Nick Gray’s book, The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, is very good and inspired me to host an event in Austin which led to me making a bunch of new friends.
I also think Nick is a genuinely awesome human who gives a damn about people and that’s rare in today’s world.
Testing Out Hosting Meetups
I took my ship, quit & learn approach to test out hosting a small gathering in Austin. I recently read a preview of Nick Gray’s amazing book which outlines an approach for hosting “two-hour cocktail parties.”
His tagline is “don’t attend bad events, host great parties.”
His take is that people either put too much pressure on themselves when hosting events or don’t put enough thought into creating structure for attendees who get stressed about attending!
I had been talking with Dickie Bush online about meeting up while he was in Austin and he suggested hosting a small meetup. I knew this was a chance to test out Nick’s approach.
So I decided to ship: I posted a tweet announcing a meetup on Twitter with a link to a simple signup page on Mixily and I knew that as soon as one person RSVP’d I would have to follow through.
Twitter friends in Austin!
Going to co-host a casual get-together with @dickiebush (who’s in town for a few days) at Native hostel bar on Monday from 6pm to 8pm. Come join.
DM if you have questions!
It was also naturally designed for quitting: it was only one event.
So what did I learn?
People appreciated me hosting an event much more than I expected. Multiple people came up and thanked me. Some people had not been out of the house in a while and were grateful for the chance to connect with new people.
- People appreciated the structured icebreakers much more than I expected (Nick always suggests doing structured activities, it gives a chance for people to find out about a lot of people at once and not get stuck in conversations).
- Even during the event, hosting an event still felt scary. The moment before I asked everyone to get together for an ice breaker, I felt tremendous pressure to skip it. I’m glad I didn’t.
- It was a lot easier than I expected and I definitely want to host more meetups and get-togethers this year. Nick’s framework is an easy way to avoid overthinking.
Participants were not paid to hold my book.
I highly recommend checking out this post on his party planning approach (and recommend signing up for his mailing list, which comes once a month or so and is always good!).