The Symposium

In 2016, a friend of mine named Sean Conner had the nerve to gather his friends and ask something of them.

He sent an email to about ten of us.

Congratulations! You’re all enrolled in the Danger School!

So what is it? Well, it’s a little like Make-a-Wish for our dying inner child + fire! + a splash of danger = full aliveness.

NOTE: This is the one and only planning email you will receive for Danger School. If you don’t follow up I’ll take that to mean you’re basically a pussy and hate fun. (Sorry, but it had to be said.)

Sean Conner, 2016

We showed up. Ate nachos. Drank beer. Planned something just outside our collective comfort zone, just enough to make it exciting and memorable without killing anyone.

The rule was simple: every man had to teach something. At least an hour. Didn’t matter what — something you knew, something you cared about, something worth sharing. Some taught. Some lectured. Some ran an activity. Some just talked. But every man gave something of himself to the group, and every man received something from every other man.

That’s why it worked.

That weekend on Vashon Island, eight men became something. Not immediately, not dramatically. But by the time we left, we had, in Sean’s words, “coalesced into a band of supportive and close friends.”

Danger School lasted two adventures. Then life happened. People moved. Jobs consumed everything. The energy to organize the next thing never materialized.

We’d built something real and had nothing to hold it.

Sean has moved on to other things. The dream never died. It is reborn now as something bigger, the same spirit, a wider reach. Not just for our friends. For all men.

The ancient Greeks invented this. A symposium — men, wine, ideas worth arguing about. Not a party. Not a lecture. A gathering with intention: a host, a code, every man expected to contribute. Plato wrote the most famous one. They were doing this 2,500 years ago and somehow we forgot.

Danger School was eight guys on Vashon Island where every man had to teach the others something. Not watch. Not listen. Give. That’s why it worked. That’s always why it works.

The Symposium is what it always should have been — that same room, that same energy, with the structure to make it last longer than one weekend.

We didn’t invent this. We’re just bringing it back.

Every model we have for men is broken.

The church has lost most men. The machismo culture mistakes aggression for strength. The men’s wellness industry sells retreats and breathwork and sends men home to the same lives.

The problem isn’t that nobody expects anything of men. Expectations are arguably at an all-time high. The problem is that those expectations are in direct conflict with each other — and none of them are meaningfully aligned with what men actually are: beings shaped by millions of years of evolutionary pressure into something specific, something real, something that doesn’t just disappear because the culture decided it was inconvenient.

Men are lost not because they lack standards, but because the standards don’t add up. Nobody has given them a coherent framework to live inside — one that works with their nature instead of against it, and asks something genuinely worthy of them.

So we’re building one.

The Symposium is a men’s club that requires something of you.

It costs you in character, in time, and in money. In return, it gives you brotherhood, camaraderie, and genuine growth. And over time, something more concrete: chapter spaces to work and meet, properties to retreat to with your family, places that belong to the men who built them.

It is chapter-based. Each chapter has leadership and a shared code — ethics, service, and how you treat other people. There is no pastor. There is no doctrine. There are brothers who know you well enough to call you on your bullshit, and care enough to do it.

We took what church got right: community, ritual, a shared code, the expectation that you show up and give back. We went deeper on service and accountability. We left the theology behind.

The long vision is a global network: chapters in cities, destination properties for retreats and family gatherings, spaces that members help build and can use. An institution that outlasts any of us.

But more than the real estate: a generation of men who are empathetic, service-oriented, and genuinely accountable to each other and to the world they live in.

Men in The Symposium must be good people. Helpful people.

That means community service — real service, not performative. It means giving to the order and to each other. It means living by a shared code and being held to it by men who know you. It means showing up, consistently, not just when it’s convenient.

It costs money. It costs time. Those costs are real and intentional. They are part of what makes belonging here mean something.

Brotherhood. A true community — not a feed, not a group chat, not a monthly newsletter. Men you actually see.

Weekly gatherings where someone always teaches something. Discussions worth having. Barbecues. Outings. The kind of events where you show up not knowing what to expect and leave glad you came.

Physical access to chapter spaces: co-working when you need to get out of the house, meeting rooms, a place to be that isn’t home or a coffee shop. Access to Symposium properties for retreats, getaways, and family time.

And men who actually know you. Who’ve seen you on a good day and a bad one. Who won’t let you disappear into yourself when something’s wrong. Who will call you when they need help and pick up when you call.

That’s the thing that’s been missing. That’s what this is.

If you don’t give a damn about other people, this isn’t for you.

If you believe some people deserve less — less dignity, less opportunity, less of anything — this isn’t for you.

We don’t preach tolerance. We expect it, fully, as a baseline condition of membership. You either believe every person deserves the same shot you got, or you belong somewhere else.

If you’re here to take and not give — to consume the community without contributing to it — this isn’t for you.

If you can’t handle being challenged. If feedback feels like an attack. If you need to be the smartest guy in the room and can’t let that go — this isn’t for you. Not yet.

If you’re just looking for a networking opportunity with a better vibe, there are a hundred of those. This isn’t one of them.

In twenty years, if this works: chapters in every major city. Properties on multiple continents. A network built by men who held each other to a standard worth holding.

But the real measure isn’t the buildings. It’s the men.

Men who are more empathetic because they were challenged to be. Men who give a damn about each other and the world around them — not as a performance, but because that’s who they became inside a community that expected it. Men who aren’t competing to accumulate the most, but to affect the most. Who keep score by lives changed, not dollars made.

That’s a different kind of man. And a different kind of man produces a different kind of world — for his family, his community, and everyone downstream of him.

Not a lifestyle brand. Not a subscription. An institution that asks something real of the men who belong to it, and gives something real back.

“Get way more out of it than you put in.” Sean said that in the first Danger School email. It’s still true. It’s the whole idea.