(These don't really apply to parties, but they do apply to non-party events)
1. Do intro circles: If it's a 5-25 person event with a handful of people that don't know each other, do an intro circle about 15-20 mins after the start time. Turns it from something where people show up and might meet 1-3 random people that they happen to walk up to, vs something where everyone gets 1 point of contact with anyone else. Works well up to about 25 people, haven't tested it beyond that. Go round say name, and then pick a few questions depending on the audience (eg could be something you'd like help with, something you're reading about, etc). For non-parties (eg meetups, work mixers, things that don't have alcohol or aren't late), the easiest way to improve any event is for the host to do a brief intro circle.
2. The best events to host are the ones you wish you could attend but that don't exist
3. Minimize uncertainty for attendees: Clear parking info/photos and a photo of the space is always helpful too.
4. Host more events: Very positive sum. Even can be simple discussion groups. Anything that you enjoy doing where it'd be more fun with a few other people. Playing video games together, reading papers together, discussing how you're using AI coding tools, whatever. Workshops, mixers, talks, parties, peer groups, etc. If you enjoy reading about it on HN or twitter, you'd probably also enjoy discussing it with people directly. The world is undersupplied for events.
I sure miss the kind of parties where they have to get an emergency court order to cut power the building at 3am.
I learned everything I need to know about throwing parties from Dave Barry.
If you throw a party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one.
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you.
22) Turn the AC wayyyyyyy down when the party starts
23) Buy frozen finger food and put into oven in staggered batches. When a batch is ready, immediately transfer to serving tray and walk through party offering people food. Great task to delegate to that one attendee who doesn't know anyone!
24) Polaroids/Disposable cameras are cheap and seem to be universally adored. Get a few and scatter them throughout the party.
25) Sharpies/labels for marking solo cups, drastically cuts down on clutter as the night goes on.
26) If someone brings a bottle of wine or a bottle of liquor as a gift, just crack it open and ask them to share it with other attendees. Same with food. Makes for a good conversation starter.
If you're hosting a party in a place where there's lots of shy or quiet people, you should recruit some people who are skilled at getting others to open up, and keep them in active rotation. Call them firestarters: tasked with making sure that none of the fires go out while making sure that the party doesn't burn down.
I feel like this is really an American culture thing where parties or dinner parties are mostly the responsibility of the host. In movies or TV there’s even a common theme of guests judging the host’s hosting abilities.
In Brazil you throw a party to people you like and they all have a hand in helping you, sharing the load. Everyone will be responsible for some part of it, all of it is organized informally, there are no real formalities to the event. No one cares about making a science out of it.
I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
I prefer to invite people individually, and create a group chat with those who confirmed. Nothing is more demoralising than 24 hours of people saying they won’t come, in the group chat, right before the event.
My flake rate is close to zero, mostly because people personally told me they’ll join.
It doesn’t hurt to get the group chat hyped up on the day of the event. The activity is enough to get people excited. I also pin the time and location so people find it easily.
Besides that, just chill. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once a few good people are there, the thing mostly runs itself. Try to relax and enjoy your own party.
I did a fun one at a party of mine where I had name tags for everyone (a pretty good idea by itself) but each person's name tag had the name of someone else they had to talk to at some point. Most of the pairings were quite intentional but a few ended up being random. Got a lot of compliments about it!
ask people that stayed late to help cleanup a bit. It will only take them 5minutes and will save you hours. Also cleanup everything before you go to sleep. It will save your next day
Love all of these tips. I've hosted dozens of events since moving to NYC and figured I'd add 5 more:
1. If this is a dinner party (or people are all seated), force people to get up and move in a way that they'll meet new people. Do this when you're about 2/3 of the way through the party. Some will complain - do it anyway.
2. Plan 1 (ideally 2) interludes. It can be a small speech, moving people around, changing locations, having people vote on something, etc. For whatever reason, they make the night more memorable.
3. Do your best to make introductions natural and low-pressure. Saying things like "you two would really get along" can put pressure on people - especially shy ones. Bring up something they have in common and let them chat while you back away.
4. Go easy on folks who cancel last minute. They often don't feel good about doing it and you don't want to add more stress to them or yourself.
5. More music != more fun. Some music is good, but if people can't hear each other, turn it down.
If you're interested reading more about this stuff, read The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
Surprised no mention of space per person.
The sweet spot is not yet fully known to me. But maybe about 8-10 square feet per person.
You want that intoxicating social energy, but people need the space to bop from circle to circle
As someone who was throwing the most popular parties in my hometown¹ during my youth probably the number 1 thing is finding the right mixture of people.
Nearly the most boring thing you can do is only inviting people who know each other, ideally it is an explosive mix of different ages, backgrounds, interests, styles to avoid people sticking together in their known constellations.
