So you want to throw a party. Get some friends together to hang out, maybe a group that doesn’t all know each other. Great! How do you do it?
I’m no expert on parties, but I’ve been to a bunch of bad ones and a handful of good ones. I’ve talked to people about what isn’t working, especially as they leave. Here’s what I’ve noticed:
this is true for personal parties, corporate events, thanksgiving gatherings, even your D&D groups.
In a party space no one can hear you scream
You need a location. And, for a big enough party (more than 6 people), you need to break that location into smaller sub-locations. 7 people can’t hold one conversation. You get a small number of people dominating the space and everyone else listening in, unable to contribute.
The best case scenario here is that sub conversations break out. The worst is that you have contributors and observers, dicated that way by dint of where they’re sitting relative to the loudest person, and not by choice.
Burn the chairs
The worst place for a party is seated an office conference room. You can have an office party! But the moment everyone is sitting around a conference table, you’ve lost. That’s a recipe for one person domineering and everyone else listening. Especially if you’re at the same conference rooms you work on. The environment is overloaded! People expect a hierarchy, and parties die by hierarchy.
If you must be in a conference room, throw out the chairs and make everyone stand around. Then they can naturally mingle, and move closer or further to the person talking.
Why is the DJ making this awkard?
Music! You need music! The music at a party isn’t there to be listened to, and it’s not there to be yelled over either. Some parties may benefit from a single dance area where the music is loud, but you better be sure you and your guests are bringing the energy to make that room LIVELY before you try this. File under “advanced party moves”.
The music is there to fill the gaps. Those moments where someone’s story ends and the laughter fades. If there’s music, the silence is comfortable. Without music, the silence becomes the loudest thing ever heard, dominating the moment. Awkardness permeates like a thick fog. Don’t let that happen!
Music music everywhere and not a beat to play
What kind of music? It doesn’t matter! Not as much as you think. The music should be bland but not boring. Recognizable but not memorable. More “pop from 10 years ago” than “ice arena”. You don’t want people to get up and do the macerena, the chicken dance or the cha cha slide (unless it’s a dance party, see above re: advanced). You want it to fill the gaps and be forgettable.
This isn’t the time to show off your eclectic tastes or your favorite niche bands. You don’t want people to be listening to the music, you want them to forget its there until it does its job: smoother over conversational silence. Then people can say “oh, I haven’t heard this song in ages” and the conversation flows again.
How low can you go?
The music should be quieter than you think. Even quieter. Just lower than normal speaking voice. In addition to filling gaps, the music has another function: it stops people from gathering. With the music at the right volume, even if people want (or think they want) to sit around a weirdly long table and listen to the self-declared Most Important Partygoer, they can’t. Beyond a distance of a few feet, the music should be louder than the MIP. This is good! This means that the people at the far end of the table will tune out, will chat amongst themselves. Will mingle!
Walk this way!
You need five zones. If you’re stuck in a small space, you can cut it to three, but no fewer.
-
The loud room. This is where the music is playing, it’s where the general mingling is happening. This is where you should be as host, watching people and mixing groups together. Don’t let the groups stagnate!
-
The food and drink area. This should be a separate area from the loud room. If the loud room is the living room, let this be the kitchen. Just far enough away that’s it’s a little quieter. In a 5-zone setup, you can have a medium zone in between, a quieter area people are forced to walk through to get drinks. People will stop there and chat. It’s louder than the food zone (kitchen should not be a stopping point! No chairs here!) but convenient to catch up with new people.
-
The quiet spot. Somewehere like a balcony, just past the food zone where you can see parts of the party, but the music is a faint echo. You can see and be seen by other guests (maybe just the food zone, maybe just the loud room), but it’s clearly isolated. A couple chairs or beanbags to make it inviting for a small, transient group, but not a place to stay. Let people get a breath of fresh air, have a more intimate chat, or find a minute of quiet. This is where memories are made.
-
In a 5-zone setup, you also want The Secret Space. Somewhere like a basement or roof. This should be a separate space from the main party, somewhere were you can neither see or be seen by other guests. There should be seating available, but NO FOOD OR DRINKS. People come to the secret space to unwind, have deep conversations in this space, and then they leave to get a drink. When they leave, they mingle with the other people, and the bodies move between zones. This keeps the party fresh!
This body makes a fine host
You’re the host. Your job isn’t to have fun, it’s to make sure everyone else is having fun. Always be looking across the zones and see who isn’t engaged. Find them, check in, and introduce them to someone else. Use a shared interest.
Hey Brad, this is Molly. She studied architecture at Penn State. Brad just finished designing the new prison.
Then you exit. Get them talking on solid, shared ground (ideally with a group of 3-4 people, so you aren’t just foisting two people into a conversation they don’t want). If you don’t know of anything in common, give a fun fact to start the conversation.
Have you all met Cheryll? She just moved here and is trying to decide which dog to adopt.
Then move on. You get the conversation flowing, and don’t let yourself be drawn in to long conversations. Everyone here knows you. Find the people with the fewest connections and make them feel welcome.
This is work, but you’ll get time for fun too, once everyone settles in. The first third of the party is welcoming everyone, the second third is enjoyment, and the final third is seeing people off. That’s host life, baby.
No, you move!
You need to get people to move between zones. No one wants to talk to the same three people all night. Parties thrive when they mingle. As a guest, you want to talk to someone new for 30 minutes, 60 MAX, and then make an excuse as leave while there’s still something mysterious about you. You’ll never make friends by unloading your life story all at once.
Learn and be learned just enough to stay interesting, make your excuse, and mingle somewhere else. As host, your job is to give excuses that facilitate the mingle. Keeping the food and drinks away from the main event is one just technique. People have to leave the loud zone, and in doing so see the quiet place, the transient place (if it exists), and maaybe the secret zone.
If you do have dancing, putting on a song that you know will get people dancing will force a mingle. So does a raffle, or karaoke. You want to inspire people to move between zones, and you want them to think it’s their own idea.
I may do another post in the future about running social events online, or using Discord to emulate parties. The principles are the same, the techniques totally different