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A review by lisabage
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
informative
medium-paced
4.0
A very good definitive work on what it means to bring people together and how to create a meaningful and memorable experience. Something to reread anytime you are planning a large event.
- Have a reason to meet
- Make it a closed and safe space for your guests
- Don’t be afraid to take the reins and create the experience.
- Make the closed space a fun temporary world
- Never start or end with logistics
- End as purposefully as you began.
Quotes:
- A good gathering purpose should also be disputable.
- A disputable purpose begins to be a decision filter.
- Ex: a wedding is a celebration of love but that’s not disputable. Is it a way to repay your parents and end your life with them, or a way to celebrate a new pairing and start a new tribe. That will help distinguish who gets the last seat.
- She invited her guests to serve each other and not worry about being served themselves.
- She plays the Egyptian when warmth is required and the German when greater order is required.
- Because so much gathering advice comes from exporters in food and decor rather than from facilitators, that advice almost invariably focuses on preparing things instead of preparing people.
- A gathering starts from the moment a guest learns of its existence.
- The bigger the ask, the more care, attention, and detail should be put into the pregame phase.
- Ex: creative way to introduce people to each other - guests send two photos and he decorated the Christmas tree with the photos
- Note: make sure you close, don’t just end. Look inward - what has this experience meant to me, and outward - what do I want to take from this temporary world back to the real world. If you have to do logistics, make them before the close.