The Guest List: Apparently, we need still need people.
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We have spent the past twenty years inventing increasingly sophisticated ways of avoiding other human beings.
We order food on apps without speaking to anyone. We check into hotels on our phones. We hold meetings from bedrooms while pretending the strategically positioned bookcase and plant behind us have always been there. And now we have AI. It can write the email, summarise the meeting, plan the trip and, presumably before long, attend the networking event on our behalf. This is all terribly efficient. There is, however, a small problem.
People are quite useful.
I spent much of my career producing luxury events, an industry ostensibly concerned with venues, food, flowers, lighting and persuading somebody that, no, you really cannot suspend huge amounts of equipment from a ceiling designed in 1847. But none of those things actually determined whether an event was good. The people did. You can spend an obscene amount of money on a room. But, without the right people, you can still produce something with the atmosphere of a regional airport lounge. Or you can put twelve interesting people around a well-lit table, give them decent food and enough reason to stay, and suddenly nobody wants to leave.
The guest list mattered.
The networking problem
This is why I’ve always found the word networking slightly sinister. It suggests approaching another human being while quietly calculating their potential commercial value. LinkedIn has, occasionally, perfected this, and we’ve probably all been guilty of it. Have you ever received a message like:
“Hi Joe, I’ve been following your incredible journey…”
No you haven’t, Daniel. You sell accounting software. The best relationships don’t tend to start with an objective. Some become business relationships. Some produce introductions. Some become friendships. Some result in a thoroughly enjoyable dinner and absolutely nothing else apart from wine lip the next day.
Then AI arrived
AI will make an extraordinary number of things faster and easier.
There’s an argument that eventually we won’t think of AI as a product or service at all, but as a utility, more like electricity. You can, after all, assemble IKEA flat-pack furniture with one of those tiny silver hex keys. But a electricity-apowered DeWalt drill is a considerably more satisfying companion. I’m fascinated by it.
But when anyone can generate a perfectly respectable article, presentation or business plan in thirty seconds, perhaps the scarce commodity becomes something rather old-fashioned:
Having actually done something.
Having been somewhere.
Knowing somebody.
Having an opinion formed through experience rather than because a chatbot produced five bullet points about it.
Technology can introduce two people brilliantly, but it still can’t entirely replicate what happens when they sit opposite one another.
So, The Guest List...
That’s the idea behind this newsletter. It won't contain the seven morning habits of successful CEOs, because the internet appears to have that covered. Instead, The Guest List will be about people, business, hospitality, travel, interesting places and occasionally things I find ridiculous.
Some of it will come from my own experiences. Some will involve the many people I think are considerably more interesting than I am. Most of it will have a hint of dry british sarcasm. There isn’t really a grand strategy beyond that. Which, after years of producing events, feels rather appropriate.
Because you can obsess over the venue, the lighting, the menu and the design.
But ultimately: The room matters. The guest list matters more.
Republished from Joe’s Linkedin Newsletter: The Guest List
