Meg Bolger retweetledi
Thanks to @christsai for getting me to dig up my 2016 guide to single-threaded dinners. I think it mostly holds up and I would love suggestions.
Hosting a Dinner
(9/1/2016 edition; updated 9/11/2025)
Here's my latest thinking about hosting dinners. I'm constantly revising this so please send me feedback. And I'm happy to be an emcee if I am free!
Pre-work
Research the social profiles of every attendee. You can use a service like FancyHands (or one of the AI agents) to put together a one-pager on attendees with 1) a photo 2) occupation and background (education, place of birth, etc) 3) latest few tweets and link to profile 4) something interesting about them (you can leave this open ended as a research task).
You can do this a few days before and review it right before dinner. It is just for you and your staff.
Seating
You can decide on seating or not. Depends on the vibe of the dinner.
Pre-introductions
Just as everyone is sitting down, declare the subject of the evening, introduce the format of the evening and warn them that in a few minutes you are going to ask each of the attendees to introduce themselves and answer a question.
What kind of question works well? Something that doesn't require deep domain knowledge but lets folks show off a little bit. I usually just ask something I'm curious about and use it as the starter for evening's discussion. One clever trick is to go meta: ask what question would you like answered about the subject of the evening. When you have a clear center of attention, you can ask something like “what question do you wish so-and-so would answers but are afraid to ask.”
Rules of the road:
Everything discussed is off the record; we'll have a single thread discussion until the main course is almost finished and then the conversation will dissolve into many conversations but until then you will moderate; at the end of the evening as dessert and coffee is being served, you'll ask everyone to share something they learned that evening. If you'd like, you can say that the best insight is going to win a prize.
Introductions (after 5-10 minutes)
Model how you want people to introduce themselves by offering a short introduction and then answering the question—you get to set the tone. Do you want it serious or light and funny? Then go around the room asking folks to introduce themselves. Depending on your goals, you can call each person out and say something flattering about them before you let them introduce themselves. (“And next, I'll let Mark introduce himself. He won't admit this but he's the main reason I started programming.”)
Single-threaded conversation
Imagine that you are a talk show host. Shush people who have side conversations. Move the conversation along to new topics when people look like they are getting bored.
Declare an end to the single threaded conversation just before you think it is going to dissolve.
Wrap Up
As dessert comes out, ask people to share an insight or resource. If you offer a prize to the best insight, remind them of it before they share an insight. At the end, make a big show of giving something silly—another glass of wine or slice of pie.
At the very end, ask if it is ok for you to send a mass email connecting everyone or share links and notes over WhatsApp.
English
