Someone stands up in a bar with a slide deck and spends three minutes hyping up their single friend. That’s Pitch-a-Friend, and it’s fun and something of a new phenomenon. What I wanted to talk to my friend and colleague, Melissa Schipke, about is the infrastructure that lets something that playful run in more than a thousand cities.
(Watch the full-length version on YouTube - 54 mins)
Melissa is CMAC’s engagement metrics lead and the founder of Tassl, so she thinks in systems. When Pitch-A-Friend took off, she didn’t wing it. She built onboarding, a resource portal volunteers can pull from and contribute back to, and a clear blueprint so a chapter in a brand-new city runs like the ones before it. The fun is the front end. The reason it scales is the unglamorous stuff behind it.
She’s always asking “how much tech is too much tech,” which I really appreciate in this moment we’re living in.
Big Themes This Week
What lets a light-hearted experience scale is unglamorous infrastructure: onboarding, shared resources, and a repeatable blueprint.
Ask how much tech is too much. Technology should help a room connect, not replace the face-to-face that is the actual point.
Start with the audience, not the event. Decide who it’s for and where they already gather, then design something worth showing up for.
Team Discussion Questions
Where are we spending on the invite but not on the experience?
What in our regional playbook could become a real blueprint, so a new chapter isn’t reinventing the wheel?
If we designed an event around what alumni actually want, not what’s easy for us, what would change?
