Rudeness and Flakiness in Boston
Adding People to the Invitation List
Descriptive Tags and Descriptions
Parties Hosted by Other Organizations
Dancing at the Large Cocktail Parties
In early 2002, I started attending numerous parties in Boston, and I was surprised at how bad most of them are. So what's wrong with so many of them? First, the venue is all wrong. Many are too crowded — if I wanted to be crammed in, I would have been born a sardine. The layout is often all wrong, making the flow difficult. Many have loud music, making it difficult to talk. In 2002, most Boston restaurants and bars permitted smoking, but fortunately that is no longer permitted.
Second, many of the people attending are those I would not invite — rude people, those without manners, flaky people, people with no social skills. At many parties, groups of people (usually women) come as a group, stand in a corner by themselves (making it unlikely that any men will approach them), and then at the end of the evening, they complain they didn't meet anyone.
As I talked with others attending these parties, I heard horror stories about what happens after most parties, whether it was in the context of new Platonic friendships or dating. A would meet B at a party. A would then call B, leave word on B's voice mail, and then B would not have the courtesy of calling back. Or A would send B an e-mail, which B would not respond to. Or A would ask B out, B would say "Yes," and then B would cancel the day (or sometimes the evening) of the date, sometimes with no explanation.
As I heard more and more stories, I learned that this is common behavior in Boston, so common in fact that most people are not surprised when it happens. One girl said, "In dating, I'm used to be a guy being a jerk. I'm glad when it happens early in the process, because that's much better than my getting involved with him and then finding out he is a jerk." Not only would I hear stories about others treating them poorly, but sometimes people will tell me about how they treated others, which I considered to be rude, and they felt no compunction about acting this way. One girl told me that if she is not interested in a guy, she simply doesn't return his telephone calls. "Eventually he gets the message." One girl went out with a guy four times, and for two of these dates, she was more than one hour late. One guy freely admitted that at the end of the first date, if he's decided he doesn't want to go out a girl again, he'll still say he will call her, knowing that he won't. Another guy bragged that he slept with several women that he had no intention of asking out again, even though the women had different expectations.
When people told me about their own behavior that I considered to be rude, in many cases they would justify it with some lame excuse — "I was awfully busy at work, so I didn't have time to call him back," "I'm working on my dissertation and I haven't had time to respond to my e-mails," that kind of thing. One of my favorites is "I didn't call him back because I didn't know why he was calling." (If you called back, presumably he would tell you.) In most cases, it simply didn't register in their minds that the other person is a person who has feelings, who should be treated with respect. In many cases, people said in effect, "I was being rude to them, I'm just a space cadet who is terrible about returning phone calls. I treat everyone this way." I decided that it really doesn't matter if someone is flaky, a space cadet, or is simply rude, the results are the same. I'm terrible in any event about judging motives, but I'm great at assessing behavior. I concluded that the distinction between rudeness and flakiness was irrelevant, the results are the same.
I concluded that Boston parties consisted of high-quality people (people with manners, who are not flakes, who do not lead people on, and who treat people well, which I'll call "Group A") and those who are not, which I'll call "Group B." The problem was that Group A was being mixed in with Group B and it was almost impossible at first to distinguish who is in which group. Sometimes a person is such a jerk that they develop a reputation which precedes them, but information flows are quite imperfect and this usually does not happen. In many cases, the Group A people were so used to being treated poorly that they had radically lowered their expectations about how they should be treated (similar to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's concept of defining deviancy down).
I decided that there needed to be better sorting of these two groups. Why aren't the organizers of these events more careful about whom they invite? What if they gave a party where everyone was screened for having good manners and not being a flake? Wouldn't such a party be more enjoyable? Word would get around and high-quality people would seek out such parties. What if you gave a party where only Group A people were invited?
For several months, I debated moving to New York — everyone agrees the parties in New York are so much better — but I never made the move. In November, 2002, I invited 20 of my friends to get together at the Bar Lola (formerly known as Dartmouth Cafe and Geoffrie's), and a friend of mine invited 20 of his friends. The next day, I received a dozen e-mails: "Great party! When is the next one?" "Next one?" I said to myself. "What do you mean next one? This was a one-shot deal."
