What This Investigation Actually Taught Me

I really did not intend to go this far down the rabbit hole.

What started as a fairly simple question about overlapping people and festivals turned into several posts, a timeline, a network map, a reverse search, a festival matrix and eventually something resembling a small Organizational Behaviour case study.

And, strangely enough, I am glad it did.

Because the deeper we went, the less simple the story became.

The Original Question Was Too Simple

At the beginning, it would have been easy to imagine a straight line:

Rainbow
   |
 Eric Mandala
   |
Bhakti
   |
Raven's Knoll
   |
KN¿WHERE

That would have made for a very tidy story.

It also would have been wrong.

The evidence did not reveal one person connecting everything.

It did not reveal one organization directing everything.

And it certainly did not reveal some hidden command structure linking all these communities together.

What appeared instead was considerably more ordinary and considerably more interesting.

A network.

Actually, Several Networks

We found a long-running devotional music, yoga and wellness community operating through Ottawa, Gatineau, Peterborough and surrounding areas.

We found people moving repeatedly through Bhakti in the Woods, Bhakti Bliss, Gaiafest, Peterborough Yoga Festival, Rooted in Wellness and other events.

We found another network extending through Pagan gatherings, Rainbow-associated environments, ecstatic dance and transformational festivals.

We found another through Ottawa electronic music, psychedelic events, Eclipse Festival and Sonic Springs.

And we found KN¿WHERE developing largely from its own Toronto bass-music and DNR Productions lineage before parts of that network began touching some of the same broader festival ecosystem.

The People Were Important, But Not in the Way I Expected

Eric Mandala remains an important person in the map.

He crosses between cultural environments more often than most of the people we examined.

But he turned out not to be the bridge.

Remove Eric and the network still exists.

Rebecca White Raven still connects the Bhakti in the Woods lineage with Bhakti Bliss.

Justine Hoang still appears repeatedly through the regional yoga and kirtan environment.

Kevin Guerette remains part of that devotional music community.

Andrew Sass remains embedded in the Bhakti and Gaiafest cluster.

Nikoli independently connects Gaiafest, Eclipse and Ottawa electronic culture.

Other people we had not originally been looking at produced additional links once we reversed the search.

That was probably one of the most important lessons.

If a network disappears when you remove one person, you may be looking at one person’s social circle. If it continues to function through several independent paths, you are probably looking at an actual social ecosystem.

The Festivals Were Important Too

Some events turned out to play very different roles.

Bhakti Bliss appears to concentrate a large portion of the recurring devotional, yoga and wellness community.

Gaiafest appears particularly important because people from somewhat different cultural environments meet there.

Eclipse Festival appears to act as another bridge into psychedelic and transformational electronic culture.

Raven’s Knoll performs a different function again. It is a physical venue where events from very different organizational histories can occupy the same space.

And KN¿WHERE, despite becoming part of this larger map, still appears to possess its own organizational ancestry through DNR and Toronto electronic music rather than simply emerging from the Bhakti or Rainbow communities.

That Difference Matters

It would have been very easy to confuse connection with control.

That is probably the biggest caution I am taking away from this entire exercise.

Two people appearing at the same festival does not establish partnership.

A performer appearing at an event does not make that performer an organizer.

Two festivals using the same venue do not become the same organization.

A person participating in several communities does not mean those communities answer to one another.

And a network can be completely real without being conspiratorial.

Organizational Behaviour Made This Much Easier to Understand

This is where my Organizational Behaviour studies unexpectedly became useful.

Once I stopped thinking only in terms of organizations and started thinking in terms of informal organizations, the entire picture made more sense.

Organizational charts tell us who officially reports to whom.

Networks tell us who actually interacts.

People recommend people.

Performers introduce performers.

Volunteers become organizers.

Organizers reuse people they trust.

Ideas travel with the people carrying them.

Culture moves from one environment into another.

Some people become what Organizational Behaviour calls boundary spanners: people capable of moving between otherwise different communities.

Some festivals become brokerage points: places where those communities meet.

And some venues become physical nodes through which otherwise unrelated groups encounter the same space.

