Xmas break

I'm taking a break from planning for the 2nd half of December -- xmas vacation and friends' schedules conspired to keep things too busy for me to wedge a plan in there.  But don't wory!  I'm going to triple down in January so that I can keep on pace. Here are the events I'm working on for January.

• Tron movie night: There's a new Tron movie (titled, for some reason, Tr2n) coming out in 2011, a sequel to the 1982 original.  Time for a viewing!
• Jonathan Coultan concert on the 17th or 18th.  Like funny songs?  You'll like this guy!
• Climbing at Planet Granite in the Persidio.  My Planet Granite rates went up to support this place, so I'm darned well gonna check it out at least once!  It's got a view of the SF Bay and all!

Stay tuned!

Plan 2: Ice Skating in San Jose

It was cold, and it rained a little, but most of the rain came after we left, so all in all it worked out pretty well.  I suspect the variable weather kept people away, so the crowds were pretty thin.

The five of us started by having a nice brunch at Il Fornaio (mmmm french toast with mascarpone!), then A's husband headed home and it was just the four of us for the ice skating.  Our abilities ranged from "skated as a kid" to "never ice- or roller skated before," but we all managed to have some fun!  During the hour and a half we were there, we all managed to improve greatly over our first couple turns around the rink... but after 90 minutes of it we were all pretty cold and ready to call it a day.  We had some falls among us, but no injuries!

Planning the Plan

I'm experimenting with different ways of getting the ball rolling.  With this outing, I arranged one cohort in person, and then sent out a mass email to gather more folks.  I got very few responses from the email, so I think my approach needs some tuning.  With just a mass email, I think each recipient feels like they would be the first person joining the outing crew, and no one wants to be the first.  It's like dancing at a party: no one wants to be first, but once someone starts, the dance floor fills up on no time.  For the next outing, I'll try gathering a cadre of folks before sending out the email and maybe mention who's in the core group.  Maybe that will make it easier to join up.

Doing Stuff

I created an email list called Doing Stuff to help me organize these plans.  When you have a group of friends on a To: line in an email, it's clearly something personal, but I think some of the personal aspect disappears when it's a mailing list.  When I was sending out invitations to the list, I was surprised that I came up with as many friends as I did -- over 50 folks that I'd love to do stuff with!  About half of the invitees accepted the invitation to join up.  There were some surprises on both sides: some people I didn't expect to join did join, while some whom I did expect, didn't.

Plan 1: The da Vinci Exhibit at The Tech Museum

I'm a member of The Tech museum in San Jose, and they kept emailing me about the da Vinci exhibit.  I found a handful of friends who were interested in seeing it, and see it we did!

The exhibit didn't focus on a particular aspect of da Vinci's life: rather it was a broad-strokes approach to everything he did!  Art, science, architecture, engineering.  The photo at right is a dodecahedron that included decomposition of it's parts and tangent lines; there were several exhibits where a simple shape was decomposed or repeated and incorporated into machines or architectural features.  

Planning the Plan

I'm interested in the psychology of getting people to come do stuff.  I sent out a mass email to get people to come, plus I sent a few personal emails.  It seemed like the personal emails had a better success rate; and the people I talked to in person were also more amenable.  I know this is a small sample size to judge from, but it seems like the personal approach is more effective in motivating people than a mass email.  evite.com is an interesting hybrid of personal/impersonal -- it's a mass email, but it has a couple appealing features that make it seem personal: it sends out reminders and you can go to the site and see who else is going before you commit.  For Plan 2, I started with only mass email, and I got a really low response rate; I'll need to bolster the ranks with personal appeals... but more on how that turned out in a future post!

Plan *: Twenty-four Plans to what?

I like doing things.  Friends plan things, and I'll show up and have some fun.  But why does someone else always have to plan activities?  I'll tell ya why: because I'm not a great planner! But as with most things, one can improve one's skills with practice.  I'm also a procrastinator, so that makes it really easy to put off planning things, and it leads to laid-back weekends of just "hanging out."  Mind-you, there's nothing wrong with taking it easy, but there's a whole world of things to see and do out there, and I'd like to see and do some of it.

So to help defeat my procrastination, or at least hold it in abeyance, I figure that if I set a regular schedule for doing things, I can "force" myself to go have fun and get a way to measure whether I'm keeping up my end of the bargain with myself.  My goal, then, is to plan a couple things each month for one year, and then evaluate how it's going.  My first idea was to start a blog called "Fifty-two Plans," but upon reflection, that seemed a bit ambitious.  My intention is to actually succeed at this, and I think even I can handle two things a month :-)

So.  What are the plans?  I don't know yet!  I'm keeping the definition loose on purpose, but I figure most things will be small (getting a group together to go to a musuem, throwning a dinner party or game night, or attending a concert or something); but they could be big too, like getting a few friends and going to some other country!  Friends in the past have organized trips that I've gone on: Cambridge, Whistler, Vegas... it's always been fun, so why can't I organize something that would be fun for my friends?  (Wait, Las Vegas isn't a country?)

The purpose of this blog, then, is to chronicle the 24 plans of the first year.  I'll describe the plans, maybe talk about what was easy or hard about organizing them, think about what could have made it better, and talk about future plans.