blip.tv Fifth Anniversary Party

Bill Cammack — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:00:58 +0000

Co-Founders Dina Kaplan, Mike Hudack, Jared Klett, Justin Day & Charles Hope at the blip.tv fifth anniversary party on June 08, 2010

How To Throw A Party

Bill Cammack — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:40:46 +0000

Throwing a party in the year 2010 isn’t what it used to be. We’re all virtually connected now, through Social Media.

Back in the day, it was all about “Come to my party!!! :D” and since nobody knew anybody else online, it was pot luck what happened when you arrived.

That’s over now.

With Facebook, eVite, and a bunch of other sites, you now have access to *ALL* of the information you need in order to determine whether you’re going to a party or not. You know when it is, where it is, how much it costs and who it is that claims they’re going to go. If you need more information than that, you can look up the website to the venue and see the menu, who’s DJing, etc.

Besides the obvious reasons, this is important information because as our Social Media networks expand, we get more invites and there are more overlapping events. As of today, I have 1,905 Facebook friends, which means that if they were evenly spread out throughout the year, it would be FIVE PEOPLE’S BIRTHDAYS, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR.

Not every weekend. Each one of 365 days, it would be FIVE PEOPLE’S birthdays and if they all decided to throw parties ON their birthday, probably three out of those five people are getting bumped… ASSUMING that I wanted to party every single day of my life.

To be fair.. I only know 475 people that live in Manhattan, NYC, 101 that live in Brooklyn, and a few more scattered around the Tri-State Area, so let’s call it 600 people that might throw a party in Manhattan any day of the week… Except… Nobody throws parties on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday is a maybe, with Friday and Saturday being definites, so mostly what happens is that the 10 people who celebrated birthdays this week *ALL* want to have their parties on either Friday night or Saturday night between 7pm and 4am.

That’s also not counting *ANY* of the networking parties that companies like to throw on a regular basis, holiday parties, housewarming parties, graduation parties, engagement parties, or even small get-togethers that you plan with friends. When you know a lot of people, there’s a tremendous overlap of Social Engagements.

There are a couple of ways that people deal with this:

Be Everywhere

The solution to this for some people is to attend EVERY party they’re invited to. I had seen this on television, but had never experienced it until a couple of years ago.

A homegirl of mine invited me to hang out with her and some of her friends at an apartment party, so I was like “cool”. We got to the party, everybody’s socializing and ‘getting they DRANK on’, and suddenly someone announces that we’re moving to a different party. I’m thinking “We already have chicks and brews. Why are we going somewhere else?”, but I was rollin’ wit da homies, so we geared up and rolled out.

We show up at some apartment building blocks away and the doorman doesn’t want to let 12 already-drunk people into the building, so we had to wait for someone to call upstairs and have one of the hosts ‘ok’ us. We go upstairs and it’s a MUCH nicer apartment than where we started, with MORE alcohol and HOTTER chicks, so I’m like “nice move, y’all! :D”. The entire group we showed up with dispersed into the crowd and we socialized for maybe an hour, then it was like “We’re going to the next party” and I’m like WHAAAAT? :/

We ended up going to either four or five parties in one evening, with the point being that the people I was hanging out with would be talked about by the people that saw them at each of the parties. It was like a public relations tour. The point wasn’t to socialize, but to Be Seen so their names could be on the tips of everyone’s tongues at the water cooler on Monday.

This is because in that society, name-dropping is where it’s at. First you want to say WHERE the party was or who the host was and then you want to say WHO was there, even if that person didn’t say a single word to you or notice that you were at the party.

Let’s Not, And Say We Did

For most people, that’s neither fun nor interesting. Well, actually, I guess for *MOST* people, they’re lucky if someone they know is throwing a party AT ALL.

I’m saying that for most people that get invited to a ton of stuff, more parties thrown = more parties *MISSED*, not ALL PARTIES ATTENDED for a fraction of the time so other people could say they were at a party with you. :/

It’s YOUR JOB to make your event as attractive to your target audience as possible, as early as possible and as transparently as possible so you end up with the Voltron effect of a buzz starting on the back-channel and multiple people encouraging multiple people that your party is going to be ‘the place to be’ and that everyone should converge in that place and time to REALLY get their party on! :D

Here are some tips on how to maximize attendance at your parties:

1. Make sure your guest list is available on the net

In the movie “Ronin”, De Niro says “I never walk into a place I don’t know how to walk out of”. The same holds true for parties. If you can’t see at least who CLAIMS they’re going to attend a party, you have to assume the worst. You have to assume that nobody you want to see is going to be there and that the party will be populated with people you DON’T want to see. That event automatically drops to the bottom of the list. Seeya!

