For Dan Berger, inspiration came from attending a wedding.
"I wanted to see where the cute girls were. I didn't know where anyone else was going to be, it was a destination wedding," Berger says. "So i thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if i saw a published seating chart before i got to the wedding?"
That thought evolved into Social Tables, his Washington-based start up working its way into the event planning business --
Social Tables does everything from manage their guest lists, to the floor plans for events, to the seating charts. It also lets guests interact with each other before or after, based on where they're seated.
That last part is what puts "social" on the "table."
The platform draws data about guests from their social networks, so planners can seat people with common interests together, hopefully trading awkward icebreakers for more meaningful conversations.
Planners can publish a guest list before the event to give a head start on the "getting to know you process." And for those who feel that's too much information too soon, there's the option to publish the list after the party too, which Berger says more people seem to be opting for, even though he sees online and offline worlds merging.
As more people get more social, all that time online could potentially turn into more face time.
"I wanted to see where the cute girls were. I didn't know where anyone else was going to be, it was a destination wedding," Berger says. "So i thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if i saw a published seating chart before i got to the wedding?"
That thought evolved into Social Tables, his Washington-based start up working its way into the event planning business --
Social Tables does everything from manage their guest lists, to the floor plans for events, to the seating charts. It also lets guests interact with each other before or after, based on where they're seated.
That last part is what puts "social" on the "table."
The platform draws data about guests from their social networks, so planners can seat people with common interests together, hopefully trading awkward icebreakers for more meaningful conversations.
Planners can publish a guest list before the event to give a head start on the "getting to know you process." And for those who feel that's too much information too soon, there's the option to publish the list after the party too, which Berger says more people seem to be opting for, even though he sees online and offline worlds merging.
As more people get more social, all that time online could potentially turn into more face time.