Two months later, I relented and invited about 30 people. Another set of favorable e-mails ensued. So I gave my third party, with about 40 people attending. People who came almost always wanted to come again, and they would bring their friends.
Starting with the fifth party, I gave them at 33 Restaurant. First we used just the side room on the top floor, then we used that room plus the right half of the main room, and then we took over the entire top floor. The flow worked well, there were lots of places to sit down, there was no loud music, and you could order food. 33 worked really well for us.
Starting with the third party, I started collecting business cards of guests who attended but were not on the invitation list. Starting with the fifth party, I prepared a form, asking for more information than a business card provides. Guests not on the invitation list fill out this form when they first show up.
As the invitation list grow, I regularly thought about how to keep the parties limited to Group A people. The people being added were friends of friends of friends, whom I did not know. I looked for a proxy — a characteristic that is easy to ascertain and is highly coorelated with something else that is harder to ascertain, such as whether someone has manners. I decided I would require everyone on the invitation list to RSVP for each cocktail party, even if they were not coming, and this would be my proxy.
As far as I know, none of the other social groups in Boston has such a requirement. If you don't respond, you still stay on the invitation list for future parties. Under my system, each invitee is expected to respond to the invitations they receive for my large cocktail parties. If they don't respond, they receive another invitation, and so on. Through an invitation cycle, they will receive as many as 10 invitations, assuming they never respond. If they don't respond through two invitations cycles in a row, I usually remove them from the invitation list.
I reasoned that rude and flaky people (Group B) were much more likely not to respond than the Group A people I was looking for. I now have a lot of empirical evidence on this issue, and it turned out I was more correct than I had expected. The odds that someone who doesn't respond being flaky and/or rude are, as it turns out, quite high — more than 75 percent. In the social sciences, where predicting human behavior is difficult at best, a 75 percent correlation coefficient is the equivalent of winning the lottery.
In the past few years, as I have removed various people who did not respond, it has become quite common for me to hear several months or even a year or two later that others considered them to be rude or flaky. In many cases, when I told someone that X has been taken off, they respond, "I'm so glad to hear that. I know someone he was a jerk to. I didn't want to say anything but I was wondering why you were inviting him to your parties."
Time and time again, I hear how polite my guests are. Every establishment we've given parties at — the Bar Lola, 33 Restaurant, Saint, and the Ritz-Carlton — has commented on how polite my guests are to their staff, which is gratifying. I can't say with a straight face that every person on my list is polite and not a flake, but the percentage of rude or flaky people on my list is substantially lower than any other social group in Boston. I can say with a straight face that if I find out that someone on my invitation list rude or flaky, they will soon not be on my invitation list.
After the fourth party, I realized that the invitation list was increasing every month, and I needed to systemize how it was being managed. I started to write a database/information system in Microsoft Access, which began as a 3-day project and worked well. As with other information systems, I thought of another feature I needed, and another, and since then, I've spent a considerable amount of time rewriting and enhancing my database. I've added several useful features, such as people being able to choose which parties and events they will be invited to, tracking who recommended whom, and being able to put someone on hold for X months or X years (e.g., if they are leaving Boston for the Summer or have started a part-time graduate program and thus cannot attend anything for the next 3 years).
After the sixth party, I realized that these parties were taking a lot of my time, and much of that time was spent on routine data maintenance, so I've hired a full-time personal/social secretary. She does many things — such as making appointments, paying bills, personal filing and the like — but her primary responsibility is to manage most of the day-to-day aspects of my parties.
The tenth party at 33 Restaurant was particularly good, with an energy that was amazing. We had taken off the entire top floor plus the side room, and it wasn't too crowded. Five days before the eleventh party, 33 told me that they had hired a chef from the Four Seasons and they were filled up with dinner reservations, so we'd had to stay solely within the side room. At that point, I was more than 100 people, and the side room was about five times too small to house 100 people.
