Gatekeeping
Maggie Appleton
Gatekeeping gets a bad rap as being exclusive and unfriendly. It can be if you do it wrong. I’m certainly not suggesting you plan an exciting event, loudly yell about it on Twitter, and then go around telling most people they’re not invited. Have a little discretion here. Only people invited to the event should know it exists at all.
Why Gatekeep though? Because events are usually better when the people: a) have high shared context on a particular topic or interest, and b) are genuinely nice, kind, social people who will add to the experience and not detract from it. Everyone is more likely to have a good time in good company.
The best events I’ve been to were ones where the host hand-picked everyone. For example, one event only included people who had demonstrated significant dedication to a particular community, and were doing serious work in it. Everyone came in with a lot of common background knowledge, which allowed us to jump into discussions at a deeper level. When you’ve all read the same books, know the same people, and reference the same historical touchpoints, debates become much meatier. It’s probably what academia is like, but less soul-crushing and zero-sum.
Think about it as positive exclusion. Only inviting people who are deeply into X will give them stronger connections to one another, and they’ll have plenty talk about. Someone who doesn’t care about X wouldn’t want to come anyway.