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lprovenWell. It was odd.
I've never gone to anything resembling a speed-dating event before. I might well do so again.
I could sum-up the night, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
major_clanger has done so rather well on his LJ... Ah. But it's F/O. Bum.
On finding the area and strolling in, not only did I spot the illustrious Prof Wiseman, but also, to my pleased surprise, the highly esteemed Dr Bradshaw as well.
I'd spoken to Richard (i.e., The Prof) briefly at a Skeptics event beforehand so I knew to expect a fully-subscribed evening and a 50:50 gender mix.
The pre-selection
When one arrived, one chose from a row of half a dozen books: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Bill Bryson's Brief History of Nearly Everything, a Nigella Lawson tome, a Harry Potter book, a self-help book, a Lee Childs military novel - I think that was all. One chap chose Mr Childs; a couple of girls, remarkably, chose the self-help book. Many men seemed to chose Bryson, but fairly few women; OTOH, lots of women chose McEwan, whom I've never read (or watched a film of) nor ever felt the slightest inclination to. This posed a conversational challenge, but no more so than pickups ever do.
I picked Bryson. My first reading choice in terms of genre would be SF & fantasy, which meant JK Rowling, but I don't especially like those books and I am not a fantasy reader, so I felt that would be a misleading choice, whereas I've read just about all of Bill B's stuff and am a confirmed admirer. Also, of course, there's the selection factor of "what would be the genre that I could most use in a chat-up situation", in which case, travel writing is a good solid choice. Cookery, perhaps, but mostly I'd have to bluff that. Which I did, at one point, in fact.
We had 10-15min to stand around and chat.
Now, when I was travelling there, I was feeling rather nervous. On arrival, though, I was fine. Feeling relaxed and confident, actually. (This is perhaps rather more unusual than it might appear; I don't know how I really come over.) But I'm fairly confident with the opposite sex, these days; for many years now, I've had a reasonably good success rate with potential partners. I actively prefer an environment which favours talking over something like a noisy nightclub or something, though I've "pulled" in those, too, occasionally. I've never been to any sort of actual planned singles event before, but hey, I'm reasonably confident in my appearance and personality and I know that I can do charming if I can be bothered; my concern, appallingingly egotistical as it will no doubt sound, was whether I'd find anyone there attractive.
So I was already people-watching with interest in the social bit beforehand. I went to the free "bar" and picked an orange juice; one wouldn't want to dull the faculties before use, what?
My initial impression was that the men were huddled together in several, mostly nervous-looking groups. As I'd half-suspected, most of the organizers and helpers were women and I couldn't pick out helpers from female participants; indeed, quite a number of the women I chatted with were there because they were friends of organizers and had got roped-in. I found it amusing that the men - you know, according to cliché, the predatory sex - had more of the manner of prey animals.
The setup
OK. About 45 people. 4 rows of chairs in 2 facing rows. All the women sat in the outside rows, facing in. The men sat in the inside rows, facing out. We chaps we sat, each facing a girl. All participants had a number and a sheet of forms, together with a piece of cardboard to either use as a prop or a shield.
The way it worked was this: at the start of the experimental run, you got 3min to talk to the person opposite you. You noted their number and if their book choice matched yours, then you were left to talk. There was background music provided, which caused problems for me. After the 3min, we were stopped, and all the chaps stood up and moved down a place; the guy on the end looped around to the beginning. The two sets of rows were handled separately.
(Amazingly, this was too much for some guys to follow and they got confused. The chap one ahead of me kept dropping his stuff or forgetting to move or leaving his glass or getting confused which way to go. Remarkable, really. Naturally, two level-headed, highly intelligent chaps such as Simon and I were unfazed by this.)
So we worked our way along the row; after a bit under an hour, every guy had had 3min in front of every girl. After each 3min session, you moved on one, then marked your form: what number person were you talking to? Did your books match (Y/N)? Did you like them (not at all, no, yes, very)? Did you find them attractive? (Same 4 answers) Would you want to see them again (Y/N)? Would you like us to give them your contact details (Y/N)?
After this, it all went a little pear-shaped. Talking to the organizers later on, this was because it was a bit over-full. There wasn't time to swap rows and repeat the exercise - not that I'm at all sure I'd have had the strength. It was very tiring, even more than I might have expected.
So instead, we got 2min, no forms or anything, but with Richard giving us all a topic to talk about for those 2min, which he was improvising. Favourite book; favourite holiday; what you do at work; favourite music; all relatively banal stuff. But no forms, so no way of expressing interest or getting details, and in 2min, you cannot charm a phone number out of a stranger, unless you're [a] extraordinarily gifted or [b] you're extremely blatant.
Afterwards, there was an informal mingling session - with free drinks - for an hour or so. I ended up in conversation for quite some time with a jokey and very irreverent late-middle-aged Northern woman, talking mostly about doing stand-up comedy, when to be honest, I'd have gone chasing some of the girls given a free hand.
