A Q&A with the man who spearheaded a society for cloud lovers around the world.
This interview is part of the People & Company team’s ongoing research into extraordinary communities that are bridging the gaps between us. P&C is a small strategy company that helps organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.
If you enjoy this interview, you can learn more about our services and reach out here. We’ve also published a community-building handbook called Get Together: How to build a community with your people. Order your copy here, and subscribe to our podcast “Get Together” for more stories from extraordinary communities.
In 2004, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, an English graphic-designer, inadvertently started a Cloud Appreciation Society while giving a talk a literary festival in Cornwall.
He went home and built a website — complete with a manifesto and a photo gallery. Members could pay $15 to join in exchange for a badge and certificate with their member number (I’m #46,504).
Within a few months, more than 2,000 people had paid to join the society. Today, The Cloud Appreciation Society has over 45,000 members around the world. These members gather for Sky Holidays, share cloud-related music, art, and poetry with one another, and have even joined forces to identify a new type of cloud: the asperitas.
How did Gavin build something so special?
We called him at his home in Somerset, England, to find out.
Three Takeaways from Gavin
1. Put your purpose front-and-center so people can choose if your community is for them.
The name itself, and later Gavin’s prominent manifesto (“We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.”), have all made the The Cloud Appreciation Society’s purpose easy to glean for all who might be interested.
2. If well articulated, passionate members will share your story for you.
Gavin has never done any advertising for the society. “If an idea is something that people want to tell other people about, then you don’t need to do any marketing,” he told us. “Fortunately, it’s very easy for members to explain the society to someone else. The name says it all.”
3. To make sure your community grows and evolves, you’ll have to pass the torch .
Gavin’s in the progress of figuring out how to work with leaders in his community to build the community. “The society can be so much more if everything didn’t have to go through me,” Gavin told us. “I’ve done everything. I’ve designed the stuff we sell in the shop. I’ve written a book so I’ve been on the TV programs and done the talks. That’s all very well up to a point and then it just go any further.” To make sure a community sustains and evolves over the long term, you’ll have to delegate responsibility to members.
Full Transcript
Bailey Richardson: How did you realize that other people might be as devoted to the clouds as you are?
Gavin Pretor-Pinney: Funnily enough, it was because people complain about the clouds that I knew they were interesting. If everyone thought clouds were nice, then it’s too obvious. But when there are an equal number of people for and against something, it means there’s a kind of debate—that there’s a reason for to get your team together and for people to join you, so to speak,
I always felt that clouds in the sky were a beautiful part of nature which, because they’re always there in the background, we can become blind to them. I was interested in starting a society because I thought there are lots of people who notice the clouds but only in a negative way. This is certainly the case in the UK.
“Are you with us or you’re against us? Do you see the world in this way or not?”
Implied in the Cloud Appreciation Society names is the fact that clouds are an under appreciated part of nature. That reason for the society to exist is front and center. We are a reminder for people to look at this everyday aspect of the world and see the positive in it, not just kind of have a knee jerk reaction to the negative.
BR: Where did the very first members come from?
GPP: A friend of mine started a literary festival down in the southwest of England. She was looking for speakers at the festival and knew that I liked clouds, so she asked if I would do a talk about them.
I had this whimsical idea to call that talk “The Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society.” I didn’t have any real plan to start a society then. I was just a bit nervous about whether anyone would come, and thought that sounded an intriguing name.
I even borrowed one of those metal presses that make tin badges from a friend, and made a bunch of “Cloud Appreciation Society” badges for the talk.
BR: What inspired you to make those badges for the talk?
GPP: Looking back on it now, what I was doing was find a physical way of precipitating a choice — are you with us or you’re against us? Do you see the world in this way or not?
If people did, I invited them to come up at the end and get a badge. The talk was totally full and there was a stampede for those buttons.
Those people who took buttons said to me, “I’m joining, how do I do that?”
I could only reply with “Uh, I don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that.” Although I had made these badges and done the talk, I hadn’t really thought about the consequences beyond that.
BR: After that talk, how did you turn your make-believe society into a real one?
GPP: In January 2005, I just got a book on how to make a website and put the first site together in Dreamweaver.
The early site was really kind of rubbish, but the part that resonated for people was the chance to submit and see other images of clouds in the photo gallery. Those images came flooding in
It became apparent to me very quickly that people weren’t rushing out to take new pictures and sending them in. Instead they had lots of pictures that they’ve taken previously that they’d saved and were sending in to me to post. I got the impression that they had been showing these photographs to their friends, and finally they felt like they’d found somewhere where people were actually interested to see these photos.
BR: People could also formally apply to be members on the website, right? What did that entail?
GPP: If you applied, I’d send you a badge and a certificate. I just printed those out on my color printer at home, but I made them special by including the member’s name and membership number on them.
Around the time of starting the society, a friend told me I had to give people a membership number, saying “people pretend that they don’t want to be a number, but actually people love being a number. So I knew early on that having a number actually gives it shows your sort of part of something.
We also had a manifesto right from the start too because I felt like there was humor in the contrast. All these serious things — the manifesto, the membership number and the badges — were all in support of these things that are so ephemeral and light and airy and momentary and transient.
“Images came flooding in.”
BR: How did you grow the society from those first talk attendees to so many more folks?
GPP: I’ve never done any sort of advertising for the society. The community started to grow as a result of people telling people. Fortunately, it’s very easy for members to explain the society to someone else. The name says it all.
