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Events bring us into the same room, but not into each other’s lives. After years of hosting meetups, I’ve learned that when you take care of the room’s layout and how people interact, you can multiply the odds of meaningful connection.
Marcus is halfway through explaining why this is Bitcoin’s breakthrough year when you notice it. Three seats down, laughter bursts from a group sharing their weekend hiking disasters. You’d love to join them, but between you and them is the vintage board-game collector, already shuffling through the rules of something called Wingspan. You’re trapped.
At a networking event, you cling to the first friendly face. Like shipwreck survivors, the two of you circle the room, eyeing clusters of laughter you can’t reach without crossing an awkward gap and intruding mid-sentence. So you don’t. You retreat to the snack table, make another loop with your safety partner, and leave early.
At a presentation, you sit with sixty other people in silence. When the last important question is asked, everyone’s stiff, tired, and ready to leave. A few brave souls attempt post-talk mingling, but no one wants to force polite chatter.
Most events bring people together physically, but not socially.
I once went to a meetup called Overcome Loneliness where dozens of lonely digital nomads sat quietly side by side, watching someone speak from Singapore – through a screen!
Compare this to a party at a friend’s house, a dynamic event with different areas. Within minutes of arriving, you’re talking to a couple of people. You know someone who knows someone, and it’s natural to join the conversation. By the end of the night, you’ve made new friends.
Experiences like this are rare. Even when people manage to talk, they rarely get past the surface. Two people with the same obscure passion exchange the usual script about where they’re from and what they do, then walk away, never knowing they’re both hooked on retro arcade games, obsessed with brewing the perfect stout, or devoted to late-night poetry debates. They were one question away from a fun conversation and didn’t know it.1
After six years hosting meetups, I’ve learned that you can recreate the house party atmosphere by designing the interaction around three elements:
You want people flowing through the room like atoms, bumping into each other to form brief connections before breaking apart to mix again.
Picture a cocktail party: Someone gets a drink, joins a conversation by the window, then drifts to another group by the door. That’s the movement you want. But certain setups make it impossible.
Meet the long table. You can only join where there’s an empty chair, and once you sit you’re stuck talking to your immediate neighbors. Group topics stay superficial to include everyone. Escaping isn’t easy. “Hey, Frank, great talking, but I should catch Phil before he disappears.”
In a space where people can mix and mingle, you can talk to almost anyone. Walk up to a group, and they naturally open to let you in. Joining the right conversation becomes effortless.
Instead of long tables, create condensation points, spots where people naturally gather. Like the kitchen at a house party, the smokers’ corner, or the bar line.
Use cocktail tables with bar stools so people can rest for a moment without settling in. Provide only a few stools, so most guests remain standing and moving.
Keep circulating even if others are sitting. Make it clear this isn’t the kind of night where people stay put.
But movement alone isn’t enough. The layout sets the tone for everything that follows. You can tell within minutes if it’ll be a night of easy mixing or small circles of people sticking to their friends.
If groups are too far apart, they’ll form little bubbles, each with its own gravity but no exchange. People stick to the first conversation they stumble into and never drift to another, as no one wants to cross a yawning void to step into a group that’s watching them approach.
In a good space, you overhear others discussing something interesting and casually turn around to join in. Who would have thought that Frank, you tried to escape from earlier, is a hidden gem – once you get him talking about his sourdough experiments.
To encourage these natural encounters, arrange tables2 with enough space for two or three people to stand between them. Closer than that and they blend into one big table, with no easy way to get around. Too far apart and conversations become isolated islands.
At the start of the event, when attendance is light, keep early arrivals close so the first conversations happen within earshot of each other. As more people arrive, the group naturally expands and divides but maintains that connected feeling.
A good layout will help people mix and mingle. But if you want to take it to the next level, you don’t just let the room do the work, you actively connect the people in it.
There’s nothing more awkward than being sent into a room full of strangers, not knowing who to approach. But no one should have to figure this out alone.
When someone arrives, introduce them to a couple of people. You don’t have to know them. Ask their names and connect them. “Josh, Rob. Rob, Josh.” If someone is standing alone, do it again.
