Notes from a Reunion: Tech, Teamwork, and Showing Up

For the past couple of years, I’ve been helping organize the Somewhat Reunion - a get-together for folks involved in Queen’s Drama in the early 2000s. I started off just volunteering when the organizers asked for help, and… well, I ended up getting pretty deeply involved: setting up the website, managing the budget and ticket sales, and eventually taking over as chair when the original chair needed to step back.

We wrapped up the event this past weekend, and it went really well. Great turnout, great vibes, and lots of kind words from people who came. I also ended up making some real friendships with the committee - most of whom were total strangers when we started.

While it’s still fresh in my head, I wanted to jot down some notes about the tech side of organizing it. This is partly for anyone else doing something similar - and partly for myself, if I ever en up participating in another one of these.

Website #

The website was the first thing I worked on. I went with WordPress, and honestly, I think it was the right call:

• You get a domain included, which makes the whole thing feel a bit more legit
• People can subscribe to updates and get posts by email
• It supports multiple authors
• Photo galleries are easy
• Lots of themes and customization options
• It’s relatively user-friendly
• It’s about $100 a year, which felt reasonable

That said, customizing WordPress was kind of a pain. I had a hard time getting things to look the way I wanted, and I still find the admin interface pretty clunky. (This is why I moved my own site from WordPress to Hugo.)

But for this use case? It worked well. I don’t regret the choice.

Organizing Stuff #

I run an IT department for work, but I started out as a project manager - so I definitely had opinions about organizing things.

I started out using Notion, hoping to store all our plans, budgets, notes, contact lists, etc. in one place. I really like Notion - the way pages can nest inside other pages, and how you can view things as boards or calendars or tables - it just makes sense to me.

But I realized pretty quickly that Notion has a learning curve. It’s great once you’re used to it, but it can be kind of intimidating if you’re not used to it. And since everyone was doing this on their own time, asking them to learn a new tool didn’t feel fair.

So we pivoted to Google Sheets and Docs. One big Sheet with tabs for tasks, contact lists, budgets, and so on. One shared Doc for minutes and any drafts. Not fancy, but very effective. Everyone knew how to use them already, and we spent less time explaining things and more time actually getting stuff done.

(Also, partway through, Google Docs rolled out document tabs, which let us organize everything in one file with tabs for different topics. Super handy.)

Ticket Sales #

Our main event was a ticketed dinner with speeches, dancing, and karaoke. There were also two free events, and people could pick and choose what they wanted to attend.

We didn’t want to deal with e-transfers or cheques, so we went with an online ticketing platform. Since we had a tight budget - and planned to donate any surplus - we wanted something with low fees.

I chose Tixtree. They have super low per-ticket fees, no charges for free events, and they plant a tree for every ticket sold, which is a nice touch.

The interface was great - easy to set up, customizable, and you can collect extra info from attendees (we asked for grad year, pronouns, meal choice, etc.). The dashboard was helpful too - it showed ticket counts and revenue in a clear way.

The only downside: getting data out of Tixtree was harder than I’d like. Their CSV exports are messy, and there’s no API, which made it hard to integrate with anything else. But honestly? Not a dealbreaker. I’d still recommend them.

Budgeting #

I handled the budgeting too. At first I tried tracking everything in our main Google Sheet, but it got messy fast.

I ended up using Airtable, which is like a spreadsheet with superpowers. I used it to track budgets for each area, record expenses, and keep tabs on who needed to be reimbursed. It also made it easier to import data from Tixtree and clean it up - especially when I wanted a one-line-per-attendee view instead of one line per ticket.

I even built a little check-in interface in Airtable’s mobile app so committee members could check people in at the door. It mostly worked, though I wish I’d made it easier to edit things on the fly - we had a few last-minute changes that were awkward to deal with.

I paid for Airtable Pro for a few months to get access to automation features, but I didn’t charge that back to the reunion since it was mostly a “me” thing. To keep costs down, I set up a shared login so others could use the mobile app - not ideal in a professional setting, but fine here.

If I had to do it again? I’d probably just use Google Sheets. Airtable was cool, but maybe more than we needed.

Communications #

At work, I live in Slack. I love how fast it is - no subject lines, no weird email threads, just real-time conversation. So I pushed for us to use Discord, which is sort of like Slack’s slightly more chaotic cousin.

Discord’s built for gaming communities, but it’s actually great for small groups. You get multiple channels for different topics, and you can hop into voice or video calls without needing a Zoom link or a meeting ID. The video quality isn’t amazing, but it’s fine. And it’s free.

Once people got used to it, Discord really took off. It became our main hub for all planning discussions. We probably could’ve used WhatsApp or something, but having separate channels (e.g. one for promotions, one for money, one for the website) helped a lot.

What It All Meant #

At the end of the day, the tech stuff was just a means to an end. What really stuck with me was the people. There was no formal hiring process for the committee - it just came together through shared interest and momentum. But the group that formed was kind, motivated, and fun to work with.

For me, this ended up being one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in a long time. Not because it was flashy or high-profile, but because it was about building something meaningful for others - for the joy of it.

I wasn’t doing this for money, or for my résumé, or even just for fun (even though I ended up having fun). It was about making something nice happen. And there’s real satisfaction in that.

If you ever get a chance to help out with a community project - a reunion, a non-profit, a club, whatever - I say go for it. You don’t need to have the “right” skills. You just need to show up.