BR: What do you think has motivated members to spread the word?
GPP: If an idea is something that people want to tell other people about, then you don’t need to do any marketing to kind of build up a reasonably good community. But in order for an idea to be something that people want to tell other people about, they need to believe that thing will reflect well on them.
The society does that at the moment. People feel it reflects well on them because it shows that they look at the world and a slightly different way.
BR: For you, what does being a member of The Cloud Appreciation Society communicate about that person?
GPP: If you start looking at the world like in this way, it represents a little shift in your perspective and, people who join want to invite that shift. It shows that they are sensitive to the natural world. It shows that they’ve got imagination because they can see this aspect of nature has a magical quality to it.
So many people over the years have said to me that since they heard my talk or read my book or whatever that they’ve been noticing the sky in a slightly different way. The shift required is very simple because the sky is always there. You’re just asking them to peel back a layer of wonder about the clouds that they used to have as child. It’s kind of nostalgic element.
“If an idea is something that people want to tell other people about, then you don’t need to do any marketing.”
BR: One thing we believe about communities is that members first show up for the thing — in this case, an appreciation of the clouds — but they come back for the people they meet.
Is that true for The Cloud Appreciation Society—are you seeing members build relationships directly with each other?
GPP: In the last couple of years, I’ve started to do trips and gatherings of the society. We did our first big gathering in London in 2016 that people came to from different countries. It was a really great experience and it left me thinking, “why haven’t I done this before?”
Since that time I’ve done some sky holidays where we go to a destination that relates to the sky in some way. We’ve gone to see the Northern Lights in Canada and Norway and I’ve got one coming up in Finland.
Each time I do a gathering, I realize that what was interesting about it is the people. The sky was the invitation that got them out the door, but then once they arrive, the reason they enjoy it and really what they’re there for is each other.
Their self-selection is the magic there. If you have a society which is quite focused in, and why it exists is quite clear, then members get a feeling that “I joined the society and I’m like this, so anyone else who joins this is going to be a bit like me.” People like to meet new people that they have things in common with.
BR: Do you plan to do more to help members meet other members of the society?
GPP: I feel a tension between wanting to keep what’s special about the society intact, which is the personality of it, and also wanting to open it up.
At the moment the society has a pretty good clear voice. The reason for that is because a lot of the voice comes from me and that means that I am like a walking bottleneck. I’ve done everything. I’ve designed the stuff we sell in the shop myself. I’ve written a book, so it’s me who has been on the TV programs, done the talks. That’s all very well up to a point and then it just becomes limiting. I can’t go any further. There’s only so much that can happen if it all goes through the one funnel.
A bit ago, some people started asking, “Can I start a chapter local chapter of the cloud appreciation society?” And I was like, “That sounds good. I’ll have a little think about how it could work.” I mentioned the idea in a newsletter and people said that they wanted to start one in all different parts of the world — from India to Reno, Nevada, to South Korea to New Zealand.
BR: Did you end up launching those local chapters?
GPP: At first I thought this could be great. But practically, how does that work? How do I enable that in a way? Once you start a chapter, is it its own thing or is it a part of the society? Once people start putting on events, then do they represent the society as a whole?
In the digital world, it’s possible to grow a community more rapidly than ever. But the age-old issues remain the same, which is that if you define yourself by “we’re like this and we’re not like that,” then as you allow lots of different kind of groups to emerge independently, that kind of line of who you are and who you’re not starts to become much more blurry and the more blurry that line becomes, then in a way the less powerful the why of your society becomes. That’s the danger I guess.
BR: I hear you. You’re excellent at communicating The Cloud Appreciation Society’s why. You’ve done an amazing job of it from the very beginning.
The why you have is not only beautiful and resonant, but you’re very good at sharing it with other people. So I’d say have some faith in your ability to really convey that personality, that approach and see how other people could maybe mimic it but with their own little little flavor.
GPP: It just requires a bit of a, a bit of a shift in my thinking. Like you say, it’s relinquishing control and realizing that that means you can’t quite control the voice of the society in the same way, but it also means that the voice of the society can kind of go in different directions that you can’t conceive on your own.
“I am like a walking bottleneck. I’ve done everything…That’s all very well up to a point and then it just becomes limiting.”
BR: After 13 years, what has The Cloud Appreciation Society brought you and your life?
GPP: On a personal level, I gave a talk recently and someone came up to me afterwards. He lifted his shirt sleeve and he said, look, and he showed me a tattoo on his arm with the cloud illustration that we had on a first certificates and his membership number underneath.
I thought, wow, that’s kind of amazing. Something that I kind of began as this whimsical idea has now been indelibly tattooed onto this person’s skin.
And I thought, huh, my conception of the society and his conception of the society are going to be different, but what’s interesting is that his experience of what the society is feels personal enough to him to want to tattoo tattooed on his arm. And that though he won’t know exactly what the society will be like in 10 years time, he has faith that it’ll still be something he’s happy to have on my arm. That made me feel that this society has become something interesting.
This interview is part of the People & Company team’s ongoing research into extraordinary communities that are bridging the gaps between us. P&C is a small strategy company that helps organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.
If you enjoyed this interview, you can learn more about our services and reach out here. We’ve also published a community-building handbook called Get Together: How to build a community with your people. Order your copy here, and subscribe to our podcast “Get Together” for more stories from extraordinary communities.
