Planet Jeffro

I got an email a few weeks ago from Dave, who works for a marketing company. They were planning a big party for Absolut and wanted to use Cnvrge for it.  Dave and I had met at the NY Creative Interns Meetup several months ago - where I was running Cnvrge at the meetup.

So I came in to their office last week and demo’d the “awesome game that introduces you to cool people” to an audience of 20 employees who all took part in a live run-through of Cnvrge.  They dug it and saw how awesome and easy it was to get SMS intros to new people at an event.

Wednesday night was the party - a 250+ invite list of VIPs and “see and be seen” folks who partied with Absolut in an insane 5 floor house (with a pool) in SoHo.

I came 2 hours early to scope out the locations and sort out some final details.

Dave and I ran it and mingled, handed out cards (with the phone number to text and check in) and told a bunch of people about it.

About 15 people checked in and while the technology worked flawlessly, I don’t think anyone actually showed up to their locations to meet the people.  But that’s OK because we learned a lot from the process:

1. Tell everyone beforehand, through an email, on the website when they sign up, and then keep drilling it: when they check in at the door, via signage, and with people circulating wearing shirts and handing out cards.  Everyone needs to know what they’re getting in to otherwise you end up needing to *cold pitch* each person one at a time (which is what we did, and it just doesn’t work).
2. Get a critical mass. With a drink in their hand and a ton of people surrounding them, the prospect of moving somewhere else isn’t so appealing unlesseveryone is doing it.  When you’re at an event and you sense that everyone is already involved in this cool game to meet new people, but you’re left out, then you’ll immediately take it seriously and want in.  If no one is involved then you know you’re not missing out.
3. A big party with many floors isn’t the best place to run Cnvrge.  A big open space is easier for people to navigate to various areas.
4. People need to have their phones close by otherwise they just ignore the texts.
5. The best Cnvrge events are the ones where people naturally want to meet a ton of other people.  Participants need to arrive to a room full of strangers but leave a room full of familiar faces.

Though Cnvrge didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped, Maddy and I did have an awesome time…

Here are some better photos taken by the pros: