Creating Events That People Love, Pt 1
A record of my best event ever
The best event I ever ran was called The Living Room.
The goal of the event was to connect the best minds working at the intersection of Authentic Relating and the outside world. The people on the front lines, applying our practices to business, sex work, consulting, rationality, community, graduate education, and more. I wanted them to share best practices, to get inspired by each other, and to connect.
But this was a first-time conference, and these are high-leverage people who are in high demand. So I had to answer two questions:
How do I get them there
When they are there, how can I make them drop their assumptions and just participate?
The second question came from knowing myself. As a leader, I come in a little wary of any new event. Is it going to be good enough to hold my attention? Will I find myself judging the facilitator or the design? If so, how much agency should I take to change things? …and on and on: lots of thoughts that keep me from fully participating in the event.
I had to get these folks interested, engaged, and out of their heads.
And I did it.
I did it so well that many of the event attendees still wear their nametags from the event, or have them hung up on their wall. (More on these nametags later!)
How?
I’m going to describe the key elements that made the Living Room so great. But that’s just the setup. What I really want to get to is the question of: what makes phenomenal experience design? What elements should be present, what considerations should designers have, when putting together an event?
I’m starting to take on more experience design clients, so I want to map out everything in my brain about how I can work with them. And, as always, this Substack is my guinea pig ;)
First, though. Let me tell you the story of…
Enrolling Well Known People
The people I wanted at the Living Room were at the top of their various fields. I knew I wouldn’t get all or even many of them at a first-run event, but I had to get some.
These people got invited to things all. The. Time. They wouldn’t respond to a Facebook invitation or an email sequence. I could maybe have enrolled by phone call, but those who didn’t know me wouldn’t have picked up; and if they did, it’s unlikely that they would have paid.
I didn’t have a big name outside my small field. I could get a few people there, but not the numbers that I needed. And the last thing I wanted was to spend six months rolling around in bed with a marketing firm to get My Message Just Right. I needed another way.
At the time, I was reading The Art of Gathering, the bible on experience design. I took notes on every story in that book. And I began to dream.
What would it look like to create a truly innovative invitation process? One steeped so far in weirdness, mystery, and delight that the person receiving couldn’t have any expectations about the event? And, one that would be life-giving to me to enact?
Before going into this, I first have to mention that I was not creating The Living Room alone. I had a fantastic team of two women, Marisa Negri (now Forest Soleil) and Megan Rose Browning, who respectively acted as my conference organizer and my master (mistress?) of aesthetics. They contributed ideas and helped enact them at every step of the way. The handwriting on the envelope above is Megan’s. (It will tell you something about the conference that “aesthetics” was on the same level of importance as “conference organizer.”)
In this conference, we all let our imagination free. I tried every cracked-out concept I’d ever created in the dark of night when I thought nobody was listening. Turns out my subconscious was, and that bitch has a mind of her own.
So, the invitations for the Living Room.
First, we created a giant list of everyone we wanted there. We had a direct contact send an email to each person on that list, asking for their home address to “send them a secret thing”.
Then, we got on wedding invitation sites and started looking. We found our perfect invite, and I crafted a cryptic acronym-poem to go inside that, once deciphered, would lead to the website for The Living Room. We got them printed.
We hand-addressed every single envelope in calligraphy. On the inside of some of them, we printed testimonials like the one above, cited from the person who recommended that guest. We filled them with rose petals, and we sent them off.
I have lost many of the source files for the original Living Room site, which makes me *very* upset. But these are some examples. It was irreverent, poetic, and highly-designed.
So we had people signing up. Then what?
The Arrival
I had to create an arrival process that would, again, get people onto their back foot without getting them all the way back into their cars. I had to create the unexpected. I wanted it to feel strange but also high-quality, and honor the fact that the people invited were all leaders in their own right.
So, the Living Room began without an introduction.
Let me describe it as if you were there.
You arrive in the parking lot of a gorgeous, mostly-outdoor location called The Cedars, outside of Austin. The first thing you see is this:
Next to the door, a hand holds out a doorbell. You press it and the door swings open, revealing…
A bunch of these strange, black-clad, bird-masked figures, silently waving you in. They’re in the trees with chimes; they’re along the path, beckoning you on. You follow the path to a clearing in the woods, where there are set a series of long wooden tables…
with handmade dreamcatchers hung all around, and the strange sounds of Jon Hopkins playing through the woods.
As other attendees arrive, you begin talking, confused and enchanted by the strangeness of the atmosphere.
A bird-figure nudges you towards the table. You peer down it and realize that there are place settings, and upon each plate is a strange nametag. You find yours.
You put the nametag around your neck. More and more people start to arrive. Now it’s getting dark, and string lights come on around the area.
You are uncertain what to do. Where are the staff? Where’s the introduction?
Finally, you think to unfold the little black crane that was placed on your plate with the nametag. Inside is a message.
Food begins to come out. The air is tense with confusion and expectation. Then a woman rises towards the end of the table.
She begins, “My crane says that I’m the master of ceremonies. So…let me welcome you all here today…”
The Process of Everything Else
This beginning was a resounding success. After dinner, we staff (the silent bird-masked figures) led everyone down to the main area for stargazing and a musical performance. We finally started to talk afterwards and gave a welcome and orientation to the event.
When the guests returned the next morning, they walked into a giant, airy hall. They were welcomed into activities for the weekend: a mix of exercises curated by the hosts, and unconference-style presentations that they themselves had contributed. We spent half of the weekend in breakout talks with feedback, and half of it all connecting together. There was good food, good music, dancing, and discussion.
Among other connection creativities, you are given a card upon which are written four names, and the phrase “Find out why”. All weekend long, you approach others, and others approach you, with the intro: “My card said I should talk to you…”
(The research shows that you can put people together totally at random, tell them to find out why they were put together, and they’ll discover similarities. But in this case we actually did intentionally match people we thought would get along well and have points of connection. And yes, that took a LONG time to do.)
There were many other heartbeats and high notes to The Living Room, but I’m reaching Substack’s email size limit, so I’ll stop here. After one last note.
As the Living Room approached, it became clear that we were going to lose money. A lot of money. Tens of thousands of dollars of money.
I had decided to use the whole conference as an excuse to do things I was scared of. So, I thought: “What is the scariest way I can try to recoup this cost? What am I hiding from?”
The scariest way was to ask for money. Thus, I approached several men who I knew had it, and asked for help. The first two I asked…both said yes.
One of those men has since become a funder of my company in general. If we ever do another Living Room (which I hope we will - we tried for a second one but pandemic killed it), he has tons of tickets to bring all his friends.
I learned something about asking for help for big, ridiculous, wonderful things.
If you have a vision, and you are doing it beautifully, other people want to help.
Your loving thought-partner,
Sara
P.S I and my husband Geof do experience design consulting! If you want to work with us to design an event, conference, festival, party, or other offering, contact us at love@authrev.com and we’ll set up an exploration call.