Event Design
Quizzes are not quizzes. They're community rituals.
The hidden architecture behind participatory events. Why the room matters more than the poster, and how ritual creates the belonging that attendance alone never could.
A pub quiz is not a pub quiz. That is the thing most people who try to run one get wrong. They think the quiz is the product. The questions are what people came for. Get them right, and the night will work.
The questions are almost completely irrelevant.
What people come for is permission. Permission to sit in a room with strangers who care about the same things they do. Permission to be visibly enthusiastic about something niche without embarrassment. Permission to feel, for one night, that the thing they love is worth celebrating in public.
The quiz is a container. It is a ritual structure that gives people a reason to show up, a shared activity to organise around, and a social frame within which belonging can happen. The questions are just the mechanism. The belonging is the point.
The full essay is in progress. In the meantime, the NerdyNI page covers the practical architecture behind what a decade of running these events actually taught.
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