¹: one if the proudest moments was when some random stranger in an European capital spoke to me on the street and told me: "Hey I know you, I have been to your party!" and I had no idea who they were
I'll probably get uninvited from the party for pointing this out, but Partiful is free for users because they are datamining the shit out of us. If Palantir gives any here the creeps, just fyi, Partiful was founded by several former Palantir employees, including CEO Shreya Murthy and CTO Joy Tao.
I've organized so many parties that I feel qualified to comment here :D (actually sorry but the other commens I've read feel silly).
Love the number one advice of the post: focusing on yourself having a good time. Although the more you organize the easier it gets.
> 5) Use an app like Partiful or Luma
I refuse to use an event page personally because I think it makes it less personal. I always DM people directly if I want to invite them.
Also always try to get people to invite their friends as well. That'a the upside of gatherings: you get to meet new people effortlessly. And this solves a number of the problem in the post's list.
> In a small group, the quality of the experience will depend a lot on whether the various friends blend together well
Na, just invite everyone, diversity is a feature.
IMO most of the advice are over engineer. Here are more from mine:
- soundproof with plants and rugs and stuff in the room so it doesn't get echo'y
- play some background music at low volume
- always prepare a punch. People don't realize it but there's alcohol in this thing
- don't have seats otherwise people will sit down, and sitting down is the party killer
- don't prep anything. The place will get messy anyway. Just make sure people bring food and drinks.
> The biggest problem at many parties is an endless escalation of volume. If you know how to fix this, let me know.
If there’s a band: if you’re the host or the person paying, just ask them politely to turn the volume down every ten minutes or however long it takes for the volume to drift up. And it will drift back up, because very few bands are able to keep their hands off the mixer.
For conversational volume, either go outside or use serious acoustic treatment. The latter may be challenging.
I don’t like #2 because I hate the game of tricking people to be on time and then people start compensating further and eventually I’m trying to host a Cosmic Comet Party and you’re showing up after the punch has been distributed.
I just like being honest and stripping away the layers of manipulation. “Starts at 2:00. Please be on time. If you don’t want to be the first, show up at 2:10. If you want to come early, we’d love a bit of help with last minute preparation but we won’t be in hosting mode just yet!”
Do I overthink things? Absolutely. Do people comment about how much they love how I strip all the uncertainty and mind games from it all? Yes.
This is great advice, parties are a lost technology in some parts of society, like the pyramids. We should throw more parties
For a dinner party specifically I like to force everyone to go for a walk before dessert. By that point they’re all hot and drunk, sending them outside for a quick lap cools everybody off, gets them talking, and is good for the digestion. Then you can come home and crack into that bottle of wine someone brought
> Once an event crosses a threshold (maybe 70%?) of male-or-female dominance, most people of the other gender are likely to decline (or just not-come to your next party) as a result.
I’m not sure that this one is true. Once, as a single guy, I got invited to a party that turned out to be 80% women, and I would definitely have gone to that guy’s parties again.
A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1]
Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events.
She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional wisdom appears to be way out from where the data leads.
shameless pluck:
In my friend circle im the only one throwing real parties. The most annoying thing always was the logistics of keeping track how many people come and what they might bring (cuz usually it's a, bring your favorite food/booze party).
group chats are super messy and get taken away by chit chat, so I build a simple, clean product that helps me with all that.
it's basically a virtual invitation card with extra features, like comments when people rsvp, image upload for after the party etc.
never shared it outside my circles but it's pretty polished.
hope this could be of some use for you:
https://create.party
77 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 72.3 ms ] threadOnly way I know is to have a porch, garage, or other connected-but-not-the-same-space open for people to spill into.
See also: https://x.com/wangzjeff/status/1983914310738047291
And also Nick Gray's 2 hour cocktail party book
My personal thoughts on events:
(These don't really apply to parties, but they do apply to non-party events)
1. Do intro circles: If it's a 5-25 person event with a handful of people that don't know each other, do an intro circle about 15-20 mins after the start time. Turns it from something where people show up and might meet 1-3 random people that they happen to walk up to, vs something where everyone gets 1 point of contact with anyone else. Works well up to about 25 people, haven't tested it beyond that. Go round say name, and then pick a few questions depending on the audience (eg could be something you'd like help with, something you're reading about, etc). For non-parties (eg meetups, work mixers, things that don't have alcohol or aren't late), the easiest way to improve any event is for the host to do a brief intro circle.
2. The best events to host are the ones you wish you could attend but that don't exist
3. Minimize uncertainty for attendees: Clear parking info/photos and a photo of the space is always helpful too.
4. Host more events: Very positive sum. Even can be simple discussion groups. Anything that you enjoy doing where it'd be more fun with a few other people. Playing video games together, reading papers together, discussing how you're using AI coding tools, whatever. Workshops, mixers, talks, parties, peer groups, etc. If you enjoy reading about it on HN or twitter, you'd probably also enjoy discussing it with people directly. The world is undersupplied for events.
