Last November I went to Selena Soo's Rich Relationships event.
Same material she'd delivered at her New York event six months earlier. Same concepts, same frameworks, same talking points. People had already heard some of it.
They called it one of the best events they'd attended all year.
Same content. Better curation. That's the whole explanation.
The Observation That Changed How I Think About Events
My friend Tim observed the way out that I haven't been able to shake: “Even if Selena didn't say a single word the whole time… just put everyone in a room and switched the table assignments every hour… people would've said it was a smoking event.”
He's right. And if you've ever hosted anything — a dinner, a conference, a workshop — you probably know exactly what he means.
The magic wasn't in what was presented. It was in who was in the room and how they were arranged.
This is what I'd call a front stage vs. backstage problem. The backstage work is what creates the front stage experience. But most event hosts spend 80% of their preparation time on the front stage stuff — the agenda, the speakers, the talking points — and almost no time on the invisible work that actually determines whether the event is memorable.
What 50+ Dinners Taught Me
I've been hosting dinners and events in Austin for years. Jeffersonian-style dinners where one conversation happens at a time. Investment dinners. Small gatherings at member clubs. The LATT3 coffee parties we throw downtown.
The events people still bring up months later? Never the ones where I had the most polished agenda.
They were the ones where I got the room right.
Early on I learned something from hosting at Soho House. At rectangular tables, if two people sit on opposite corners, they literally never get to talk to each other. Three hours in the same room and they might as well have been in different cities.
Switch to circular tables — six people max — and suddenly everyone can look each other in the eye. One conversation flows. People actually get to know each other instead of just exchanging business cards.
That decision happens before anyone walks in the door. The guests never see it. But they feel everything.
The Co-founder Story
A few years back, a woman came up to me after one of my dinners. She said she'd met her co-founder at one of my events the previous year. They'd built something together that was already helping hundreds of people.
I had no idea that would happen when I put them at the same table.
You never do.
That's the thing about curation. You're not controlling outcomes — you can't. You're creating conditions. The chemistry happens between the people. Your job is just to make the introductions likely.
When I think about the best connections I've made in Austin — the business partnerships, the friendships, the introductions that opened doors — they almost always trace back to a specific moment where someone put me in the right room.
The Three Things That Actually Matter
After hosting more events than I can count, here's where I actually focus my prep time:
Who's in the room. Not how many — who. The right 12 people will always beat 200 random attendees. Quality over quantity in every dimension.
Who sits next to whom. This is probably the most underrated skill in event hosting. Think about two people who share a problem, a market, a question. Put them next to each other and let the conversation find its own shape. I spend more time on seating charts than I do on agendas.
Whether the space makes talking easy. Furniture matters more than people think. Spaces with lots of separate seating pockets actually prevent connection. The best spaces have friction-free transition points — near the bar, near the entrance — places people naturally move through.
What This Means If You Host Events
If you're planning something, here's a simple reframe: your content is the excuse to get people in the room. The curation is the actual product.
Before you spend another hour on your agenda or your speaker lineup, ask yourself:
- Have you thought about who specifically you want in the room — and why those people?
- Do you have a plan for how you'll group people or encourage certain conversations?
- Have you walked the physical space and thought about where the natural connection points are?
The content gives people a reason to say yes. The curation is what makes them say “that was the best event I've been to in years.”
Selena didn't need better material. She needed — and clearly had — better room design.
Most of us are working on the wrong problem.
If you're thinking about events for your business or community, I write about this stuff in the weekly newsletter. It's free.