I could repeat what was going on in my head when 33 told me this, but that would violate federal obscenity laws. In the previous year, I had discussed with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel about hosting my parties there. They repeatedly had said they were interested, on the terms I was proposing. I never followed through, for two reasons. First, things were going well at 33 and I tend to be quite loyal to those who treat me well. Second, I kept thinking, "This is too good to be true. I can't believe the best hotel in Boston could be that accommodating. There must be a catch."
Well, now I didn't have a choice, so I called them. "Remember what we talked about a few months ago? Does that offer stand?" "Certainly it does." "Good. Do you have a room available five days from now." "Five days from now?? We normally book months in advance." Fortunately, the room I wanted happened to be free, so starting with party 11, I host the large cocktail parties at the Ritz.
The first two were given on the roof deck — the top floor of the Ritz, with a killer view of the Boston Public Garden and other parts of Boston (including a great view of their primary competitor, the Four Seasons). I knew that my invitees would like the Ritz, but I've been surprised to what extent attendance has increased simply because they're being given there — people apparently care more about the venue than I realized.
The roof deck is open from April to November. So when it closed, the Ritz moved me to the Lounge and the two adjoining side rooms (the Adams room and the French room). Although the view was not as nice as the roof deck (what is?), it was a much better fit. The Lounge has lots of sound absorbing material, such as thick carpets and drapes, so it's even easier to hear people. It has a warm living room type feel to it, with lots of comfortable chairs, sofas and tables. Conversation was simply easier than on the roof deck.
I had been thinking of having an artist exhibit their art at one of my parties. Linda Ellison — a good friend and a regular attendee — stepped forward. We looked at the Lounge closely and we were worried that people would bump into her paintings, particularly since attendance was continuing to increase and even the Lounge was becoming a bit crowded — the 17th party had about 250 people attending.
The only larger room in the Ritz was the Grand Ballroom, which was much larger. I was frankly scared about making the jump, since I need to fill up whatever room I booked so that the Ritz could make enough money off the cash bar. I took the plunge and asked everyone on the invitation list to recommend several friends to add to the list. My secretary and I were deluged with names. She was working full-time adding people, and she was still backlogged. So I wrote some special forms and macros in Access to systematize the process, since when we added people, 90 percent of the time the same choices were made for them.
The 18th party, given in the Grand Ballroom, went better than we had hoped. About 450 people showed up and the flow was perfect, since the Grand Ballroom was one big large room. Everyone loved Linda's paintings, where we protected by placing them in the bay windows. The 19th party was also given there, with approximately 500 people, and going forward, I expect to give most of the large cocktail parties there. Dates of previous large cocktail parties are listed here.
As the large cocktail parties became larger and larger, some people commented that it was harder to meet people, since almost everyone attending was a stranger to them. At the 16th large cocktail party in March 2006, three people volunteered to be facilitators — people who go around the room and introduce people to each other. The facilitators worked well, and we now have 20 to 25 facilitators at each large cocktail party. (You can tell who they are because they wear nametags and descriptive tags with a red border.) If you're standing alone, most likely a facilitator will soon approach you, find out more about you, and then introduce you to someone. If a facilitator sees three women who came together standing in a corner, she will approach them, ascertain if they really want to be standing together the entire party, and if not, break them up — girl A is introduced to one person, girl B is introduced to another person, etc.
From the beginning, we've always had nametags. (When I go with friends to other parties, they often joke that there will be no nametags at that party.) In addition to the facilitators, starting in May, 2005, I added descriptive tags. These are tags that people wear on their chest that say something about themselves. Initially, there was a limit of 500 characters for a descriptive tag. That meant the type was too small, and they really didn't work. So I decided to have two things: (i) a descriptive tag and (ii) a description. I limit the descriptive tags to 150 characters, which allows the type to be much larger, and they now work well.
The descriptions have a minimum of 1000 characters, with essentially no limit in length. These are sent to everyone before the party via e-mail. Even before the first party when they were sent beforehand, I realized they would be successful, because several people e-mailed me and asked that I forwarded e-mails to someone they wanted to meet. They've become a regular feature of both the large and smaller cocktail parties and if I am late in sending them, I receive a couple of dozen of e-mails asking me where they are.