Add context when you can, using whatever you just learned: “Sophie is a Korean philosopher who started a travel YouTube channel.”
Magic happens when you spot a link and walk someone across the room: Josh wants to visit Seoul; Sophie just moved from there. You’re not just connecting two people, you’re teaching them the social map of the event. Now Rob knows where the creative travelers hang out and can introduce Sophie to the product management group.
Within an hour, you’ve created a web where everyone knows someone who knows someone else. The shy person who walked in alone now has three groups they can rejoin, and they’re confident enough to bring someone with them.
Peter Finger, who used to run my university’s alumni events, showed me how this is done. At his events, he’d remember your story3 and know exactly who to connect you with. He’s not doing it for himself. He’s doing it for you. He knows how to give everyone a good time.4
We never know who will connect or why. Chemistry is mysterious. But we can create more opportunities for it.
Here’s what happens: The accountant passionate about urban beekeeping gets stuck talking to three people about crunching numbers and goes home feeling disconnected. If she’d had ten conversations instead of three, if she’d overheard someone mention sustainability, if she’d been introduced as “the one with the rooftop hives” she might have found her people.
More shots, better aim. Every conversation is a chance to discover connection. Every overheard comment is a potential hook. Every context-rich introduction is a shortcut past small talk.
Movement, proximity, and introductions multiply the odds of a genuine connection, one that lasts beyond the event. When all three come together, you get the kind of night you come home from smiling, not quite knowing why.
Your next event could connect the banker with his new head of IT, the introvert with her badminton partner, or the immigrant with the love of his life. It could spark a friendship, a romance, a future. And you might never know.
Design for connection, then watch what happens.
Let me know how it goes.
Consider adding conversation triggers. A Polaroid camera, a book, or a map of attendee countries can create natural talking points at these spots. ↩︎
Peter even taught me a trick: If you forgot someone’s name, take a guess. When they correct you, you’re far more likely to remember it next time. He isn’t afraid to get it wrong today – because he cares about getting it right in the long run. ↩︎
This is what networking is about. It’s not about getting “connections” to “leverage”. It’s meeting interesting people and making new friends. And then you might help each other because you genuinely like each other. ↩︎
Herman Martinus wants his products to be like a garden:
That’s what I want from my products. I want to putter about, feel connected to the process, and have fun doing so. I want to make things that don’t scale. To see people tuck into them and enjoy them as people, not as stats. I’ve done this fairly successfully with JustSketchMe. We have a small, diverse, and amazing community of artists and illustrators making awesome things. I’m trying to build a similar product with Bear Blog. Something niche but valuable. Something I can spend time on because I want to.
Being able to talk to, and interact with the people using my tools is fulfilling. Spending time meticulously improving subtle aspects of the product is enjoyable.
The first time it happened, I was writing a paper. The paragraphs I had just typed vanished into thin air, faster than Time Machine or Backblaze could save them. Gone. The next occurrence was during app development; Xcode suddenly flagged numerous errors in previously error-free code. My recent changes to several files were erased.
Months later, the mystery is solved: iCloud Drive detected a file conflict. It assumed different versions of the same file existed on my Mac and iPhone and couldn’t merge them automatically. This was impossible; the affected files were never opened on the iPhone. But they were in iCloud, as I had moved my Mac’s Documents folder there.
Dropbox manages version conflicts by storing all conflicting files side by side, labeled as “(John Doe’s conflicted copy)“. iCloud Drive, however, doesn’t show these conflicts in the file system. If you open the file in an editor that supports conflict handling, a popup appears asking which version to keep. Editors like Textifier, Xcode, or Obsidian, lacking conflict handling, leave iCloud to decide which version to store on your disk and in your backup.
Over time, newer backups overwrite older ones containing the correct version; your content is gone for good. The only way to get it back is to open the file with an editor that supports conflict resolution.1 Once moved out of iCloud Drive, even that won’t help. The content is lost.2
Masking version conflicts might appear user-friendly, but it has catastrophic consequences. You might not discover the data loss until years later, when reopening significant but infrequently used documents.
