I’ve never really thrown a party.

Not the paper hat and cake type, but more the beer and conversation oriented type of party. Don’t get me wrong, when I was in LA many a party was thrown in my apartment, but it was never my doing and people were always looking at me with a “who invited this schmuck” type of face. Hardly conducive to an evening of enjoyment and relaxation.

So when we needed to plan a social event for the Linux User Group, I sent out an email that began as follows:

“We haven’t had a social meeting this month and there’s no better way to get engineers together than playing video games on the hot new console, which is why we’re having:

===Wii Doubles Tennis Tournament===

A series of 2 vs. 2 Wii Tennis matches which will determine the participants’ fortune in not just some silly game, but in LIFE ITSELF.”

We ended up with 9 two person teams and had to close down registration because, quite frankly, my apartment isn’t that big. Team T-Shirts were heavily encouraged and those teams that showed team spirit did significantly better than their counterparts, as can be seen from this photo just before the championship match between Team Bohemia and the Rockaholics:

In the end we had 25+ people all packed into my apartment, and it seems like everyone had a really good time, despite the close quarters. I’m looking forward to planning similar events in the (distant) future.