In February, 2005, I sent an e-mail, asking people if they would like to have the option of playing board games at the large parties. Several dozen people said they very much wanted to play. For the 17th and 18th parties, I offered three games: Monopoly, Scrabble and Pictionary. The board games were a total bust. Only one game was played at the 17th party, and none were played at the 18th party (in part because the games were located on the second floor balcony in the Grand Ballroom). Even though lots of people said they wanted to play, when it came time to actually play, people would rather enjoy the party.
(This experiment was similar with what happens a lot in market research. Market research companies ask a few thousand people if they would purchase a product with certain characteristics for $X, and lots of people say they would. When the product is then offered, almost no one buys. It doesn't cost anyone to say they would purchase a product, but when it comes to parting with one's money, few step up to the plate.)
As the parties became increasing larger, a few invitees said they preferred the parties when fewer people attended. Starting in June, 2005, I started a separate series of parties which are deliberately meant to be smaller. I now give these 4 to 6 times a month, typically when I have nothing to do that evening, usually at Foundation Lounge, Jurys Hotel, and Bar Lola. Depending on how much notice I give, approximately 30 to 150 people attend these parties,. They have been extremely well received, since you can at least say hello to everyone who attends. Some people on the invitation have requested that they only be invited to the smaller cocktail parites (while at the same time, some have asked that they only be invited to the larger cocktail parties). Nametags and descriptive tags are usually used at these parties. Dates of previous smaller cocktail parties are listed here.
Until June, 2005, I and my secretary processed all of the RSVPs for these parties. I realized I was receiving between 5000 and 6000 e-mails a month, with most of them simply saying Yes, No or Maybe. My In Box was being overtaken with RSVPs. The previous month I co-hosted a house party with a friend, and we used Evite for the invitations. For that party, Evite worked really well (I had tried it 2003, when it had several bugs). So I switched to Evite to send invitations and to process RSVPs, and my In Box was no longer taken over by RSVPs. As the list has grown, using an invitation system has become more and more essential to running these parties.
Almost from the beginning of the parties, my guests said I needed a Web site. I resisted for a long time, because the parties have been (and are) by invitation only, and I was afraid of the rifraff finding out about them. As the list became larger and the complexity of communicating with such a large group of people increased, a Web site became more and more compelling. So in August 2005, I launched a Web site for my parties off my company's Web site. Development of this Web site continues to the present.
From the beginning, I've invited people on my list to parties and events hosted by other organizations. For events such as the Boston Public Library gala and the Winter Ball, I'm able to sell a substantial number of tickets for these non-profit organizations. I hope to increase this activity over time.
I gave the 20th large cocktail party at the Harvard Club of Boston in August, 2005, and both I and the Club were very happy with the results. After that party, I started to give the large cocktail parties at both the Ritz and the downtown Harvard Club in the financial district, with the Ritz always being our premier base location.
The sole purpose I host these parties is social — for interesting and polite people to meet similar people and for them to make new friends. Since 2004, people have suggested that we have dancing at the large cocktail parties, an idea I instictively resisted. I have been to so many large parties where the dancing make it more difficult to meet new people, with very loud music being the most obvious culprit. I always concluded to myself that dancing would make the parties worse, not better. Over time, the requests for dancing became more frequent, particularly as the large parties became larger. Every time I heard such a request, I said to myself, "How can we have dancing and keep true to the mission of the parties?"
In life, I always seek to try intelligent experiments, to go somewhat outside of your comfort zone. Notice I said "intelligent experiments" — jumping out of an airplane without a parichute would not be a particularly intelligent thing to do. So in July, 2006, I said to myself, "Let's try dancing. The parties are so good and have such an awesome reputation that if one or two are ruined by dancing, we'll quickly recover. You're not making a long-term commitment here. If it doesn't work out, you can simply drop the idea."
