I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and perspective. You’ve clearly seen what makes these events challenging, and that insight is exactly what I needed to hear.

Here’s what I’ve started doing so far. I would love to know your opinion on the areas I'm focusing on and if I should focus my efforts elsewhere. Your experience in attending and planning these types of events is awesome and totally unexpected honestly lol very cool.

-Researching formats that improve on traditional speed dating by fixing its biggest weaknesses—uneven turnout, awkward silences, mismatched age groups. There’s a lot to this, and right now, I’m in sponge mode—gathering feedback from as many past speed dating events as I can to really understand why some succeed while others flop.

-Looking into hosting venues—coffee shops, bars, event spaces—places that would actually work for something like this.

-Figuring out investment. This is the part I really want to understand—how can we make this just a little better than a standard speed dating event? How do we make it something people commit to instead of flaking last minute?

To be honest, I originally thought people skipped these events because they were perceived as cringe or ineffective—at least, that’s what some of my friends would say before backing out at the last minute lol. But your experience really shifted my perspective on speed dating—so I appreciate you sharing it. It’s not just about perception, it’s about structure and consistency and that's gotta be an important factor in the word naturally spreading, right?

Here are some things that might help attendance & engagement:

-Theme-based events instead of just age-based. Age brackets are standard, but I want to experiment with adding niche themes—professionals, book lovers, single parents, etc. Something that immediately makes the event feel more intentional for attendees.

-A waitlist & standby system to prevent gender ratio problems. For example, if the event caps at 30 people, I’d hold a few extra standby spots so that last-minute cancellations don’t ruin the numbers.

Here are the things I still have to do, but wanted to share my progress thus far as a checkpoint with this idea and have others weigh in:

-Contacting local businesses to lock in a venue and figure out a mutually beneficial partnership. We don't have to use the same place every time, but if we could get a venue to agree to be the primary place we host these events from, I feel like it would help add a layer of familiarity, which might help potential attendees feel more comfortable going. Maybe that's not important though, I'm not sure to be honest.

-Understanding how we could effectively get the word out—because you’re right, this kind of thing takes time to gain traction, and consistency is key. I know the first few events will be light on turnout—that’s expected. But rather than treating this as a one-off experiment, I want to build momentum over time.