I'm looking at New Newsvine's tour page today. That means it's getting close. I'm excited and anxious.

There's an essay that web entrepreneur Anil Dash (NSFW language, right in the headline) wrote in 2011 that I keep coming back to as we prepare to launch. I gravitate to this paragraph:

I realized that one of the reasons people don't understand how I've had such a wonderful response from all of you over the years is because they simply don't believe great conversations can happen on the web. Fortunately, I have seen so much proof to the contrary.

So have I. I've had a wonderful time here, and I've met great folks through this site. I learn as much from discussions as from articles.

Dash, later in the essay:

When you engage with a community online in a constructive way, it can be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life. It doesn't have to be polite, or neat and tidy, or full of everyone agreeing with each other. It just has to not be hateful and destructive.

From Mike D's initial email to Beta testers:

Communities, like trees, don't grow to the sky.

A cocktail party with five close friends is a great time. A luncheon with 100 acquaintances is a great time. Even an event with 500 colleagues can be a great time. But an event with 50,000 or more people is no longer a social gathering at all. It's just a big glob of people talking past each other.

For this reason, we've come to the realization that for Newsvine to continue growing but at the same time regain the intimacy it was once lauded for, we need to stop treating Newsvine as one community of 40 million people and start creating thousands of communities of much fewer people.

To help realize this goal, we're creating an entirely new construct on Newsvine that we call "Newsvine Nations". From now on, all of your activity on Newsvine, whether it be writing articles, seeding links, or participating in discussion threads will be done within the scope of what Nations you are a part of. In other words, the concept of a global discussion thread where everyone on Newsvine can talk past each other is being de-emphasized. When you discuss things on the site, you will now be discussing them with a much more familiar set of community members: the community members who choose to be in the same Nations you choose to be in.

Bolding's mine. There's a lot changing in New Newsvine, but this is the biggest change. To grow, we must convene differently. I'm convinced that Nations presents that opportunity.