So we had dancing at the 30th and 31st large parties in July, 2006. Both of these were an experiment. The reaction was extremely favorable — "the best party you have ever had," "totally blows away the previous parties you have given," that kind of thing. Although there is always a lot of buzz in Boston after each large party, the buzz after the two dancing parties was much stronger.
So dancing has become part of many of the large cocktail parties. The primary purpose of the parties will always be social. I did not — and do not — intend to start a dance club. More than one-half of the large parties will not have dancing, and none of the smaller cocktail parties will have dancing. For the parties that have dancing, there was a considerable amount of debate as to specific details, caused in part by three long reviews in RICO Soiree Events. These details are discussed on our dancing page.
Using Evite made my life much easier, but over time, I was having more and more problems with Evite. Many of my guests check their e-mail at work and many corporate firewalls block invitations sent by Evite. I made several suggestions to the Evite technical team about how to improve their Web site. Most of these suggestions went ignored and they seem to have a bureaucratic development process. Over time, I also became more and more concerned about the ethics of some of their people. As my list got larger, I was obviously sending out more e-mails, and Evite's computers are not equipped to handle large e-mail lists. The last straw was when they deleted some invitations and had no ability to recover the data. (When I mentioned to them the inconvenience they had caused my guests, they clearly did not care. I looked at a few dozen invitation systems; it's amazing how bad most of them are. The most logical choice was HeyLetsGo, a social networking site that includes an invitation system. I know two of the founders and they have been quite responsive to suggestions.
From the beginning, these parties had been called "James Mitchell's parties." In 2005, I asked people to suggest a name for the group. The two favorites were Back Bay Soiree and Convivium. I liked the latter a little bit better and wanted Boston in the name, so in November 2006, the group officially became called "Boston Convivium." Because so much brand equity had been built-up with "James Mitchell's parties," hundreds of people urge me to keep my name in the group, so the group is often called "James Mitchell's Boston Convivium." Upon choosing a name, I moved the Web site for the parties to its own URL.
When I hosted my first party in November, 2002, I had no idea that these parties would become so spectacularly successful or that tnese parties would become what may be the most talked about social events in Boston. I was in the right place at the right time. Boston has so many interesting people who want to meet each other, and there aren't many good venues for them to do so. Every time I read the descriptions my guests have prepared, I realize that we've assembled some of the most interesting people in Boston.
It's been extremely gratifying to watch the 1000+friendships that have been made, the 35 to 40 medium- and long-term romantic relationships that have developed, and the two couples that got married as a result of my parties. Even more gratifying has been the few hundred acquaintanceships and several dozen close friendships I've made through these parties.
The basic format has been extensively developed and I don't envision many changes going forward. I'll give one large cocktail party every month, with approximately 500 people attending. These parties will be given at the Ritz and the Harvard Club for as long as they are willing. Each large party will have 20 to 25 facilitators. A few times a year, we'll have artist exhibits at these parties, and once or twice a year, we'll have casino nights.
Each month, I'll host 4 to 6 smaller cocktail parties, with 30 to approximately 100 people attending. I'll host 4 to 6 other parties a year, such as my Super Bowl, July 4 and New Years Eve parties. I'll give 4 to 6 dinner parties each quarter, with the invitation list remaining closed for the foreseeable future. As for parties and events hosted by other organizations, I'll send out several invitations a month to these events to those who wish to receive them.
Going forward, I'll continue with the policies that have made these parties the best in Boston. We'll continue to cull people who don't respond o invitations, who are substantially underdressed, who act inappropriately to those they meet at my parties, and those I subsequently learn are rude or flaky. I'll definitely be firmer about the descriptive tags and descriptions, which already have benefitted the group substantially. Once almost everyone who is on the invitation list has prepared a description, a substantial number of new friendships and relationships will occur as a result of the descriptions being forwarded to those who are attending a particular party.
I'll continue to enhance this Web site. Soon I'd like invitees to edit their descriptive tags and descriptions on line, as well as select the parties and events they wish to be invited to. More than anything else, I'm firmly committed to the principle that these are social parties, rather than business networking events or singles parties.