People and Publications: How do in-person events build connection and community?

“It has become more valuable to do things in person… it shows that you are confident and committed to contribute.” - Richard Kilgariff

We have never had more access to information, more ways to communicate, more platforms through which to express ourselves, and yet, something about connection feels thinner in the digital age. More efficient, perhaps. But less prone to positive stochastic events, serendipity, and good fortune.

In this episode of The Great RomCon?, I sat down with Richard Kilgarriff - former journalist, television pioneer, and now convenor of book-led events such as Books for Breakfast, Author Insights and Bookomi - to explore whether in an age of infinite content, do we still need to meet in person to understand it? Richard’s career began in the world of traditional media: radio, television, and the early days of digital broadcasting. Long before YouTube became the cultural monolith it is today, he was already experimenting with how content might live beyond linear schedules.

“The technology was ahead of the business model in those early days.”

It’s a familiar story: platforms emerge before we know what they are for. The same, arguably, could be said of dating apps. At their peak, they promised scale, convenience, and access, a kind of romantic abundance. But as we’ve explored throughout The Great RomCon?, this apparent abundance has a habit of curdling into user fatigue. If dating apps represent one form of mediated connection, online communities represent another. BookTok, Substack, and other online forums can be spaces where people gather around shared interests. You can find your tribe, your niche, your people. But as Richard points out, something is lost in translation.

“Things happen off the page, off the screen - but in-person interaction, you will never replicate it.”

Reading, on the face of it, is a solitary act. You sit alone with a book, absorbing someone else’s ideas in (hopeful) silence. However, how often do you finish a book and think - what am I supposed to make of that? You are left to draw your own conclusions. For Richard, this is where events come in. Discussion transforms consumption of content into greater understanding. Conversation turns information into insight.

“Insights happen when you speak to someone about it.”

Paying attention is giving something of yourself. In a world of constant distraction, attention has become both scarce and valuable. When you show up to something in person, you are giving your time, your focus and your contribution. You are signalling something to others, and yourself.

Our conversation drifted, as it inevitably does in RomCon, towards romance and love.

“The earliest novels were collections of letters between lovers. It’s hard to imagine now, but this was once the raciest entertainment available.”

 Love, once, was slow. Mediated through distance and built through anticipation. Think James McAvoy writing letters to Keira Knightley in Antonement. Today, we have the opposite problem. Too much access and availability. Too much immediacy, and too little reflection. And perhaps that is why people are increasingly drawn to: non-fiction, psychology and self-help books. A desire not just to speak with others, but to try to understand their motivations.

The attention economy meets the intimacy economy. There is a deeper thread running through all of this. The same forces that shape how we consume media are shaping how we form relationships: optimisation, efficiency and scale. A startup needs to scale rapidly, or it will die. But people are different - human connection resists this drive from tech. You cannot optimise chemistry. You cannot scale trust. You cannot automate presence and attention. Who knows the myriad reasons why we click with some people and not others. This cannot, whatever Match Group tell you, be algorithmically defined.

What Richard has built, through his events, is a space where people can gather, where ideas are discussed, where attention is shared, and hopefully where connection is formed. Not through algorithms, but through proximity. And perhaps most importantly, through risk and chance. Have we convinced ourselves we don’t have time for a meeting of minds like this anymore? Even attending a half-day conference in person now feels indulgent.  We have time. We just allocate it differently and prioritise who we want to be with. In doing so, we may be trading depth and connection for convenience and efficiency.

There is a cyclical quality to all of this. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000 when the promise of the internet outpaced its practical application. Today, with AI and digital platforms, we may be seeing a similar dynamic: enormous investment, boundless optimism and perhaps unclear long-term value. The question is not whether these technologies will endure the investment bubble. It’s what physical and societal infrastructure they will leave behind.

If dating apps represent one model of connection (scalable, efficient, mediated), then in-person events represent another: slower, messier, more demanding but ultimately, more rewarding. They require some effort from the participant, and this means they also create something that cannot be easily replicated. We admire great works of art and sculpture for this reason. In the end, whether we are talking about books, ideas, or relationships, the same truth seems to apply - information is abundant, but attention is scarce. But connection - real connection - still requires presence in the room. And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do in 2026 is simply turn up.