I had my first +1 club experience this Saturday. What's +1 club you say? That's exactly what I asked (OK fine, I actually mistook it for something D&D and asked if the club was Vorpal).
The +1 club is a term coined by my friend Julian and it refers to bringing an random friend along to a party as extra. The only rule of being in the club for a guy is that you don't make an ass of the primary invitee. It is an excellent concept because it benefits both the random along with the primary invitee. The primary invitee gets to inject some new blood into conversations and also gets shortlisted to be added as a +1 in other parties whilst the random gets a chance to meet some new friends.
The party was an birthday party for an ex-worker, Dylan, who I never met before. The party was at the Dome club within Crown Hotel in Surry Hills. Considering how very ordinary and pub-like the downstairs is, the upstairs "Dome" component is very trendy. It has a reasonably sized bar area, the crowd is mostly middle aged so there were a lot fewer posers and the surroundings felt sophisticated.
I've never really noticed Julian's abilities at parties before and after Saturday night he is my new hero. He has this remarkable ability to just converse with people and engage them with funny stories or quirky questions. There were many fantastic looking guys and ladies (I'd be interested if I was 30 anyway), who Julian easily chatted to with no pretension or ulterior motive (well that I know about) and I was thinking, I want to be that confident one day! Being able to be witty on demand, to engage multiple people and keep thinking on one's feet is a fantastic skill which I'd love to master one day.
Well it's either all the above, or it could be due to the fact he managed smuggle out some tasty birthday cake from the sealed 'superheroes' 30th party which happened to be running in a function room at the bar.
Enough with the Julian worship; on a side note it is amazing how small a world it is in some ways. I met two other people who used to work for us, AND who also worked with Mr R. And I met someone who worked with someone else whose boss was Cat from work's ex-husband whilst they were in Guildford. Then we met someone who used to work with Jane before she came to work with us. Then again, the Australian IT community is small enough that the degrees of separation are likely to be small.
One habit that I have formed of late is to keep in my personal wiki, a list of people I meet and a few notes about each of them for future reference. When I went to write up those who I met Saturday night I realized by accident I had been a +1 at over 4 different parties in the last two months. I wouldn't have believed it without counting it, but I've been introduced to over 40 new people! Considering how boring my social life is, this is kind of amazing. I envy those who are regularly meeting lots of new people, sort of like Julian. Ahh I think I'm going to stop blogging before this becomes a Julian fan site.
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