everyone thinking about Real Review issue 12 – the magazine we sent to subscribers as our May delivery. The event was only open to Stack subscribers, and Real Review editor Jack Self joined us to speak about the magazine. He was predictably brilliant; literally overflowing with thoughts and insights about the magazine, he brought a whole new perspective to the stories he discussed.
I’m sharing the video above so that more people can enjoy listening to Jack, and also as a bit of an advert as well. I’d love to see the club grow from this point, so if you’re a Stack subscriber please do take a look and consider joining us for our next event. It will be essentially the same as this first one, but with the following tweaks:
// First of all, we’ll allow it to run longer. Lots of the feedback from our first event consisted of people saying they wanted to hear more from Jack, and I know he had more he could say. I’m aware that everyone has other stuff they need to do, and you can’t spend all day chatting about magazines, but I think we’ll say the next one will run for up to 90 minutes, and of course people should feel free to duck out early if they need to.
// Probably the biggest difference is that next time I’ll ask for questions in advance. That will make it much easier for me to send the conversation in a particular direction, and make sure we cover as many different areas of conversation as possible. We’ll definitely still use the chat for comments and further questions, but I think it will be better if that’s supporting the main flow, rather than leading it.
// And we’re going to try running the next one without breakout rooms. I personally enjoyed that bit, but lots of people said it was their least favourite part, so I want to see what the Magazine Club is like if we keep the whole focus on our guest speaker.
I think the most exciting thing about this first subscriber-only event was the potential for doing more. You don’t really get a sense of it in the video above because it only shows the person speaking, but I loved being (virtually) face to face with a group of our subscribers, and getting a better sense of what they thought about the magazine. If you’re a Stack subscriber please do join us on Thursday 21st July for our next one with Suze Olbrich from Somesuch Stories. The link for joining will be in the letter for the July delivery, and I’ll also email all our subscribers with the details nearer the time. Or of course you can always just email me and ask for the Zoom details.
And if you’re not already a subscriber, come and join us! We deliver a different independent magazine every month, keeping you inspired and informed, and now we also get together to talk about it too. You can choose to pay monthly, quarterly or annually, and you can cancel any time, so trying our magazines is easy, accessible, and zero risk.
