Southern & Northern California
BeHereNow is a developing social utility with the goal of maximally reducing screen time spent to result in in-person social experiences, through design choices that reduce social cost and social friction. It operates as a peer-to-peer node system, rooted in the rules that dictated how social systems worked pre digital age.
BeHereNow is an in-person events system based on a small community made up of artists and art projects.
How It Works
BeHereNow is structured around a peer-to-peer node system. Each member is a node — a trusted person who can receive and extend invitations to others within their immediate social network. There is no public directory, no algorithmic feed, and no discovery engine. Access is exclusively by invitation from an existing member.
This design is intentional. By removing the mechanics that drive passive, high-volume screen time — notifications, likes, follower counts, public profiles — BeHereNow creates the conditions for social interaction to happen the way it did before social media: organically, through trust, and with a shared expectation of real in-person presence.
When an event is created, it is shared only with the host's direct connections. Those connections can RSVP or pass. The platform handles basic logistics — RSVP coordination, location sharing, timing — and nothing more. The goal is to get people to the same physical space with as little friction and as little screen time as possible.
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New members join exclusively through invitation from an existing member. There is no public sign-up or open registration.
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Each member is a node in the network. Events and invitations travel along trusted personal connections, not broadcast channels.
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Alerts are purposely limited to what is necessary for coordination. No engagement loops, no passive browsing, no infinite scroll.
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The platform is modeled on how communities organized before digital communication — through word-of-mouth and direct personal trust.
Community
The BeHereNow community began as a small, tight-knit group of artists and art projects in the greater Los Angeles and Ventura County area. The platform grew out of a recognized need: independent artists and project-based creative communities needed a low-overhead, low-distraction way to coordinate in-person gatherings, studio visits, openings, and collaborative events.
The community is intentionally small. There is no growth objective, no advertising, and no ambition to scale beyond what is organically sustainable. The platform is supported by Cultivate Art Nonprofit, a registered nonprofit organization based in Westlake Village, California, whose mission aligns with building genuine community infrastructure for working artists.
Members include studio artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and the art projects and collectives they participate in. The shared context is creative practice and the social fabric that sustains it — the kind that can only be built in person.