Brewing Community
Connection Over Coffee with Mesh
Watching the gang from Friends hang out at Central Perk so often made me believe that I would be doing that a lot more in my 20s. I imagined holding a large, foamy cappuccino while listening to my friends gossip about their love lives and petty work grievances. But in real life, especially on a big campus like UW-Madison, those moments don’t always happen on their own. Mesh is trying to change that, one coffee chat at a time.
Mesh is a friend-making app that is designed to bring people in the community together. When you join Mesh, you’ll fill out a short survey about your age and interests. Then you’ll get a weekly invite to meet people for coffee every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Since you accept a weekly invite, you are grouped with three other people who have similar interests or are within a similar age range as you. You show up to the coffee shop, find your group, and get to know people in live conversation, in real life. There’s no profile to create or swiping required. It’s a low stakes way to expand your bubble and make new friends. All you have to decide is, “Do I want to get some coffee and chat with some new people this Saturday?”
The founder, Michael Orosz-Fagen, created Mesh because he wanted to make it easier for people to approach others. “Although there are many ways to build community at UW-Madison, such as joining a student organization, sometimes it can be difficult to identify who to talk to, especially when it is your first meeting and it’s a large group. In a Mesh group, you know that the three other people that are interested in meeting you are social types of people who want to meet strangers for coffee on a Saturday morning,” says Orosz-Fagen.
Meeting for coffee is more informal than a scheduled activity or dinner. You can get a pastry or drink of your choice while enjoying conversation with new people. If you mesh well, you can continue your time together after coffee. You can also add them as a friend on the app or in real life afterwards. Sometimes you might end up in a group that you don’t mesh well, and that’s OK — at least you practiced the muscle of showing up and supported a local coffee shop.
My Experience Making New Friends Through Mesh
Last summer I became curious about expanding my friend group. As a graduate student in chemistry, I spend most of my time in the research lab, so many of my friends are graduate students in STEM. When I saw an ad for Mesh on Instagram, I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet new people in Madison with different interests and hobbies from me. I filled out a short survey about myself and waited to receive an invitation with my group’s information and meeting place.
However, my first Mesh meetup didn’t go as planned. I was invited to meet 3 other people at Ancora on King St. When I showed up, I couldn’t find anyone in my group because it was so crowded. Instead of leaving right away, I sat on the patio to read and waited to see if someone would approach me. I noticed two other women looking for people and I asked them if they were here for Mesh. They both were, but couldn’t find their groups either. Since we couldn’t find our groups, we decided to combine groups and get to know each other anyway. One of them is a software developer at Epic and the other one is a law student. Our first conversations were about our hobbies and books that we enjoyed reading. Eventually we discovered that we shared similar values and perspectives from these topics. Over time, we started going out to dinner together, watching movies at the theater, and hosting potlucks. Now over a year later, we are still good friends. If it weren’t for Mesh, I most likely would not have met them.
I attended a couple more Mesh hangouts and found some people that I meshed well with. For example, I introduced a Mesh friend to my roommate because they both play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), and now my roommate is in a D&D group with my Mesh friend and his Mesh friends. Later, we all met for a game night and boba at Roll Play. Now we are one big group of friends who love to play board games and have potlucks. Once you become more confident in showing up, you can become the person who builds the community or connects people to others.
Building Community in a New City with Mesh
When we graduate and move to a new city, it can be hard to know where to make new friends because we no longer have the built-in community from our classes or student organizations. Brock Wilson, an ambassador for Mesh, lived in Indiana before moving to Wisconsin. To make new friends in Madison, he’s attended more than 45 weekly Mesh meetups out of the 80 weeks Mesh has been active in Madison. As a recent postgrad with a job, he’s met a mix of people still in college and other recent graduates through Mesh meetups. Some of his favorite Mesh locations include Leopold’s and Bandit Tacos. “Whenever I go, I get chips and salsa for the table and everyone just kind of shares out of that and they find a sense of community in that,” says Wilson.
In addition to Madison, Mesh is also currently active in Austin, Charlotte, Raleigh, Chicago, Milwaukee, Nashville, and St. Louis. If you’re moving to any of these cities after graduation, make sure to check your local Mesh community (or join the waitlist for any cities not listed). Mesh just launched “Mesh Nights”, where meetups will focus more on locations with fun nightlife, such as arcade bars and mini golf. “We were college students too, so we're just trying to do things that we wanted to do in college,” says Orosz-Fagen.
Mesh is a great way to take advantage of the great coffee scene and to get outside your social bubble, whether you’re in Madison now, or in a new city after graduation. If you’re looking for your next social event, search “Mesh” on your app store or go to mesh-local.com and fill out their short questionnaire to get started. You never know who you might meet: some cool new classmates, your next best friend, or possibly a new love in your life.