In 2018, I attended a workshop hosted by Priya Parker, and read her book, The Art of Gathering, and got really excited about what becomes possible when people get together.
The invitation
Be it a monthly business meeting, product launch, birthday party, or a conversation space (that’s my thing!) —a gathering is in effect a temporary world, where transformative experiences become possible. If you design for it, you can inspire true connection and move people.
I’m a believer. Undaunted (though often frustrated) by the many, many boring and ineffective meetings I’ve been in. All-hands where everyone is texting and thinking: bullshit, while they join in the cheer required at the end. Parties where I hugged the wall and wished I had the nerve to just stand there taking photos. Panels and educational events, classes and seminars that I barely remembered after.
I think we can do this. We can have good meetings, family dinners, birthdays, business meetings of all kinds. We just have to get intentional and do it differently, experiment. Over and over until it becomes a thing that we all expect to, and get to, have good, and even transformational, experiences when we get together.
Though I don’t know how. So, I started a lab to deconstruct and discover what goes into creating good gatherings. I’ve dubbed it The Experiential Lab. Small groups talking about what’s meaningful to us, and how to create experiences that connect people to each other, to ideas, to more sides of themselves.
It was so nice!
The Experiential Lab was (and may be again) a gathering to deconstruct and discover the ways to good gathering. We talked through all kinds of events, and invoked, studied and discussed The Art of Gathering’s six-stage approach as a guide to re-envisioning and enlivening the special and the routine events, ceremonies, and meetings of our lives.
The Lab ran from September 2019 (in-person, monthly meetings in NYC) through July 2020 (then moving online in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown).
| 09/17/2019 | What is a good gathering? |
| 10/15/2019 | The six-stage framework for designing a gathering |
| 11/19/2019 | Entering: how did it feel? |
| 12/09/2019 | Hosting is a combination of authority, power and generosity |
| 01/14/2020 | Collaborate and Make it Personal |
| 02/18/2020 | Priming |
| 03/17/2020 | purpose and Purpose, with a capital P |
| 04/14/2020 | How might your meeting fail? |
| 04/28/2020 | Navigating Online + IRL |
| 05/12/2020 | The path to your people is inside you |
| 05/26/2020 | Let’s play! Or is now just not the time for it? |
| 06/09/2020 | Listening as a practice and a path toward empathy |
| 07/07/2020 | Finding the bright spots |
| 07/21/2020 | Does inclusion lead to connection? |
It doesn’t have to be some big revelation, or group hug, to be inspiring. Whatever the gathering you’re hosting or attending, I believe the possibility to be moved, connect and to collaborate exists every time we meet.
— Alexandra Jacoby
Alexandra Jacoby 