How I Planned My First Social Meetup to Make New Friends in Singapore
I moved to Singapore in January barely knowing anyone, and found it hard to make friends naturally — I knew I had to make an effort to find friends on this tropical island. I was bound to my remote work and mostly worked in coffee shops, where I didn’t want to talk to strangers and my laptop screen was my best friend. Making friends have always been done through organizations, through work, or through mutual friend circles.
After realizing I needed to make new friends, I took it upon myself to reach out to a few meetups that held similar interests or were within my age group and asked if I could help lead an event. I guess for my own selfish purpose, I wanted to hike the MacRitchie Trail and make new friends — what other better way to plan a meetup?
I’ve realized that everyone wants to attend events, but no one wants to plan it. It’s time consuming, a bit stressful, and everyone looks to you to lead the event. Event planning sounds simple, but you’d be surprised by what a little initiative can do.
After getting the green light from a millennial meetup group, I decided to plan a MacRitchie Treetop Walk + Brunch event. I’ve had experience planning tech meetups, so had an idea of some best practices.
A few things you should know as a meetup planner:
- You should plan the event a month and a half in advance to get more exposure and promote the event.
- Expect like 10–20% of RSVPs to actually show up. Unfortunately, with free meetups, people don’t feel obligated to show up or update their RSVP. Don’t feel bad — it just happens. Once you plan often and there’s a following, you’ll gain traction from this.
- Make things super clear. Things are always interpreted differently, and sometimes you literally just have to spell it out for people. Make sure instructions on where to meet and what to expect are crystal clear.
Have a defined outline for your meetup page:
- Add a small intro blurb of what the event is and what to expect.
- Clearly state date, meeting time and location. We were meeting at a large park, so I added a linked specific google pin drop to an entrance.
- Add in other additional details about the event itself that may be interesting and useful.
- If you need a disclaimer, definitely add it as a security measure. We had 43 RSVPs and I got nervous because it was a bigger number than I prepared for. Because of the coronavirus, I added some info surrounding precautions that should be taken.
How to Help New People Feel at Ease
Meeting new people can be scary. I personally hate small talk, but have gotten over the fear and just ran with it. It’s the small, seemingly useless things you know about people that start conversations and bridge friendships.
So at the beginning of the meetup, we started off with an icebreaker once everyone arrived. Say your name and state one interesting fact — this helped us associate name and fact within the group, especially since there were 12 of us. It helped tremendously, and aided in starting side conversations as we were walking on the hike. “I remember you said you just moved from the UK. Whereabout?” or “You love boardgames? What type of boardgames do you play?”
Another thing you can do is make sure intros happen naturally, and you can help others intro themselves. “Have you met so-and-so?” or “Oh, that’s awesome that you like board games! Rahul is an avid player too.”
Keep Everyone Connected
After the hike, we all exchanged info and added ourselves into a group chat on Whatsapp. Because of this meetup, all 12 of us got to know each other fairly quickly and all agreed that we’d be happy to attend future events. It was a pretty wholesome group. We already have a few ideas of new meetups in the mix, such as getting korean bbq, board game night, and doing another hiking trip. In some weird way, we all bonded over being dehydrated and exhausted in the sweltering, humid heat of Singapore and hiking for four consecutive hours — life is magical and my calves are now super toned.
I also find that if you plan these things consistently, you almost create an ongoing cadence of having friends meet up. Then in my opinion, it blooms into a community, as reoccurring attendees get to know each other better and newcomers continue to add color to the group.
If you plan a meetup, let me know how it goes! Hope this was useful.
Emily is a US expat currently living in Singapore to learn about the tech communities growing in Asia. She has worked 4+ years in dev relations, community management, and event marketing within the tech and travel industry. Her time at OmniSci, Google and Booking.com gave her cross-functional expertise. In her free time, she runs the volunteer community initiatives for TEDxSanFrancisco, as well as promote and blog on the importance of financial literacy and education.
