An in-person event format for meeting new people through organized conversations
Participants know who they will meet and how to begin, while each conversation remains open and unscripted.
Many events are created with the expectation that participants will meet, talk, and get to know one another. The event may bring the right people into the same place, but the interactions between them are often left to develop on their own.
Once the event begins, participants are often left to navigate the room without a shared process for meeting others. They have to decide whom to approach, whether that person is open to talking, how to begin the conversation, what they might have in common, and when to move on. Each of these decisions is ordinary on its own. Taken together, however, they mean that every new conversation depends on someone taking the initiative and navigating that uncertainty.
As a result, the conversations that take place are often shaped by familiarity, proximity, confidence, and chance. Participants may remain with the first people they meet, find no comfortable opportunity to approach someone else, or leave without speaking to people they would have been interested in meeting. An event can therefore succeed in gathering people while only partly supporting the interaction it was intended to create.
Ooverlap was created to bridge that gap by adding structure to the transition from being in the same room to actually beginning a conversation.
Ooverlap organizes an event as a series of conversations. Over the course of the event, each participant has opportunities to meet and talk with different people.
The steps below describe the general structure:
On arrival, each participant receives a temporary identifier that represents them during the event, such as a badge with a color and a number. Participation does not require a name, contact information, or a public profile. This gives participants control over what personal information they share with others.
Using a web application built for this format, participants answer a questionnaire about their interests, activities, and hobbies. By selecting specific topics, they indicate what they are open to discussing with others during the event.
After participants complete the questionnaires, the system compares their responses and creates a series of conversation rounds. For each round, participants receive clear instructions showing where in the room to go and who to meet. Everyone in the same conversation sees the same meeting details at the same time.
For every conversation, the system provides a starting point, such as specific interests the participants have in common, a question related to those interests, or a broader discussion question. This helps the conversation begin while leaving the participants free to decide what to discuss and how the conversation develops.
Each round lasts for a set amount of time. When the time is up, the round ends for everyone at once, providing a natural point to move on to the next conversation.
Together, these steps turn the event into a series of conversations with a clear beginning and ending. Participants are not left to figure out who to approach, whether the other person is open to talking, how to begin, or when to move on. Those parts are handled by the format, while the conversations themselves remain open and unscripted.
The How It Works page describes in more detail how the format works in practice today: the full participant process, the web application, and how the rounds are organized.
My name is Vlad Pundik, and I am the creator and developer of Ooverlap. After a year of focused design and development, the project entered live testing in July 2026, with the first test event held in Omaha, Nebraska.
As testing continues, the current focus is on exploring the social settings where the format might naturally fit. These could include community meetups, university orientation events, and other gatherings where meeting new people is one of the reasons people attend.
If you would like to discuss the format, share relevant experience or feedback, or explore a possible setting for a future test, I would be glad to hear from you.
You can reach me at vlad@ooverlap.net