2. Do not select a venue with a “cover”

If there’s a cover charge to get into the place where you’re throwing a party, ASSUME that your party drops to the bottom of the list. There are too many places in Manhattan that I can walk into for free. I’m not interested in handing someone money to enter a bar. I’m way more likely to take my money 20 steps to the left and walk into a different bar for free and spend my money buying food & drinks. It’s just the principle of the thing.

3. Make sure the bar doesn’t discriminate against guys

Girls wouldn’t know this because they receive special privileges when they go places, such as not having to stand in line “because it’s cold outside”, but there are lots of places in Manhattan that will not allow guys to enter without girls on their arms. I understand why they do this, because they don’t want their bar to become a pick-up joint with guys hovering around the chicks all night, causing the chicks to select a different venue, causing the guys to select a venue with better chicks, causing the bar to shut down entirely.

If I suspect that a) there’s going to be a line to get into a place, and b) that even if I stand on the line, I might get jerked by the doorman because you invited me to a party at a place that doesn’t want to let “single” guys in, I’m not coming.

4. Make sure there’s no line to get in

Speaking of lines.. Nobody that’s been getting their drink on before your party wants to stand in a line for 30 minutes, sobering up. **** that. If you just HAVE to throw your party there, make sure there are provisions for your guests to skip the line by informing the doorman that they’re there for your party. Other than that, you can expect people to follow the path of least resistance and break north instead of waiting on a line in the middle of the night feeling their alcohol wearing off.

5. Sponsor the right things

A lot of companies throw parties and they get “sponsors” to give them money in order to attach their name to the event. If you throw a party that’s sponsored, be intelligent about what you’re allocating your money towards.

I went to one specifically notorious party about a year ago that had claimed to be sponsored and when I got there, the chicken wings were free and the small-ass bottles of beer were NINE ******* DOLLARS!!! >:/

As soon as I found that out, my friend and I rolled *IMMEDIATELY* to a different party that had advertised an open vodka bar for a full hour after we arrived there.

The difference between the two was that you knew you were going to pay for drinks at the second party AFTER the free drinks were over, yet the first party had advertised itself as “sponsored” and not informed you that the free stuff wasn’t anything you actually cared about. Obviously, the hosts of the second party received all the forward-extending feelings of goodwill and the hosts of the first party were never believed again when they advertises a party. Bottom of the list! Seeya! :D

6. Noise

If you’re throwing a dance party, fine.. Make sure the music is loud so people can enjoy themselves. Other than that, make sure that the venue is as quiet as possible (without trying to be a library… shhhhhhhh! :D) so that the people that show up can meet and greet each other and get to know each other without having to shout over the din.

7. Crowd

If you’re planning on having more than five (5) people attend an event, make sure you don’t select a popular location that’s going to be crowded. There are three problems with this. There’s noise, like I just talked about.. There’s the ability for your entire group to get and retain seating, and there’s the ability for your group to re-up with drinks.

Too many people in a bar means that the waitresses are going to be overextended. They’re not going to come around often, and when they do, they won’t be coming back with your drinks soon. There’s also a good chance they’ll get your order wrong, trying to serve so many people.. ESPECIALLY if the people that ordered drinks are now located in different places because you didn’t properly lock down your seating arrangements.

If there’s no waitress, too many people means that the bartenders are overextended or that you can’t even GET to the bar because there’s such a backlog of people that are clamoring to get drinks. Either way, the net result is that the alcohol isn’t flowing the way it’s supposed to and it’s going to put a damper on your party if not cause people to leave early to head to a better-functioning party.

8. Tab

Speaking of people leaving early, coughstevecough, Do *NOT* start group tabs unless you’re willing to eat the entire bill.

When people are partying, they’re not keeping tabs of who came and went or who ordered what, but the waitress is. Do NOT expect people to kick in their share before they walk out the door, because sometimes, they have to leave quickly and forget. Sometimes, they’re too drunk to remember. Sometimes, they’re just like “Let someone else pay for my drinks.. PAYCE!!! :D”.

