What’s the point of an interest-specific social club?

To socialize, of course! With people who share a specific interest. I would argue this isn’t as obvious to people-organizers as it might sound.

Last Friday, I attended a meetup with my university’s philosophy club. I went in expecting many opportunities to meet other thoughtful people, but I left the main event without seeing them. Instead, the meetup was a guided large group discussion about quotes from Emerson. While I did learn a lot by following the conversation, and it was somewhat entertaining, I was disappointed that I didn’t have the chance to engage in more personal conversations and get to know the other members of the club.

If you get to decide what ~15 thoughtful people will do for two hours on a Friday afternoon, this is a rare opportunity, and you should be strategic about it. It represents 30 synchronous human-hours of opportunity cost, plus transportation. While you could use these hours to help people learn more about philosophy, I don’t think this is the best use for the time. Rather, I believe human connection is more important. I could have learned about Emerson much more efficiently by reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or been entertained more efficiently by taking a trip to an amusement park, for two hours. But instead, I blocked out that time because meeting the right person could have a huge positive impact on my life. I might make a great friend. We might spend a lot of quality time in the future. They could be a future romantic partner, or a professional connection. Indeed, I won’t have a better opportunity to meet lifelong friends than in college ā€“Ā in no other point of my life will I have as much time at my disposal to socialize and be in the same physical location as so many similar people in the same position. Meeting people has a huge mutual return on time investment.

small group discussions are more fun and facilitate more interpersonal connections

With this motivation in mind, how does one facilitate better mingling? My suggestion: structure your meetup to encourage small group discussions.

  • Most people prefer talking to listening. The fewer people present in a conversation, the more space each person has to talk. (amount of talking)/(number of people) is larger, making the conversation more enjoyable.
  • Smaller discussion groups give each person more control over the flow of the conversation, which also makes it more enjoyable. It’s easier to interject about things that you find interesting and ask questions about things you don’t know about.
  • Talking to a smaller group allows you to speak less reservedly. It allows people to be more vulnerable and talk about things that have more personal significance. I see this as vital for interpersonal bonding.
  • Smaller groups tend to talk about things that have less broad appeal. They give people the room to talk about more personal things and tell stories and anecdotes. Tautologically, you have to learn about the people around you to get to know them.

how to encourage small group discussion

One big conversation can be an equilibrium of your social event, depending on how you engineer the environment. I call this the “committee” style of conversation, and I see it as a failure mode. Once it reaches this point, it’s awkward to split it up. You have to find an opportunity to begin a private conversation with the people next to you, which can feel like talking over the person who’s currently speaking in the large group. Most people aren’t agentic or brash enough to step in the middle of the circle and announce “Okay guys, let’s split this conversation up. People on this side, go over here, and people on this side, stay here! šŸ¤“”.

So you have to coordinate from the onset if you want a better conversation structure. Here are some ideas.

  • Invite enough people so it can’t become a committee in the first place. A circle of 25 people would be so awkward and ridiculous that people will be forced to break off.
  • Host the event in a place with enough room for people to spread out. Ideally, there will be different rooms or partly sheltered areas for some insulation between groups.
  • If you’re the host, maybe it isn’t so brash to manually split up a large group if it forms. You could, for example, instruct guests to move to a different group when they hear a bell you ring every 30 minutes. This might bring a “forced” vibe to the party, but it also gives people plausible deniability when they want to leave a conversation. If they’re engaged, they’re totally allowed to ignore the bell and continue the conversation. But if they’re bored, they can say “Sorry, looks like I have to move to a new group. What can you do? But it was nice meeting you!”.

putting my money where my mouth is

I don’t make this post to rag on the organizer of the philosophy club, or anyone else who has held a suboptimal social gathering. In fact, after the event, I pulled the philosophy club leader aside after the meeting to give him my thoughts constructively, and he was receptive to experimenting with a different structure for the next meeting. Different hosts have different goals for their events, and that’s fine. I just value human connection a lot. It brings me a lot of joy when I witness two people meet and get along well because of something I initiated. I’m not trying to be cheesy ā€“ it genuinely makes me super excited when I hear I’ve created a friendship.

I’ve attended many social meetups in college so far, but recently I decided to step up and host two of my own, and my third and most ambitious is coming up in a few weeks. With each iteration, I’ve changed things to facilitate more interpersonal connection. The first party was awkward, reserved, and small, and I was late because I didn’t give myself enough time to prepare the food. The second was bigger, and I was ecstatic to see banter, deep conversation, and people exchanging contact information before they left, but it went too late into the night and still had a bit of a committee feel. The upcoming event will have even more people, take place in a small building with partially insulated rooms to break up potential committees, and have a definitive closing point.

I hope this post inspired you to think critically about how to help people meet each other. Those with an entrepreneurial spirit towards socializing, go forth and foster connections!