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Tea with strangers

teawithstrangers.com

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Re: Tea with strangers

#81

Post by ankitshah »

apandhi wrote: post #33

Last weekend, I went to an event hosted by Tea With Strangers called "Sunshine with Strangers" One of my favorite experiences ever. I've lived in NY my whole life, and that was the first time it truly felt like a community. It was over 100 people, and everyone was just open to meeting new people. 10/10 would go again. (P.S., The creator, Ankit, is awesome.)

Wow. This is amazing. Thanks so much for being so receptive to what we're trying to do. This is exactly what we're going for. Except for 8mn people in NYC, not just 100.

In time.

Re: Tea with strangers

#82

Post by ankitshah »

robertnealan wrote: post #19

I haven't personally been to one of their events but met the founder (Ankit) by chance a few months back through a mutual friend who has been to a few. Definitely seems like a genuine guy who's passionate about the idea and being rightfully cautious about expanding at a pace that ensures all their events are of high enough quality with good hosts to guide good conversation. If they're in your area definitely be sure…

Robert! So cool that we cross paths again on the internet. We're trying hard, but time will tell if we actually are hitting the nail on the head. Things have been good so far, but this is certainly a tough thing to grow effectively :).

Re: Tea with strangers

#83

Post by ankitshah »

youshaei wrote: post #52

The only thing more amazing that going to a TWS meetup is the thoughtfulness and care the founder, Ankit, puts into growing this community. Highly recommend checking out a tea time or letting a friend know who's in one of the host areas to join.

Making me blush. So unnecessary. But we're doing our best. Long road ahead if we want to create a real dent while staying mindful.

Re: Tea with strangers

#84

Post by ankitshah »

rza wrote: post #57

Great concept, my main grip with meeting people on say a site like Meetup is that every event has like 100 attendees and smaller ones are too niche when all I really want is to have a conversation with a few people.

I think 100 attendees isn't a horrible thing if they actually feel a sense of common ground. The real difficulty is eliminating the friction that exists between people in those large gatherings. Something we try really hard to accomplish, in between all the tea times we host, is create larger gatherings for the community and cities at large that welcome people in a way that gets rid of all notions that any attendee would need formalities to treat the others like the most amazing person in the room.

Re: Tea with strangers

#85

Post by ankitshah »

calvins wrote: post #30

This sounded interesting to me when I first loaded the page and imagined it was talking about virtual tea: me sipping tea at home while typing/conversing live with a random person halfway around the world. Is there such a thing? Turns out there are quite a few, as I just discovered with a quick search. Any HN readers have good experiences with any of them? I just tried one briefly, and had a string of disconnects aft…

We're all about high fives, hugs, eye contact, and being in person. Attention and trust are really important variable in our f(human connection).

Re: Tea with strangers

#87

Post by ankitshah »

j2kun wrote: post #58

I hosted a tea this afternoon and it was really relaxed. We talked about everything from our dream jobs to improv shakespeare to what makes math beautiful. We swapped some stories, drank tea, and after two hours just said goodbye and left. Can't wait to do it again!

Golden.

Re: Tea with strangers

#89

Post by ankitshah »

icesoldier wrote: post #21

I am very much in love with this idea. There's a chicken-and-egg problem, though, where I live in a city that I doubt will get a host spontaneously (Amarillo, TX) but I'd want to attend one of these to get a feel for it before I'm willing to host one myself. I wonder if there's an opportunity there, to have a sort of "training materials" that can better bootstrap a host in this kind of situation.

Great point about the chicken and egg problem. We try really hard to ensure we have preexisting interest in a city before launching, and we make sure we have a core group of hosts to lead the charge in expanding, spreading the word, and, of course, hosting tea time. Most important, however, is that the hosts actually feel a sense of togetherness when this happens, so we place a huge emphasis on a host community before anything else.

Re: Tea with strangers

#90

Post by ankitshah »

alain94040 wrote: post #8

As an ex founder of similar ideas, good luck to you. This needs to happen. I'm just curious: doesn't tea give you a British angle?

Perhaps for those who are a little more Anglophilic :)

But generally, no. Haven't had any trouble on this front, thankfully!

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