Impressions
It was... odd. Fun, mind. There was a good mix of people - all erring somewhat towards the nerdy, or at least, bookish, especially the men; I think there were maybe 25% of so of the girls who were there because a mate was one of the organizers and had inveigled them into doing it to balance the numbers. Quite a range of ages, from early 20s to 50s, and types of people, from nerdy to at least one veguely alt-cool kid. I switched between different approaches, mostly for amusement and variety; I tried "charming and chatty", "nice but earnest", "slightly jokey", "deadpan serious" and so on. Two girls in the proper session were Hispanophones; with one, I spoke to her in my (fairly meagre) Spanish, with the other, none at all, except to drop in the name of her country's capital city right at the end to show I was paying attention (2sec, no conferring: capital of Chile?)
Interestingly, especially in the light of the experiment, the one woman I found genuinely to be rather attractive was one of the few to pick Bryson.
There was nobody I didn't like, although some of the girls I did have to work a little bit at the conversation. Once or twice, I felt I was being played as much as I was playing. There were, as I rather suspected, no raving beaties I'd pursue across an ocean, but I certainly ticked one box that I'd like to see her again, and maybe one or two others for amusement value. One thing that many chaps agreed with me on afterwards was that the other group seemed to have all the most attractive women; in the 2min informal chats, there were 3 who I really rather liked, but only 1 in my formal group. The perceived disparity was more than I'd expect from the general "grass is always greener"/other-queue-always-moves-faster effect, but this may just be a manifestation of the corollary to Hofstadter's Law - and it wasn't just me.
To be honest, I don't expect any contact back; nobody I spoke to really did. It was a laugh, though, and I regard it as a good chance to practice my "skills". [Rueful :¬) ]
People wandered off fairly quickly afterwards; there were several women I'd have like to talk to more but I didn't get a chance to. C'est la vie. By the end, there were a hard core of half a dozen of us left talking - a few chaps and a couple of helpers skiving off from moving bookcases around. Surprisingly, there was wine left; unsurprisingly, the free beer was all gone. In the end, 3 of us adjourned to a nearby pub, the Argyll, for a swift nightcap, followed by a rather longer and fruitless search for somewhere else to have another without paying to get in.
Good fun evening. Accessible sort of event for someone who knows roughly what they're doing and also a fairly friendly, safe environment for the nervous novice, I'd say. Definitely worth doing and an interesting experience, and I think there could be good hunting at more of these things... :¬D
I've never gone to anything resembling a speed-dating event before. I might well do so again.
I could sum-up the night, but
major_clanger has done so rather well on his LJ... Ah. But it's F/O. Bum.On finding the area and strolling in, not only did I spot the illustrious Prof Wiseman, but also, to my pleased surprise, the highly esteemed Dr Bradshaw as well.
I'd spoken to Richard (i.e., The Prof) briefly at a Skeptics event beforehand so I knew to expect a fully-subscribed evening and a 50:50 gender mix.
The pre-selection
When one arrived, one chose from a row of half a dozen books: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Bill Bryson's Brief History of Nearly Everything, a Nigella Lawson tome, a Harry Potter book, a self-help book, a Lee Childs military novel - I think that was all. One chap chose Mr Childs; a couple of girls, remarkably, chose the self-help book. Many men seemed to chose Bryson, but fairly few women; OTOH, lots of women chose McEwan, whom I've never read (or watched a film of) nor ever felt the slightest inclination to. This posed a conversational challenge, but no more so than pickups ever do.
I picked Bryson. My first reading choice in terms of genre would be SF & fantasy, which meant JK Rowling, but I don't especially like those books and I am not a fantasy reader, so I felt that would be a misleading choice, whereas I've read just about all of Bill B's stuff and am a confirmed admirer. Also, of course, there's the selection factor of "what would be the genre that I could most use in a chat-up situation", in which case, travel writing is a good solid choice. Cookery, perhaps, but mostly I'd have to bluff that. Which I did, at one point, in fact.
We had 10-15min to stand around and chat.
Now, when I was travelling there, I was feeling rather nervous. On arrival, though, I was fine. Feeling relaxed and confident, actually. (This is perhaps rather more unusual than it might appear; I don't know how I really come over.) But I'm fairly confident with the opposite sex, these days; for many years now, I've had a reasonably good success rate with potential partners. I actively prefer an environment which favours talking over something like a noisy nightclub or something, though I've "pulled" in those, too, occasionally. I've never been to any sort of actual planned singles event before, but hey, I'm reasonably confident in my appearance and personality and I know that I can do charming if I can be bothered; my concern, appallingingly egotistical as it will no doubt sound, was whether I'd find anyone there attractive.
So I was already people-watching with interest in the social bit beforehand. I went to the free "bar" and picked an orange juice; one wouldn't want to dull the faculties before use, what?
