The Tabete community is a small circle of experienced engineers and practitioners who have been meeting, talking shop and sharpening each other’s skills for years. We’re not a formal network or a professional association, just people who genuinely enjoy thinking through hard problems together - and who trust each other enough to say when they think someone is wrong.

Ideas travel by proximity

The main thing we’ve noticed is that just being around each other works. Nobody needs to prepare a talk. Conversations over a beer, a quick demo, a heated debate about what problem a solution addresses - something always sticks. An idea floated at a Kotatsu meeting ends up being tested in someone’s pipeline the following week. We call it osmosis; knowledge and perspective seeping across the circle through proximity and trust. It’s not structured. It doesn’t need to be. Our clients benefit from this too; ideas tested in the circle show up in better systems and calmer releases.

The group is the tether

When you’re deep inside a client engagement, it’s easy to start seeing things purely from that client’s angle. Their problems feel universal. Their habits feel normal. Regular check-ins with the Tabete circle pull us back. We can test assumptions with people who have no dog in the fight, spot when we’re rationalising rather than reasoning, and find our way back to first principles. The group doesn’t let us fully drift. That’s its most underrated value.

What it’s actually like

Lightweight and human. We have a shared Discord where conversations happen when they happen - this is also where our Orbiters live: people in our extended network who share the same professional orbit, contribute to the conversation and sometimes end up at a meetup or a Shichirin. In person we gather irregularly: sometimes a Kotatsu (a casual after-work), sometimes a Shichirin (a focused workshop on something specific). We’re all independent professionals with demanding client work, so nobody expects attendance records or formal outputs. What we do expect is honesty, curiosity and a willingness to contribute when you’re around.

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The community grows slowly and by introduction. If you’ve worked with one of us - or you’re in the same professional orbit and this resonates - ask us about Tabete. There’s no application form. You might end up at the table, or in the Orbiters channel on Discord. Either way, you’re welcome.