If you don’t have a “sponsor” picking up the tab, or it’s not a house party where you’re providing the liquor yourself or suggesting that people bring what they’d like to drink, let people know on the invite that you’re getting together at a specific place and that they need to bring cash or their own cards to deal separately with the food and drinks they order.

9. Timing

Plan your parties when other parties aren’t happening. Plan your parties when people aren’t normally partying. Stop feeling yourself that people are going to select your event over all the others. Having your party at 7pm and making sure that the venue sells good and inexpensive food might get a lot of people to show up that would have written you off in the 9pm slot or the 11pm slot or the 1am slot, due to more compelling engagements.

10. Location

Make sure your parties are centrally located within the group of people you’re inviting. If you live in Jersey and your guest list lives mostly in Manhattan, throw your party in Manhattan. If you live uptown, throw your party in the Lower East Side.

Do NOT expect people to come to you if you live somewhere out-of-the-way. When the party’s over, your guests will either have to spend an hour or two in the subway, waiting for and riding the train, or they have a $20 cab bill to look forward to. Not cool. Lots of people would LIKE to attend parties, but because of the location and travel issues, skip it for the path of least resistance.

11. Expense

Do NOT throw parties in expensive places, unless you’re “Ballin’, Shot Callin’” and you’re planning to pay for other people to drink.

When people have to pay $15 for drinks that should cost $5, they don’t spend three times as much.. they become only 1/3 as drunk. That’s no good for your party because people drink more slowly, have less of a good time, bring less energy to your event and are quietly scheming on LEAVING so they can go somewhere with affordable alcohol… Including HOME! :D

On top of that, if people know ahead of time that your venue is expensive, they’re liable to stay longer at the dive bar with the cheap alcohol where they started the evening. The longer they stay there, the more chance they’ll meet someone they want to hang out with for the rest of the night and suddenly, your party takes a dive into the dead pool.

12. Be Reliable

Make sure that when you host an event, what actually happens is congruent with what you advertised in the invitation. Do not have people show up to one bar, only to find out that nobody there has heard of your group because you changed venues and didn’t use your Social Media reach to announce that. Do not advertise that there are going to be a bunch of girls at your event and then there are a bunch of dudes. Do not advertise that it’s free and then there’s a cover. Do not say “Meet me inside” and then the doorman doesn’t want to let guys in without female accompaniment. Do not run up a group tab and then ask the people that are left at the end of the night to chip in for the extra amount from people that left early without paying their share. Do not say you’re sponsored when the alcohol isn’t free. Do not ambush people with hidden guest lists. If you’re charging for the party, make sure your guests know exactly what they’re going to receive for their money.

Nobody’s the only host or ‘draw’ of their parties anymore. Party attendance is viral. Groups of people come to a place to hang out with groups of other people. The number of individual groups you attract to your event determines the overall size of the party.

You might have the free alcohol, but someone else has a visible guest list where others are willing to pay for their own drinks to enjoy those particular people’s company. You might have the fancier venue but your guest isn’t willing to dress up. You might have the trendier venue, but a guy isn’t willing to shell out $30/round for him and his companion for the evening to drink, when it should be $12/round. You might have a party during the exact same time slot, but the other party’s much easier/faster for your guests to get home from…

There are really too many variables in today’s hypernetworked society to assume that YOUR event is the top draw of the evening. It’s in your best interest to make your party transparently as attractive as possible as soon as possible so the buzz gets out there on the back-channel between people checking with other people what they’re doing on that particular evening. Your guests are as important in publicizing your party as you are, if not more so.

The days of “One event per evening” are OVER. You’re not only in competition with the weather, but events going on the same evening, the night before AND the night after, depending on how much time out of the week a person has allocated towards publicly socializing. It’s on you to do the right things so you can maximize your event attendance, expand your sphere of influence and build your rep as a party promoter or connector.

If you have your own party tips, post them in the comments, below. :)

Bill Cammack » party

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blip.tv Fifth Anniversary Party

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How To Throw A Party

Be Everywhere

Let’s Not, And Say We Did

1. Make sure your guest list is available on the net

2. Do not select a venue with a “cover”

3. Make sure the bar doesn’t discriminate against guys

4. Make sure there’s no line to get in

5. Sponsor the right things

6. Noise

7. Crowd

8. Tab

9. Timing

10. Location

11. Expense

12. Be Reliable

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