It’s time for the airing of pet peeves. Mine is invitations. Later, I’ve got two guest posts from Mary Gardiner (frequent commenter here and LinuxChik (is that the singular?) extraordinaire) about accepting and/or blowing off invitations. But for now, how to invite people to stuff.

First, let’s cover the idea of those websites like evite that help people send out invitations to all their friends and collect RSVPs. I don’t think I’d be out of line to say that most geeks are pretty suspicious of these. I’m not sure about evite in particular, but I know that some of the early invitation services used to collect email addresses for $DEITY knows what purpose, and we were all pretty wary of them at the time. These days we seem a bit more relaxed — perhaps we’ve just given up on avoiding spam, and rely on our Bayesian spam filters — but speaking as one geek, I would rather not get an invitation this way.

So if you’re sending out an invitation, you should probably just use plain email. If it’s a small group of attendees — say less than ten — you can easily enough just Cc them all. Or perhaps there’s already a mailing list you can use. If you need to send to a huge list, however, you might want to either Bcc everyone, or whip up a quick script in the language of your choice to individually email everyone on the list. This will avoid the risk of having invitees accidentally reply to an enormous group of strangers. (Script examples welcome in comments; anyone got a good one-liner?) Set your Reply-To: header to you+party@example.com if your MTA knows how to deal with that (most do, including gmail), and filter it into its own folder, to make counting RSVPs easier.

So, as for the invitation itself. I’m not going to go all formal on you here. If you’re writing an invitation to a traditional wedding, you’re out of scope. I’m talking about invitations to housewarming parties, dinners with friends, or hackathons. It doesn’t really matter what terms you use to express yourself, as long as you cover the following points:

What is the event? If it’s a party, what kind of party? Are you celebrating a particular occasion, or just getting some people together for fun? It’s OK to say it’s for no particular occasion. In fact that will save your friends from wondering whether they missed something, should’ve bought a gift, or whatever. If your event is something that people might not have heard of before, like a BarCamp or Code Dojo, either explain it in the invitation or link to a webpage that does.

Where is it? Give the address. Don’t assume that everyone has it already. If you’re advertising your event in a public forum and it’s held at your own home and you want to preserve your privacy, say something like “At my house in Springfield — email me for directions”. It’s not a bad idea to include a contact phone number in case people get lost on the way. You could also provide public transport information: “We’re on the red line” or “Take the 99 bus.”

When is it? State a start time and, if people might drop in at any point, an end time. “BBQ at my place Sunday afternoon 2pm-6pm” is much better than just saying “Sunday” or even “Sunday afternoon”. “Eveningish” is not a time, either.

Combining “when” and “where”, if you’re proposing some kind of online event, state the timezone in full. Don’t just say “8pm Eastern”; international participants may find themselves wondering “eastern what?” A delta from GMT might also be helpful: “8pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT +10)”

What do you expect people to bring? Food? Drinks? Presents? Laptops? Board games? Be up-front about this, and save them from wondering. If it’s a traditional gift-giving occasion such as a birthday and you don’t expect gifts, it’s not a bad idea to say so: “BYO drinks, but no gifts please”. On the flip side, what will be provided? For geeky events in particular, let people know about network access, power points, projectors, and so forth. For other events, you might say “I’ll provide snacks and non-alcoholic drinks” or “No need to bring anything; I’ll arrange pizza and beer.”

Who do you want to attend? If you want everyone who might possibly be interested to show up, then say something like “Please forward this invitation to anyone else who might be interested.” If you don’t mind a few extra heads but want to keep it under control, say, “Partners welcome, but please let me know if you want to bring anyone else.” If you can really only handle a small group, say something like, “The venue is really tiny, so we can’t fit any extras in. If you really want to bring someone, let me know and I’ll keep them in mind if there are any dropouts.” It’s always better to specify than not to. If your friends have kids, it’s not a bad idea to let them know whether the event or venue is kid-friendly.

So, now an example.

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How not to do it:

Hi guys, I’m having a games thing at my place on Saturday night. Who’s up for it?

Better:

I’m organising a board/card game night at my place on Saturday. We’ll be kicking off around 7pm. Bring any games you’ve got.

Best:

I’m organising a board/card game night for this weekend.

When: Saturday 26th May, 7pm til as late as it goes
Where: My place, 123 Flanders St, Springfield (it’s on the 42 bus line)

Please bring any board or card games you think we might enjoy. We already have Settlers of Catan and Give Me The Brain and Scrabble. We’ll be ordering pizza but BYO beer etc if you want to. Also, if you want to invite any other friends, just let me know. Crash space is available.

If you need it, my phone number is 555-1234 or I’ll be checking email up til 7pm that night.

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As you can see, it doesn’t have to be formal or complicated. Just tell people everything they need to know, and save everyone having to put up with six spamtastic rounds of emailed clarifications.