We found someone to write the PEERS story with us

There are five notes in this build log so far.

Why we decided to become an AI community office (EP.01), how we expanded the space to do it (EP.02), how we ran the first seminar (EP.03), the lock-in retreat we put on ourselves (EP.04), and why we stopped a seminar that was working in order to rebuild it (EP.05).

I wrote all five of them alone.

At first that seemed obvious. I know best what PEERS is turning into and why, so recording it should be my job too.

But once the space got bigger there were more desks, and more desks meant more people. Every seminar cohort had someone walk out having changed one thing about their work. The retreat alone produced three days of moments worth keeping.

The problem is that most of those moments simply went by.

There were plenty of days where not a single photo got taken, and far more stories that I meant to write down before the next urgent thing pushed them out of view.

Around then I started thinking that running a business is a lot like football.

A team has forwards and it has defenders.

The forward pushes up and scores. Making money, getting the word out, bringing people in. The defender holds the back line. Running the space, blocking problems when they appear, keeping the daily housekeeping going.

For a long time I assumed I was a forward.

Four years in, it turns out I'm a defender.

Keeping the space running steadily, looking after members, absorbing problems when they hit — I managed all of that. But pushing forward, getting our story out, bringing new people in? That kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list.

Football isn't a solo sport. However well a defender holds the line, nobody scores.

If we're a team, we needed a forward.

So this note is a little different. The build log so far has been "here's what we tried." This one is "here's who we found to do it with."

One thing up front: this was not a job posting.

It was closer to a collaboration offer — looking for someone to play alongside us.

That's what PEERS is. Not a place where people are managed from above, but a place where people doing their own work sit next to each other and help. So the way we looked for this person had to work the same way.

What we offered wasn't a salary. It was an exchange.

Here's how the trade was set out.

PEERS provides a two-month hot-desk membership. Your own desk in Seongsu, a room with colleagues in it, a network of resident founders and freelancers, and coffee chats with the host. Whatever you make is yours to use in your own portfolio.

In exchange, that person records what happens at PEERS as content — roughly two reels a month and one card-news post a week.

And we said this plainly from the start: there is no cash payment. This is collaboration, not employment. Space traded for creative work. Two months at a time, and if it fits both sides, we keep going.

We were honest about who this would suit, too.

We weren't looking for flawless writing or slick video editing first. We were looking for a freelancer who needs a studio to commute to in Seongsu, someone who wants to work in a room with colleagues, someone who enjoys making things.

The scenes at PEERS aren't dramatic. They're small, ordinary moments — someone quietly pleased they finally pulled something off for the first time. We wanted somebody who catches those instead of walking past them, and records them without inflating them.

And as you can probably tell from the tone of this series, we prefer showing the process as it happens over polished success stories. Recording what worked and what didn't, without hiding either. Someone comfortable with that could stay a long time.

We took applications through a Google Form, met each person for a fifteen-minute coffee chat, and went from there. The goal was never volume — it was one person who fits, for a long time.

That search is now closed.

We found the person, and from here the PEERS story gets recorded together.

So, to put it plainly.

Across five build-log notes I kept saying that PEERS is trying to be a place where nobody works alone. And yet the recording of that story was the one thing I was still doing alone — which is why I kept missing it.

A team that had been running with only a defender now has a forward.

The next notes in this log will be written by two of us, not one.

Do not AI alone. And from now on, we won't record it alone either.

From PEERS