Heyo everyone 
Cam here to report on our first Cabin supper in Oakland!
This was Shirahās (my partner) and my first time hosting a Cabin Supper, and weāre happy to report that it was a great success 
Iāve attended a handful of Cabin Suppers before this one, so it was great to combine previous learnings into this event, and have the learnings from this Supper impact future ones!
TL;DR
In case you want just the headlines, here they are:
- Vision-setting: Shirah and I envisioned the event beforehand, considering factors like number of attendees.
- āWould You Ratherā Introductions: Replaced standard intros with āWould You Ratherā questions, creating a fun atmosphere.
- Table Arrangement: Two tables were used to encourage intimate conversations among guests.
- Meal Preparation: We cooked but plan to simplify food preparation for larger groups in the future.
- Parent-friendly Environment: The event was accommodating to parents, making them feel safe and welcomed.
- Is Oakland or The Bay a neighborhood: They plan to host more Oakland-centric events to cater to local residents.
- RSVP Issues: Despite efforts to ensure attendance, one guest didnāt show up due to late communication.
- Guest Contributions: Guests were asked to bring something representative of their culture, with mixed results.
- Stewardship Responsibilities: Felt the need for more detailed & easily navigatable systems to support Stewards
Letās dive inā¦
Prep
Vision-setting
Shirah and I sat down together to envision what we wanted the event to be like, which Iād recommend every couple do before hosting a Supper. Asking questions like:
- How many people?
- How do we want to welcome them?
- Do we want to curate the conversations or let them happen naturally?
- Date and time?
There were many others, but they all provide answers to the core questions of āWhy are we gathering and how do I want it to feel?ā
Event
āWould You Ratherā Intro Cards
Shirah and I donāt love the standard āName, location, favorite xā intros, so we decided to write 10 silly āWould you ratherā questions and put them in a cup for people to pass around, introduce themselves, and then answer the question.
Not only was it really fun, it also had the benefit of creating inside jokes between everyone right at the beginning. I overheard Rebekah at the end of the night talking with Lauren and referencing one of the WYR questions and they both laughed, which meant that the laughs and connection that these questions prompted at the beginning were also present at the end, which is amazing!
We like conversation cards, but they donāt work great for introductions, so this felt like a perfect happy medium and weāll definitely use it again.
Group Notes
Shirah and I are total Notion nerds, so we created our own prep page to house our tasks, notes, and ideas for the event (in retrospect, shouldāve just been located in the Cohort 0 page. But Shirah doesnāt have access to that yet, so we need to fix that).
Anywho, this page had all the details for the event and I ended up creating a section for notes I took throughout the evening. Documenting the references, IG accounts, and other tid bits that people mentioned throughout the evening.
You can see the actual section here, but after a bit, I realized this shouldāve been a shared Notion page that everyone could add to throughout the evening! It wouldāve been a collaborative way to store the topics and threads that were brought up throughout the evening.
Iām going to setup a new āGatheringā template in Notion that will be the perfect place to create a template for both event prep + communal documentation
Tables
We thought having 2 tables was ideal. Longer tables inevitably lead to feeling split between various conversations happening at the table, which is best to avoid. So we used 2 of our tables (1 was my poker table haha) and split up the 3 couples that came together, which ensured everyone got to know people they didnāt know before.
This worked out great and we think weāll continue it for future Suppers. The main thing that we couldnāt figure out how to do was switch-up the tables mid-meal so that people could get to know the rest of the people there
Dinner
Shirah did the heavy lifting of an amazing middle-eastern feast that was a total treat. It took a ton of time to make, and although I tried to help between work hours, a lot of the work did fall onto Shirahās shoulders. Sheās the queen of dank food and everyone got hella blessed her culinary feat.
While home cooked meals certainly add a connection to the food, weāre thinking of cooking for up to 6 people and experimenting with other ways to make more people than that easier. To make Cabin gatherings fun and hassle-free, weāre going to explore a simple pizza situation and funnel the time that doing so frees up towards more intentional social efforts and prep.
Parent-friendly
A major win was that that Lauren and Jon both felt safe and welcomed as parents of a baby, which is something Shirah and I had as a priority going into the supper.
It was nice to have James start to cry (only once!) and have the conversations at the 2 tables still continue and not make a big deal about it. Lauren shared that she felt accepted and welcomed as a parent, which made Shirah and I really happy ā”Ģ
@jon, would love to hear any more thoughts or feedback on what you think Suppers and Gatherings should prioritize and focus on in order to be parent-friendly.
East Bay vs The Bay
I wanted to test whether or not we could get someone to commit to running the next supper/gathering, and while that didnāt happen, itās honestly ok because nobody that came to the dinner is actually in the East Bay. We havenāt defined what a neighborhood is exactly, but I know nobody that came to the dinner feels genuinely like a neighbor to me haha
Therefore, Shirah and I want to focus on doing more Oakland-centric events that give some more specificity and proximity relevance to the people who come. I donāt believe SF, Oakland, and Berkeley can all be one Cabin neighborhood. Each is there own, and while people can certainly cross-pollinate, I think each area should have its own Steward.
Logistics
RSVPs
The perennial issue of events: people not showing up.
To address this issue, we did a very clear call-out in the invitation to please let us know if you canāt make it or, better yet, find someone to take your place! I came up with that idea when creating the invite and actually really liked it ā”Ģ
Still, we had one no-show, but it was actually a planning/communications oversight. I emailed the no-show 20 min after start-time and he didnāt respond until the day after. When he responded, he shared that,
I signed up last minute and didnāt get a confirmation email until āyour event starts in one hourā message so I was unprepared to get out there.
So my lesson: make sure there is a night-before message that gets sent + a few hours before the event to ensure everyone is kept in the loop!
Making Requests
While we ended up having more than enough food and plenty of leftovers, we did request for people to bring something (a ritual, game, activity, food, drink, dessert, etc) that represents their cultural background. One couple brought a dessert, but the majority of people either a) didnāt bring anything physical to share but had brought a ritual/game that they wanted to share but couldnāt find a time to share it or b) didnāt have the capacity to come up with one and showed up.
Both options were ok because the success of the event didnāt hinge on them, but Iām curious what the best practice would be in case it is important that people bring something or follow a theme for a future event. Is it just more clear and consistent alerts beforehand? Does it need to be more important to the event?
It was totally fine this time around, but if future events require more than for people to just show-up, that will require
I still donāt know how exactly how to talk about Citizenship and how to get people involved
Iām having conversations with Jon and Matai about this, but I believe we need to invest in setting up a one-stop-shop for everything a Steward needs to make running events seamless. Stewards are essential to enabling the new Cabin Neighborhood vision, so I think Cabin should do as much as possible to make hosting an event easy.
Right now, hereās a list of all the things Iām tracking as a Steward:
- Notion event pages
- Steward Event page
- Cohort 0 event page
- Google Doc - Email follow-up copy
- Luma link
- PNGs for QR codes
- Receipts
Itās a lot, so Iām excited to work with Matai on building out a system to make all of these necessary components for running an event and supporting Stewards. But beyond that, I feel very comfortable talking about the mission and vision of Cabin, but as a Steward, I still feel very murky on the details once someone says, āOMG Iād love to help! What do I do next?ā
Getting clarity on that is essential to ensure the efforts being invested into hosting event
so real.
