bigtentk

Once you’ve received the email inviting you to join the Big Tent Ketamine Circle Community, follow these brief instructions to create your account and profile.

We’re going to relaunch our community on a platform called Circle which offers us some nice features that we didn’t have as a Google Group:

• Member Directory – I’ve wanted our community to be more, well, “community-like” for a while. Part of being in a community means knowing who’s in it. Circle allows for a nice directory with the ability to upload pictures, website info, social links, practice and biographical info, etc., to make our space a bit more intimate.
• Different “spaces” for different themed posts. For example, we can have a space for “Looking for referrals”, another for “Article Shares”, another for “Hot Topics”, “Pain Management”, “Medical Considerations”, etc. – whatever we want to co-create.
• Chats – Circle offers the ability to message other members similar to texting, for more spontaneous interaction.
• Video meet-ups – we can get together for formal or informal real-time chats.
• Video archives of Under the Tent interviews, etc.
• And more stuff that we’re dreaming up, like on-demand courseware, live meetups, etc. Stay tuned.

With the launch of the new community, we will begin to charge for membership in Big Tent. The platforms that we’re using are no longer free (goodbye and good riddance, Google Groups), and we’ve hired professional developers to put together the new platform, so there are real costs involved. 

Our suggested membership level will be at $50/year, although we believe in a “pay what you think it’s worth” model with annual memberships from $10 to $250. We want to make our new community rich and robust, and make sure it feels fair to everyone. Everyone will get 45 days free to “kick the tires” and figure out whether it’s worthwhile. 

We don’t want to leave anyone behind, nor do we want to have folks feel cheated or leave because we’re now charging for a community that was formerly free. If you’re really strapped, reach out and we’ll comp your membership. And folks who have already donated to support our transition will get a free year, once we figure out how to do that.

Our membership levels will be:

• Beginner’s Mind Membership – $10/year
• Psycholytic Membership – $25/year
• Psychedelic Membership – $50/year
• Transcendental Membership – $100/year
• Mystical Experience Membership – $250/year

Schwag at various levels TBD 🙂

We will be organizing as a 501(c)(6) Professional Organization, as we don’t fit under the federal regs for a 501(c)(3). Donations to 501(c)(6) organizations are not tax-deductible, but membership dues may be an “off the top” expense for medical or mental health professionals. We recommend that you consult a tax professional.

Look for invitations to join the community soon. I hope it’ll be a completely smooth and frictionless transition, but I’ve actually never seen that happen before, so please bear with any bumps we encounter during launch. 

We look forward to seeing you soon, back under the Tent. Our goal is to get us back up by late July, 2024.

Warm regards,

-Carl and the entire Big Tent K team

PS: If Big Tent is meaningful to you, please consider supporting the transition of our community to a new platform by making a donation.

As of 1:25PM PDT on 6/6/24, the Big Tent Ketamine Google Group is still down.

I’ve requested a review, but there’s no way for me to supply additional information to indicate that we’re a community of licensed professionals whose discussion of ketamine is legal and legitimate. It’s a big black hole inside a faceless megacorporation.

In the mean time, I’ve engaged the web development company Rocket House to develop an alternate solution that meets the further growth needs of our community. Our immediate priority is in getting the discussion group up and running. I expect it may take 3-4 weeks to complete this project. Please be patient with this process.

I will continue to post here and to send out additional email blasts with updates.

Yours in community,
–Carl

Once again, unexpectedly and without warning, Google took down Big Tent Ketamine citing “unwanted content”.

We will appeal this as we did last time, but have very very limited recourse.

The plan is to move off the Google Group platform ASAP. Continue to check back here for updates.

The content of their email follows:

The Google Group came back up on May 2. This happened without warning, nor with any explanation as to why the group was taken down in the first place.

We have made a backup of group posts through May 2, so that we don’t lose access to the group’s history.

It’s clear that we can no longer rely on Google’s free service as a home for our community, and we will be pursuing other options moving forward.

For now, please continue to use the existing Google Group for discussion.