The Network Was More Resilient Than I Expected

Another OB concept became visible as the research expanded: redundancy.

The network has multiple pathways.

Remove one connection and others remain.

Remove one festival and people still meet through another.

Remove one individual and the community continues functioning through other relationships.

That is exactly what makes informal social networks durable.

The Rabbit Hole Also Demonstrated Confirmation Bias

There was another lesson here that had nothing to do with festivals.

It concerned the investigation itself.

Once you find a possible pattern, it is extremely easy to start looking only for things that confirm it.

That is why reversing the search became so important.

Instead of repeatedly starting with Eric, Bhakti or Raven’s Knoll and searching outward, we started from KN¿WHERE and worked backward.

Then we started from Gaiafest.

Then from other performers.

Then from other workshops and festival lineups.

Some apparent connections survived.

Some became stronger.

Some disappeared entirely.

The Andrew question is a perfect example.

Once better identification became available, the responsible conclusion was not to force two Andrews into the same person.

It was to say:

That connection is not established.

Likewise, when a search result appeared to connect another performer directly with KN¿WHERE but the underlying source did not support it, the connection had to be removed.

That is not a failure of an investigation.

That is what investigation is supposed to look like.

Sometimes the Negative Result Is the Result

We did not find evidence showing that Rainbow Family controls Bhakti Bliss.

We did not find evidence showing that Bhakti Bliss operates KN¿WHERE.

We did not find evidence showing that Eric Mandala organizes KN¿WHERE.

We did not find evidence showing that the principal Bhakti organizers operate KN¿WHERE.

Those are useful findings.

Because eliminating explanations is part of understanding what remains.

So What Did We Actually Find?

If I had to reduce several posts of investigation into one conclusion, it would be this:

There appears to be a broad and overlapping regional festival ecosystem involving devotional music, yoga, wellness, Pagan and Rainbow-associated circles, electronic music, psytrance, transformational festivals and professional festival production. Different individuals move between different portions of that ecosystem, while events such as Gaiafest and Eclipse and venues such as Raven’s Knoll create points where otherwise separate networks become adjacent.

That is a much more defensible conclusion than saying everyone belongs to the same organization.

And I think it is actually more interesting.

Because This Is How Communities Really Work

People rarely live inside one neatly labelled box.

The yoga teacher may also attend an electronic festival.

The electronic musician may teach meditation.

The Pagan musician may perform kirtan.

The festival organizer may know people from three other festivals.

The person volunteering this year may organize something next year.

A campground may begin with one community and eventually host several.

None of that requires a grand plan.

It requires people.

And time.

That May Be the Most Educational Part

I originally went into this trying to understand a few connections.

I came out of it with a much better practical understanding of:

• informal organizations;
• organizational culture;
• boundary spanning;
• social-network analysis;
• communities of practice;
• organizational continuity;
• brokerage;
• network redundancy;
• confirmation bias;
• and the difference between correlation, connection and control.

That is considerably more than I expected when I started.

And I Think This Is Where I Get Off the Ride

Could the network be mapped farther?

Absolutely.

There are hundreds more performers, facilitators, organizers, volunteers and festivals that could theoretically be followed.

At some point, however, the additional detail stops changing the conclusion.

We have already established that the network is broader than one person.

We have established that several independent communities overlap.

We have identified some of the important bridges.

We have also identified where the evidence stops.

Going another fifty names deeper might make the map larger.

I am no longer convinced it would make the conclusion substantially better.

And knowing when to stop is part of research too.

Final Thought

I did not intend to go this far down the rabbit hole.

But it was educational.

What began as an investigation into festivals became, unexpectedly, a lesson in how communities form and how people carry culture between them.

The final answer was not a hidden organization.

It was something much more human.

Relationships.

People meet.

People collaborate.

People introduce one another.

Communities overlap.

Culture travels.

And eventually a network emerges.

Sometimes there really is a rabbit hole.

Sometimes, when you finally reach the bottom, you discover that what looked mysterious from above is simply a very complicated collection of people knowing other people.

And perhaps that is a good place to leave this one.