The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

by Priya Parker

That evening there would be two presenters, and each would get a roughly forty-five-minute session with the House. For the first five minutes, each one would make a presentation to the room about a challenge. We would then have two or three minutes to ask clarifying questions about the challenge, and the entrepreneur would answer them. Then everyone would have one minute to give their “first thoughts.” (You can ask questions during this period, but the entrepreneur can’t answer them.) And the rest of the time is a dialogue between the House and the entrepreneur. The moderator makes sure that everyone has a chance to talk and guides us on what makes good feedback: examples of past successes and failures, contacts because “we want to extend tonight into the future,” and books and articles. At the end of the evening, we would have the Reveal, in which we would each share who we are and what we actually do for a living.