Declaration of Innovation

It has become necessary to strengthen our community bonds.

So we wrote one — a framework for why communities meet and a playbook for how we treat each other when we do.

Innovation is not only what we build. It is how we gather, share, disagree, repair, teach, host, and make room for what comes next.

This document is meant for meetups, coffee gatherings, workshops, hack nights, neighborhood groups, creative circles, conferences, and projects that want a shared foundation for what happens in the room, and for how people treat one another after everyone goes home.

Canonical draft

The Declaration

When it becomes necessary to strengthen the community bonds, we gather not only to exchange ideas, but to practice the conditions that allow ideas to grow.

We believe innovation is a public act of imagination, maintenance, trust, and shared effort. It belongs wherever people learn from one another, build with care, and leave the commons stronger than they found it.

What We Believe

We believe a strong community is built by the actions between the events. The meeting, the message, the follow-up coffee, the quiet introduction, the honest warning, the shared resource, and the careful listen are all part of the work.

We believe business can be done without treating people as transactions. Opportunity moves through trust, and trust grows when people show up with patience, clarity, generosity, and respect for each other's time.

We Gather With Purpose

We gather to make things, test ideas, share work in progress, and invite people into the unfinished middle of creation. We value participation over performance and curiosity over spectacle.

We Make Room

We welcome people across levels of experience, discipline, background, ability, and identity. We design our gatherings so newcomers can find the door, understand the room, and take part without needing permission from an inner circle.

We Share What We Know

We treat knowledge as something to circulate. We credit sources, name influences, teach what we can, and resist gatekeeping when generosity would strengthen the group.

How We Work With Each Other

We take the one-on-one meeting when we can. We understand that every coffee will not turn into a deal, a job, a client, a collaborator, or a breakthrough. Still, meeting with people, listening carefully, and sharing honestly are how community becomes real.

We follow up with care. We are clear about what we are asking for, what we can offer, and what we cannot promise. We do not manufacture urgency, and we do not confuse access with entitlement.

Introductions are earned, not expected. A personal introduction carries trust from one relationship into another. No one is owed someone else's network simply because they asked. When an introduction is appropriate, generous, and consented to, we celebrate it. When it is not, we respect the boundary.

NDAs are DOA. We gather to share openly, learn in public, and build trust through conversation. If an idea cannot be discussed without first turning the room into a law office, it is probably not ready for this table.

We Disagree With Care

We make space for useful tension, hard questions, and honest critique. We challenge ideas without diminishing people, and we remember that clarity is kindness; vagueness is not politeness.

We Repair Harm

We do not confuse good intentions with good impact. When harm happens, we respond with attention, accountability, and a commitment to repair. Safety is part of the work, not a distraction from it.

We Leave the Community Stronger

We measure success not only by what gets launched, but by what becomes easier for the next person to attempt. We strengthen bonds through hospitality, shared practice, documentation, mentorship, and care for the spaces that hold us.

This declaration is yours to copy, adapt, sign, and improve wherever people gather to make, and make things better.

Make it local

Adapt It For Your Group

Start with the shared declaration, then add the practices your group needs to be specific and accountable. A coffee meetup, conference, school club, and civic tech group should not all sound exactly the same. Name how people should gather, follow up, ask for help, make introductions, share opportunities, and handle trust.

Download the Draft

Local additions to include

  • Community or project name
  • City, venue, or online home
  • Host and safety contact
  • Accessibility commitments
  • One-on-one meeting norms
  • Introduction and referral norms
  • Open sharing or NDA policy
  • Conflict response process
  • Local rituals, norms, or traditions

In practice

How Communities Use It

Mondaiy Coffee

Atlanta, GA · Weekly

When it becomes necessary to strengthen the community bonds, Mondaiy Coffee gathers over coffee to make the first step easier.

We welcome builders, neighbors, artists, organizers, technologists, and the curious. We make introductions, share works in progress, and treat the morning as a place where small beginnings can become shared momentum.

We take the coffee seriously without needing every coffee to produce something. The practice is the point: listen well, share what you can, protect trust, and let useful things grow at human speed.

Free Parking

Atlanta, GA · Monthly

When it becomes necessary to strengthen the community bonds, Free Parking gathers a small circle of founders to do the work that does not fit on a slide deck.

Members share North Star Metrics, peaks and valleys, and select one or two issues for deep dives. The declaration grounds how we treat introductions, confidentiality, and repair — the same values, applied to a room of seven founders instead of a room of thirty builders.

We come prepared, speak plainly, and leave having made someone else's problem smaller.

Adopted by

Communities

Mondaiy Coffee

Atlanta, GA

Weekly AI coffee for builders, neighbors, and the curious.

mondaiycoffee.com →

Free Parking

Atlanta, GA

Monthly peer circle for ATDC portfolio CEOs.

Want to add your community? Open a GitHub issue →

Public commitment

Sign the Declaration

A signature can come from a person, meetup, project, venue, chapter, or event. Add your name, place, and one sentence about the bond you are strengthening.

Adopting as a community?

Open a GitHub issue with your community name, location, and a one-line description. We'll add you to the communities list.

Add Your Community →

Signing opens a prefilled GitHub issue. Your signature becomes part of the public record.

Signed it? Say so

Put It In Your Footer

One quiet line for the bottom of your site. It carries the opening words of the declaration and links back here, so the next community can find the door. Copy it as-is — it inherits your site's fonts and colors — and it looks the same wherever signatories put it.

How it looks

“When it becomes necessary to strengthen the community bonds…”signatory of the Declaration of Innovation

<!-- Declaration of Innovation — signatory footer -->
<p style="margin: 1.5em 0 0; font-size: 0.9em;">
  <em>&#8220;When it becomes necessary to strengthen the community bonds&#8230;&#8221;</em>
  &#8212; <a href="https://declarationofinnovation.org/" style="color: inherit;">signatory of the Declaration of Innovation</a>
</p>