Trivia Nights: NYC’s Way of Building Community

I received the most incredible Email this week.

As those who follow this blog know, TrivWorks has recently built upon our core competency producing trivia team building and corporate entertainment events in NYC to produce large-scale trivia nights which are open to the public as well. Our most recent such event was this past Monday’s “Why We Love NYC” event at The Bell House – which, like our previous events, quickly sold out at 300 attendees.

Back in early February when this event went on sale, I received an Email from someone whom I will simply call “J.” She had managed to purchase a ticket before the event sold out, but didn’t have anybody to go with; having never been to an event such as this, she was understandably concerned about what would happen if she simply arrived by herself.

In my response, I told her that while most people do arrive in their own teams, we would be encouraging smaller teams to join together, in order to help streamline the scoring process (we’ve been averaging 70 teams per event – which, as you can imagine, is quite a scoring challenge!). The crowds at these large-scale NYC trivia nights, while competitive, have been characteristically friendly and jubilant for Brooklyn trivia night enthusiasts, and as such, I told her that I was completely confident she would find a team who would be happy to let her join them. If for whatever reason this wasn’t the case, I wrote, come find me, and I will personally see to it that she is situated with a team before the event starts.

On Tuesday, the day after our event, I received the following Email:

Hi David,

I just want to say thank you so much for putting these events together. Even though I ended up attending by myself, I made new friends with the team I joined and I had an AMAZING time. SO much fun. I love trivia events. Even if I get something wrong I always see it as an opportunity to learn something new.

I plan to attend the next one in April too, hopefully then I’ll be there with a full group!

Thanks again,

 – J

Think that made me feel good?

For those of us who live in New York City, we know that the Big Apple can be as incredibly difficult place to meet people – insanely ironic, given that there are 8 million of us here, and we live on top of each other. Outside of the daily trek between our apartments and workplaces, being a New Yorker can actually be quite isolating, and finding people whom we share interests with and feel comfortable around can be a real challenge.

The above Email really hit home for me, and reminded me how trivia nights are a great way to build community. By creating a fun, competitive atmosphere which naturally fosters socialization and teamwork, trivia events really are an effective way to make new friends – and, as J said, an opportunity to learn something new.