From screen to real life
On June 9th, we invited a small group of minutiae supporters for our first in-person event held at Bon Studios in New York City. The evening was meant for 25 people. Over 350 signed up.
The idea had been sitting around for years. What happens when you take the app off the screen and into a room? What happens when the strangers on the other side are suddenly in the same space? Part social experiment, part party.
Together with our event manager Emily, we set out to create an evening that mirrored as many aspects of the app as possible in both spirit and design. The constraints were the same as the app: no name tags, no introductions, one minute per exercise. Strangers first, people later.
The Prompt:
It started with a prompt, our version of the daily notification. Guests were handed a set of cards (square, naturally) and invited to write down reflections on a past moment, a present one, and a future one.
The same basic thing minutiae asks of you every day, except this time with a pen, at a table, next to someone you'd never met.
The Timeline
Then came the timeline. We pulled a randomly selected photo from each participant's archive and projected it onto the wall, one at a time. The room had a minute to look, to ask questions, to try to place it. What did the note on the table say? What's your cat's name?
After sixty seconds, the image disappeared and a new one took its place. Anonymous until the person in the room decided it wasn't.
The Grid
The final exercise was the Grid. Everyone pinned their cards to a large physical, handmade version of the grid and spent time reading what the others had written. The result was a collective archive of past, present and future moments.
What started as a room full of strangers ended as a party that didn't want to end. The last guests left long after the original end time. We can't think of a better confirmation that the evening worked.
So, what’s next? Brooklyn was first. It won't be the last. We plan to bring these evenings to other cities around the world, because minutiae participants are everywhere, and we'd like to meet more of them.
Thank you for being part of it.
We should do it again.