How to Connect Lots of Dots and Spots - A Party Starter

Three years after moving to Chicago from Lansing, Michigan, I threw a party that changed my life. Thirty people on the guest list… a couple neighbors, colleagues from work, a guy I dated, dear friends from back in Lansing, people from my second term on the community service committee at St. Clements church, another from the Edgewater Community Council where I lived and a couple friends of friends. I planned to make good on all the times I said, “I know someone you should meet.”

Guests came alone and some brought a plus one.  I called earlier in the week to get accurate RSVPs. After they climbed the three floors, they arrived to find a string dartboard hanging on my door. I used a piece of cardboard and stuck pins around the edges of a circle evenly spaced, each labeled with a guest’s name. Three pieces of yarn, green, yellow and blue strung from each person’s pin connected them to three other’s pins. In the end, all pins had three threads.  

INSTRUCTIONS 

1.         Wear a name tag.  (Hung in the envelope below.)

2.         Once inside, meet the people whose strings connected to yours. 

3.         Determine why I thought you should meet your connections.

A prize will be awarded to the first three persons to figure out their three connections.

My reasons for connecting people were genuine – like Allen, who worked at a private university and did his Ph.D. on the 12^th century concept of sin, with Alan who worked at a public university and did his Ph.D. on 12^th century healthcare.  I connected two people starting businesses. I strung others together for less compelling connections too - two poets, two women named Ann, guys with beards, people who jogged, and a woman who chaired a church community committee and a man who chaired a committee from an organization in the same community. I wrote down my reasons for connecting my guests, leaving blanks if I didn’t have something specific. Many of my guests had a leg up on the game when they introduced themselves. I overheard more than once that evening, “Oh, you’re the one Mary said who…”

By the third guest knocking on the door, one of my prize-driven, early-bird guests answered it before I did, looked at the nametag and said, “You are someone I need to talk to.” In amazement I watched as each new person arrived to a welcome untypical to most gatherings of strangers.

More astounding to me were the reasons my guests found for my introductions. Out of ninety possible connections, I listed about forty including the lame connections of beards and similar names. My guests identified three times that number. In fact, the beards never got that match – much too mundane. Instead they puzzled out their fathers were from the same town in Pennsylvania (I’m a genealogist, who knew?) The Anns were married on the same day. One pair found they worked at the same place at different times. One pair identified same birthdays. Reasons they identified included growing up in the same size family, similar birth order, both loved the same television shows, sports teams, politicians, songs, movies, books, ethnic food, neighborhoods, countries, candy, cars or color – clearly, my guests thoroughly quizzed each other and found loads of connections I didn’t. I now wish I heard how they uncovered these disparate facts.

The process of connecting started or ended for some connections. Once the Als made the discovery that they studied the same century, they came to me to validate the pairing and went on to find their next matches, never to talk again. The two entrepreneurs started dating after that party, (I’m a Yenta – who knew?)  And, I discovered that lives intersect far more that we realize.

My life changed the moment I heard one guest say to another, “You are someone I need to talk to.” In that moment, a sense of purpose coursed through me. I made a connection. By the end of the party I learned my instincts were accurate, but I couldn’t predict or invest in an outcome. 

With nearly the same name, identical black beards, experts in the same century, no one could interrupt the two academicians, right? Ha! Their true commonality turned out to be a need to be the first to win the game.  The Als said nothing else to each other the remainder of the evening. I admit my disappointment in the lack of ignition in that connection. But, the party affirmed an interest and a talent to intentionally make connections. Dot to dot and lots of spots.