Until iCloud Drive exposes version conflicts in the file system or a central, easily accessible location, my strong recommendation is to move all crucial data out of it. Meanwhile, set up a Git repository to monitor your critical files; you might uncover surprising changes.
Update: For files that need to stay in iCloud Drive I’m building Cloud Cub, a simple way to detect and resolve hidden sync conflicts before they cause data loss.
Within a few days of prototyping a game mechanic, Valve’s designers start watching users play. And they conduct playtests once a week until their games are fun and it is “no longer excruciatingly painful” to watch.
On a side note: At least in 2012, when its Handbook for New Employees was published, Valve was completely self-organized.
YouTubers MrWhoseTheBoss and MKBHD explain the techniques tech companies use to get a more positive coverage of their products.
Matt Blodgett:
There’s a whole class of bugs that comes down to the developer followed very specific instructions without understanding the goal. And a well-meaning manager will take that to mean I wasn’t specific enough in my instructions. No! Computers need instructions. Humans need understanding.
Exactly.
I like to take developers with me when visiting customers. A common understanding of the goal removes so much friction and makes life so much easier.
I also recommend Basecamp’s Shape up to break down the barrier between product and IT and have small teams work closely together to ship a new product or feature.
Sir Jony Ive in the California College of the Arts’ virtual commencement for the graduating class of 2021:
Being curious fuels our appetite to learn, and wanting to learn is far more important than being right.
Using a public park as an example user experience consultant Paul Boag explains how to iteratively build products. And why you should do it.
Over at A List Apart Matt E. Patterson describes HTML-over-WebSockets:
What about multi-user chat? Or document collaboration? In classic frameworks and SPAs, these are the features we put off because of their difficulty and the code acrobatics needed to keep everyone’s states aligned. With HTML-over-the-wire, we’re just pushing tiny bits of HTML based on one user’s changes to every other user currently subscribed to the channel. They’ll see exactly the same thing as if they hit refresh and asked the server for the entire HTML page anew. And you can get those bits to every user in under 30ms.
Most interesting tech article I’ve read in a while.
Basecamp has been pushing this approach with Hotwire.
And Phoenix with LiveViews:
Paul Horowitz describes on OSXDaily how to add currency exchange rates to the iOS stock app:
All you need to do is search for a ticker symbol containing the two currencies, USDEUR=X, for example.
In the four years since the article was published macOS has gained support for Stocks as well and you can show the exchange rate in a notification center widget.
Every Chinese New Year, Apple commissions a short film.
This year it’s about the mythical Nian. Wikipedia explains:
Once every year at the beginning of Chinese New Year, the nian comes out of its hiding place to feed, mostly on men and animals. During winter, since food is sparse, he would go to the village. He would eat the crops and sometimes the villagers, mostly children. […] The weaknesses of the nian are purported to be a sensitivity to loud noises, fire, and a fear of the color red.
Hence the fireworks, noises and the red color everywhere. I remember riding my bike through Shanghai on Chinese New Year with things exploding left and right. It felt like crossing a battlefield.
Here’s the making-of video to the short film with director Lulu Wang and colleagues touting the iPhone 12 Pro Max as a cinema camera:
Bert Hubert dives into the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine:
The code of the vaccine starts with the following two nucleotides:
GAThis can be compared very much to every DOS and Windows executable starting with MZ, or UNIX scripts starting with
#!. In both life and operating systems, these two characters are not executed in any way. But they have to be there because otherwise nothing happens.
It’s absolutely fascinating how we’re just a combination of myriads of little biological computers.
Former Evernote CEO Phil Libin shares his simple but elegant model of tracking (and converting) different user types.
Also interesting are his remarks about how to create a well aligned business model.
James Currier, Managing Partner at NFX, lists 23 success factors of B2B marketplaces.
Ars Technica:
Today Ars Technica brings you inside the pilot’s seat of an F-15C Eagle fighter jet to break down every button in the cockpit. Join retired United States Air Force pilot Col. Andrea Themely as she walks you through everything at your disposal, from emergency features and communication controls to navigation features and weapons and defense. With 1100 hours of experience piloting F-15’s, Col. Themely expert eye is ready to guide you each step of the way.