I learned everything I need to know about throwing parties from Dave Barry.
If you throw a party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one.
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you.
23) Buy frozen finger food and put into oven in staggered batches. When a batch is ready, immediately transfer to serving tray and walk through party offering people food. Great task to delegate to that one attendee who doesn't know anyone!
24) Polaroids/Disposable cameras are cheap and seem to be universally adored. Get a few and scatter them throughout the party.
25) Sharpies/labels for marking solo cups, drastically cuts down on clutter as the night goes on.
26) If someone brings a bottle of wine or a bottle of liquor as a gift, just crack it open and ask them to share it with other attendees. Same with food. Makes for a good conversation starter.
In Brazil you throw a party to people you like and they all have a hand in helping you, sharing the load. Everyone will be responsible for some part of it, all of it is organized informally, there are no real formalities to the event. No one cares about making a science out of it.
I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
My flake rate is close to zero, mostly because people personally told me they’ll join.
It doesn’t hurt to get the group chat hyped up on the day of the event. The activity is enough to get people excited. I also pin the time and location so people find it easily.
Besides that, just chill. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once a few good people are there, the thing mostly runs itself. Try to relax and enjoy your own party.
1. If this is a dinner party (or people are all seated), force people to get up and move in a way that they'll meet new people. Do this when you're about 2/3 of the way through the party. Some will complain - do it anyway.
2. Plan 1 (ideally 2) interludes. It can be a small speech, moving people around, changing locations, having people vote on something, etc. For whatever reason, they make the night more memorable.
3. Do your best to make introductions natural and low-pressure. Saying things like "you two would really get along" can put pressure on people - especially shy ones. Bring up something they have in common and let them chat while you back away.
4. Go easy on folks who cancel last minute. They often don't feel good about doing it and you don't want to add more stress to them or yourself.
5. More music != more fun. Some music is good, but if people can't hear each other, turn it down.
If you're interested reading more about this stuff, read The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
You need games. Smalltalking gets old quick.
You need snacks, drinks, music and drugs.
Regulate that lighting. Not too bright.
Nearly the most boring thing you can do is only inviting people who know each other, ideally it is an explosive mix of different ages, backgrounds, interests, styles to avoid people sticking together in their known constellations.
¹: one if the proudest moments was when some random stranger in an European capital spoke to me on the street and told me: "Hey I know you, I have been to your party!" and I had no idea who they were
Please let me have some of your cocaine.
Love the number one advice of the post: focusing on yourself having a good time. Although the more you organize the easier it gets.
> 5) Use an app like Partiful or Luma
I refuse to use an event page personally because I think it makes it less personal. I always DM people directly if I want to invite them.
Also always try to get people to invite their friends as well. That'a the upside of gatherings: you get to meet new people effortlessly. And this solves a number of the problem in the post's list.
> In a small group, the quality of the experience will depend a lot on whether the various friends blend together well
Na, just invite everyone, diversity is a feature.
IMO most of the advice are over engineer. Here are more from mine:
- soundproof with plants and rugs and stuff in the room so it doesn't get echo'y
- play some background music at low volume
- always prepare a punch. People don't realize it but there's alcohol in this thing
- don't have seats otherwise people will sit down, and sitting down is the party killer
- don't prep anything. The place will get messy anyway. Just make sure people bring food and drinks.
If there’s a band: if you’re the host or the person paying, just ask them politely to turn the volume down every ten minutes or however long it takes for the volume to drift up. And it will drift back up, because very few bands are able to keep their hands off the mixer.
For conversational volume, either go outside or use serious acoustic treatment. The latter may be challenging.
I just like being honest and stripping away the layers of manipulation. “Starts at 2:00. Please be on time. If you don’t want to be the first, show up at 2:10. If you want to come early, we’d love a bit of help with last minute preparation but we won’t be in hosting mode just yet!”
Do I overthink things? Absolutely. Do people comment about how much they love how I strip all the uncertainty and mind games from it all? Yes.
For a dinner party specifically I like to force everyone to go for a walk before dessert. By that point they’re all hot and drunk, sending them outside for a quick lap cools everybody off, gets them talking, and is good for the digestion. Then you can come home and crack into that bottle of wine someone brought
I’m not sure that this one is true. Once, as a single guy, I got invited to a party that turned out to be 80% women, and I would definitely have gone to that guy’s parties again.
A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1]
Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events. She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional wisdom appears to be way out from where the data leads.
[1] https://aella.substack.com/p/a-girls-guide-to-a-data-driven-...