Making Of

Who'll be there · How it goes · The small print · About me · Questions

In 2000 the director Terry Gilliam started shooting Don Quixote in the Spanish desert. Within days a flash flood had washed out the set, and his lead actor could barely sit on the horse. The film collapsed.

The documentary about it, Lost in La Mancha, is better than most films that did get finished.

Loads of people have a story like that (a restaurant, a record, a company, a career that took the scenic route). Few people ask them about it.

At dinner you get "so what do you do?", and you give the version from the movie trailer.

So what if a dinner put a dozen people round one table, and opened up the making of those things... and of them, as people?

Who'll be there

People who care about the making of things: a project, their own career, or somebody else's. About a dozen of us, mostly strangers to each other.

With luck there'll be:

• someone who builds new formats inside a broadcaster
• a game designer
• a sound artist
• a brand strategist behind names you'd know
• a chef
• someone who gets young people into their first jobs
• one or two who don't fit any list

Roughly half are people I know well. The rest I've wanted to meet for a while.

How it goes

I'll level with you: I don't much like networking events. I refuse to wear a name tag (so there won't be any), and I've never enjoyed a conversation with someone looking over my shoulder for someone better. I design group experiences for a living, games and workshops mostly, so I've built this one the way I'd build anything at work, and taken out the parts that make people like me want to leave by nine.

Each course has a short round. One featured guest takes a few questions from me first, then there are cards on the table with questions and provocations for everyone else (none of them is "so what do you do?"). There'll be some other Easter eggs, too. By the time anyone asks for your story, you'll have heard someone else's. After that it's anyone's, and I won't ask what you learned.

If you'd rather listen

Nobody gets a microphone, and we don't go round in order. You can pass - encouraged, even, if the better story is at the other end of the table. There'll be Post-its on the table if you'd rather write something than say it, and a few props and prompts to fiddle with or point at.

If you'd rather talk

Good.

Bring whatever you're in the middle of, or curious about - something you're making, an idea, a slightly odd way of working. Half-finished is welcome (it's usually more interesting).

The small print

• It's all, as Danny DeVito's Sid Hudgens put it in LA Confidential, off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush. I might write about what came up, never who said it.
• Pay your own way: £80, in advance, so there's no bill at the end. It covers three courses, wine and the bar. Whatever's left after the venue goes to a charity the group picks. If you can't make it, pass your seat to someone you rate.
• Table space is limited. A late yes goes on the list for the next one.
• The next day you'll get a note of who was there, since nobody wore a name tag. And first dibs on the next one.

Tuesday 3 November, 7pm till about 10.30. Central London - the address comes when you say yes.

Save me a seat

Come and tell us how it got made, and what it made of you.

Howard

P.S. Gilliam did finish it in the end. It took him another eighteen years.

A bit about me

I'm Howard. I spent a decade in music - DJing, putting on events, then representing artists around the world - before I switched from remixing music to remixing information. I spent about ten years in New York, and these days I'm in London most of the time.

Now I run Wavetable, which makes games and simulations that teams use to practise the work that doesn't come with a playbook. I also write Groove Theory, a newsletter that takes one person who's very good at something and works out what they do. I teach at business schools when they'll have me. I box (southpaw) and follow Crystal Palace. Neither are especially elegant.

The longer version is here.

Questions