Sparking Experiences of Joy
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
We once knew a guy named Keith Browning.
Well, sorta. He filed a petition, completed the required forms, and received a court order to officially change his name.
To what, you might ask?
To Keith Sparkjoy, of course.
Why, you might wonder?
Because he realized his life's mission was to sparkjoy - and it was as simple as that.
Sometime around 2011 I found myself at a tech afterparty in Boston, at the now shuttered Les Zygomotes. A small crew had gathered; between drinks and bar snacks, the conversation turned to the heightened cool factor surrounding startups.
"Don't you think we should throw a tech prom," a blonde woman I'd never met - and likely ten years my junior - offered. "Because we were all outsiders in high school, and probably weren't invited to a real prom. Seems it's our time now."
The startup dweebs all agreed: A Tech Prom would be an amazing idea. Then the coolest startup wonk of them all, Cort Johnson, chipped in, "Hey, you just sold your company, BzzAgent, you should sponsor it."
Rarely slow on the shuffle, I snapped back with a joke, "I only sponsor things with my name on them." Then - it being 10 pm and past my Seasoned Entrepreneur bedtime - I went home, fell fast asleep and forgot the conversation ever happened.
That is until 8 AM the next morning, when the Boston Globe's Scott Kirsner called.
"What's the Dave Balter Tech Prom?" he spat.
Turns out that woman I'd never met would be my future wife, Sarah Hodges. And Sarah had gone home that night and, with friend Jen Lum, deviously, created a website, twitter handle, and facebook page for none other than The Dave Balter Tech Prom.
A small committee formed, and together we raised $80,000 from local sponsors like SVB and Wayfair, and we threw an open-bar, food-to-the-gills, dance-your-face-off, absolute rager at the Fairmont Copley in Boston for 450 startup friends. The fire marshall eventually showed, only to be sweet talked into letting the party run its course.
I think, probably, Keith would be proud: We sparked a whole boatload of joy that night.
Sarah I married in 2017. For our honeymoon, we floated the tab for twenty of our friends to join us in Mallorca. There, we rented a fifty foot catamaran and sailed crystal blue waters, stopping for all you can eat sushi, firework sizzlers, popped bottles and table dancing at Nikki Beach. One night, amongst the three houses in the countryside we'd rented, the group dropped acid; a private chef arrived to cook a magnificent paella in a massive 100 cm pan. The group sat, flummoxed and giggly, as the paella writhed and chuckled back at us; the chef, thinking we considered his food a joke, swore furiously at us in Spanish and took off, leaving his entire cooking apparatus behind.
The Paella. The Boat. The countryside. Friends. Laughter.
Joy was, indeed, sparked.
But the real party arrived a few months down the road in September, when we hosted Sarah & Dave's Untethered Ball (& Chain) for hundreds of friends and family. I refused to call it a wedding party; it was merely a chance to just boogie down and get high.
There was a petting zoo with monkeys and foxes and even a baby kangaroo. An unlimited self serve candy bar. Tattoo artists and a famous DJ - shirts and posters were gifted, plus a toy set of golden handcuffs to…well, to inspire any type of fun one could imagine.
Years later, Sarah and I spoke with our family office about how we wanted to spend the dweeb-geek-nerd-freak money we earned from building startups and investing in tech companies.
We casually sniped a page from Keith Sparkjoy's book:
Sarah & Dave's mission:
To create memorable experiences for ourselves and the people we love
Which, obviously, brings us to last week's The Thing With Eggy in Vermont. Did we throw a party? Yes. Why yes, we did.
Did we host 300+ eggy fans and close friends?
Uh huh.
Was it magical and fulfilling and a gift and a reason to feel fortunate about the possibilities; about the need for connection and the ability to instigate people's happiness? Is it such a riddle as to why?
It shouldn't really be.
The answer is simple: Don't forget to spark joy.
Don't forget to create experiences for yourself and those you love. Don't forget that everyone deserves to have fun; that the rain may come, but the sun can always shine.
Anyone can take the chance, make the move, create the space, and do the thing - and the result will pay a lifetime of dividends.
A few more recent writings:
I ❤️ Tour
The Dee
The Psyche of the Men’s Haircut
A lesson in Assholery
Office Snacks
Full Archive Here