The moral of this story is that connection doesn’t happen on its own. You have to design your gatherings for the kinds of connections you want to create. And, again, it doesn’t have to be elaborate and complicated. I once heard of a couple who found a clever way to seed connection among their wedding guests. At the entrance to the reception, they

A facilitator is someone trained in the skill of shaping group dynamics and collective conversations. My job is to put the right people in a room and help them to collectively think, dream, argue, heal, envision, trust, and connect for a specific larger purpose.

I am not suggesting that you cannot thank people. I simply mean that you shouldn’t thank them as the last thing you do when gathering. Here’s a simple solution: do it as the secondto-last thing.

In almost any group of people—including strangers—certain areas of conversation will generate more heat than others. This heat can arise from conflict, taboos, transgression, power differences, hypocrisy, identity clashes, etc. Part of my job is to figure out the sources of potential heat and then decide what to do with them.

All day long, I have been taking notes on what people say and jotting down specific phrases, confessions, epiphanies, jokes, and one-liners that I think capture an important moment.

In my experience, there are certain magic numbers in groups. Every facilitator has his or her own list, and these are obviously approximations, but here are mine: 6, 12 to 15, 30, and 150.

Thurston rescued the guests from having to introduce themselves to others, and in the process he also created an ambient awareness for each guest of every other.

Gatherings crackle and flourish when real thought goes into them, when (often invisible) structure is baked into them, and when a host has the curiosity, willingness, and generosity of spirit to try.

Every gathering with a vivid, particular purpose needs more of certain behaviors and less of others.