Why the party? Because I love parties. Since 7th grade, my first themed party was “Flamingo Flamenco.” Did it have anything to do with Flamenco dancing, no? However, this was in the days of Miami Vice. My room was pink and sea foam green, Miami Vice all the way. My 25th and 28th birthdays were the most memorable for the type of party that fills me with happiness. This was the inspiration. We are all so busy and so many are stressed out. My plan was bring, fun innocence back into the mix for a nice 5-7 hour break in our crazy lives. You won’t believe this, but I don’t have many pictures of our party.
What is a Jolene party? Well, there will be name tags, structure, lots of laughing and a moment where you might be out of your comfort zone with an outcome of a victory and a stronger bond to the other guests.
Saturday, February 25th, 5-11pm, 11pm-1am
Goal: Connect with friends and share them with each other
Objectives
- Bring back the fun from early days of the Fun Specialist
- Laugh a lot
- Share my “Singletude”
Invitations – used facebook events and posts 
- Not very effective
- Many of my friends from the past barely use Facebook
- However it was easy to post and not time consuming
- Posting on Facebook – people felt like they needed to be invited, unlike me who will invite myself
Guests
- No guests knew more than 3 people and most of them possibly knew one other person
Agenda for the evening
- Warm up the guests with the gorgeous view
- Balloon lessons
- After reaching a critical mass begin an activity
- Small groups – Commonalities – get to know 4 other people
- Improv Games
- Build a room
- Visual telephone
- Swing Dance Break before Dinner
- Exclusive Tour of the world famous women’s restroom for the fellas
- Dinner
- Fun Specialist Balloon Games
- Putting your Heads Together
- Moving Past the Kinks
- Tuba Ruba – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iymYNm5H5QE
- What’s that – Improv
- Visual Telephone – pantomiming the story
- Charade Mashup
11:00 Karaoke at Hula Hula
1:15 Retreat to hotel
I had a great time at my party. The “happy” is derived from seeing my friends from yonder meet those from over there. People who would probably never meet got to meet cool folks.
From 7th grade, I was hosting parties with different pockets of people who did not know each other. Yes, this was the beginning of my career in community building through fun (Fun Specialist and the Meeting Maximizer).