My initial impression was that the men were huddled together in several, mostly nervous-looking groups. As I'd half-suspected, most of the organizers and helpers were women and I couldn't pick out helpers from female participants; indeed, quite a number of the women I chatted with were there because they were friends of organizers and had got roped-in. I found it amusing that the men - you know, according to cliché, the predatory sex - had more of the manner of prey animals.
The setup
OK. About 45 people. 4 rows of chairs in 2 facing rows. All the women sat in the outside rows, facing in. The men sat in the inside rows, facing out. We chaps we sat, each facing a girl. All participants had a number and a sheet of forms, together with a piece of cardboard to either use as a prop or a shield.
The way it worked was this: at the start of the experimental run, you got 3min to talk to the person opposite you. You noted their number and if their book choice matched yours, then you were left to talk. There was background music provided, which caused problems for me. After the 3min, we were stopped, and all the chaps stood up and moved down a place; the guy on the end looped around to the beginning. The two sets of rows were handled separately.
(Amazingly, this was too much for some guys to follow and they got confused. The chap one ahead of me kept dropping his stuff or forgetting to move or leaving his glass or getting confused which way to go. Remarkable, really. Naturally, two level-headed, highly intelligent chaps such as Simon and I were unfazed by this.)
So we worked our way along the row; after a bit under an hour, every guy had had 3min in front of every girl. After each 3min session, you moved on one, then marked your form: what number person were you talking to? Did your books match (Y/N)? Did you like them (not at all, no, yes, very)? Did you find them attractive? (Same 4 answers) Would you want to see them again (Y/N)? Would you like us to give them your contact details (Y/N)?
After this, it all went a little pear-shaped. Talking to the organizers later on, this was because it was a bit over-full. There wasn't time to swap rows and repeat the exercise - not that I'm at all sure I'd have had the strength. It was very tiring, even more than I might have expected.
So instead, we got 2min, no forms or anything, but with Richard giving us all a topic to talk about for those 2min, which he was improvising. Favourite book; favourite holiday; what you do at work; favourite music; all relatively banal stuff. But no forms, so no way of expressing interest or getting details, and in 2min, you cannot charm a phone number out of a stranger, unless you're [a] extraordinarily gifted or [b] you're extremely blatant.
Afterwards, there was an informal mingling session - with free drinks - for an hour or so. I ended up in conversation for quite some time with a jokey and very irreverent late-middle-aged Northern woman, talking mostly about doing stand-up comedy, when to be honest, I'd have gone chasing some of the girls given a free hand.
Impressions
It was... odd. Fun, mind. There was a good mix of people - all erring somewhat towards the nerdy, or at least, bookish, especially the men; I think there were maybe 25% of so of the girls who were there because a mate was one of the organizers and had inveigled them into doing it to balance the numbers. Quite a range of ages, from early 20s to 50s, and types of people, from nerdy to at least one veguely alt-cool kid. I switched between different approaches, mostly for amusement and variety; I tried "charming and chatty", "nice but earnest", "slightly jokey", "deadpan serious" and so on. Two girls in the proper session were Hispanophones; with one, I spoke to her in my (fairly meagre) Spanish, with the other, none at all, except to drop in the name of her country's capital city right at the end to show I was paying attention (2sec, no conferring: capital of Chile?)
Interestingly, especially in the light of the experiment, the one woman I found genuinely to be rather attractive was one of the few to pick Bryson.
There was nobody I didn't like, although some of the girls I did have to work a little bit at the conversation. Once or twice, I felt I was being played as much as I was playing. There were, as I rather suspected, no raving beaties I'd pursue across an ocean, but I certainly ticked one box that I'd like to see her again, and maybe one or two others for amusement value. One thing that many chaps agreed with me on afterwards was that the other group seemed to have all the most attractive women; in the 2min informal chats, there were 3 who I really rather liked, but only 1 in my formal group. The perceived disparity was more than I'd expect from the general "grass is always greener"/other-queue-always-moves-faster effect, but this may just be a manifestation of the corollary to Hofstadter's Law - and it wasn't just me.
To be honest, I don't expect any contact back; nobody I spoke to really did. It was a laugh, though, and I regard it as a good chance to practice my "skills". [Rueful :¬) ]
People wandered off fairly quickly afterwards; there were several women I'd have like to talk to more but I didn't get a chance to. C'est la vie. By the end, there were a hard core of half a dozen of us left talking - a few chaps and a couple of helpers skiving off from moving bookcases around. Surprisingly, there was wine left; unsurprisingly, the free beer was all gone. In the end, 3 of us adjourned to a nearby pub, the Argyll, for a swift nightcap, followed by a rather longer and fruitless search for somewhere else to have another without paying to get in.
Good fun evening. Accessible sort of event for someone who knows roughly what they're doing and also a fairly friendly, safe environment for the nervous novice, I'd say. Definitely worth doing and an interesting experience, and I think there could be good hunting at more of these things... :¬D
