I read that there was a sequel in the works to 1982's Tron. A couple friends suggested that we should have a movie night, so I started putting one together. After I had begun planning it, I rewatched an episode of The Young Ones (also from 1982); I loved it in the 80's, but it was awful last week... I just can't believe how bad it was! I was trepedatious about how Tron would go over, but it turned out ok; we all more-or-less enjoyed it. After the movie we all just hung around and talked for a few hours... that was surprising and cool.Planning the Plan
I orgainzed this one from afar. I sent out an evite on Christmas while I was away on vacation, planning the showing for the evening of 1/1. I invited about 50 people, expecting that only a handful would be free and interested in seeing the movie. Until the day or two before the showing, I had something like 6 "no" responses, and no "yes" responses (most people didn't even open the evite!). So I was all set for a flop. As an aside, at the outset of 24 Plans, I had imagined that at some point during the year I would try, but fail, to organize an event. My intent for that eventuality was to go ahead and do my plan solo and just chalk it up as a learning experience -- so I was all ready for "failure." But with a little personal interaction with a couple friends at work, and support from a few other good friends, we ended up with a group of 9. It seems like my plans only start getting off the ground when I actually talk to people.
Bad Future Good Future
I can imagine difficulties in the future: Planning Things takes energy, and when it seems like the plan isn't going to go well (for example, if no one responds to the evite), then it's a little stressful and disappointing. There will probably be a point this year where I don't feel like making any more plans. I'm hoping I can just tough it out and have fun anyway.
I can also imagine wonderful things in the future: I can see where Planning Things might lead, and it sounds like a good place. It think that after a while, I could get a reputation for gathering people together and doing fun stuff. And that, in turn, will make people more interested in participating, and feedback like that is likely to make me want to plan more things.
Me? I'm pushing for the good future :-)
1 comment:
You're dissing The Young Ones? Blasphemy! Heresy, I say! (Though I have to admit, it is rather stupid.)
As for event planning, remember that word of mouth is the best advertising. Even our annual Oscar Party--the most popular, by far, of any of our gatherings--peaked at a 50% response rate on Evite. (Average over the previous 5 years was 32%.) People have been conditioned by spam and work to ignore emails.
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