Austin — Feature Guild City of The Month

6 min readAug 16, 2022

Where barbecue & live music is serious business, people are deliciously weird, and our bet is that people are passionate, smart and Guild-ready

Austin is our Guild’s August Feature City and we embrace the “other place” that somebody once mentioned to me at SxSW years ago. People don’t care as much about where you are from or who you know in Austin vs. other cities, they want to know where you are going.

Let’s invite Austin’s smartest, wide-eyed leaders, builders, experts and polymaths into our Guild world this month. Join Guild Founders Friday, August 31st, 2022 over lunch 12pm CT

Pre-register: https://bit.ly/gsgaustin

The Grey Swan Guild — What Do You Need To Know Austinites:

Our Start — the Grey Swan Guild got together at the start of the pandemic as 40 people trying to make sense of this massive interruption that turned has just turned our worlds upside down, 30 months later, we are 130x that membership and keeping adding value.
Our Why — We make sense of the world’s biggest challenges and next Grey Swans as a collective of passionate and smart people under a not-for-profit umbrella.
Our How — We have four values that guide us — Aspirational, Curious, Collaborative and Purposeful
Our What — We have a beehive of activities across six different areas — Content & Publications (10+ pubs/150+ articles per year), Events & Experiences (10+ event each month), Intelligence & Foresight (4 big weathervanes), Experiments & Ventures (12 ventures), Global Community & Network (handpicked 00s of global members), Training & Learning (Craft-building and Masterclasses)
Our Who — 5,000+ global people from 90 different countries operating at the top of their game from around the world — read on about our 50 shades of Grey …Swanners below

Here’s our website: https://www.greyswanguild.org/

What has Us Intrigued about Austin:

Austin is our 18th biggest city in the guild and we want more of you. The world needs more Austin — here’s why:

Austin is the live music capital of the world
Austin is the #1 city to relocate to in the world (the secret is out)
Austin is tops as a tech city in the USA
Austin is the top college town in the US
Austin is the king of quirky, sneaking past Portlandia
Austin has previously been the top place to live in the USA
Austin is the 2nd city in the USA for STEM professionals — being nudged out by Seattle, a previous Guild feature city
Austin is the 2nd best U.S. city for digital nomads (just squeezed out by Jacksonville)
Austin is the 7th funnest city in the USA (okay Vegas and Orlando is tough competition but you are right there with the Bay area)
Austin is the 8th most physically active city in America
Austin is 8th hardest working city in America
Austin is a top 20 city in the world for quality of life
Austin is the 21st innovation city in the world
Austin is the 47th best city in the world (others would rank even higher but still impressive given 10,000 cities in the world)
the birth place of Ethan Hawke, Dakota Johnson, Tom Ford, Dabney Coleman, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Nelly & Carly Fiorina and home to Drew Brees, Sandra Bullock, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Emma Stone and Matthew McConaughey

Plus SxSW, University of Texas, Austin City Limits, Uncommon Objects, Rainey Street food trucks, the dirty Sixth and have you tasted brisket at Franklin’s or Terry Black’s.

And for us, most importantly the people, the ambition and the Texas passion and heart (without some of its harder-edged aspects).

What Do We Do at The Guild Town Halls

Let’s spend an energetic, fun and smart 75 minutes together, with a springboard for further participation. We hope you speak well of us after, gaze on what we do and hope to bring in: 25 regularly attending members, 7 people in core 200 members and 3 people that become local contributing champions:

Welcome — founders, aspiration for meeting and recap why Austin
Introduce Austinites — who are they, what do they do, why they love Austin and metaphorical tool they represent
The Guild - our why — mission/our how — values/our what — 6 things we do/our who — types of people who join us
The Challenge — three ways to improve Austin— interactive exercise — “How Might Austin…”
What’s Next Guild-Wise — new events/new ventures/new content
Opportunities to Participate - seven steps to guild heaven + extras

Join us August 31st over Texas-sized palette of conversation, foresight and sensemaking — https://bit.ly/gsgaustin