But each of us contains fractures within our identities. If you map the attendees at a conference (professional or otherwise) you will find some people who attend all the same events, all year round. But most people probably attend a variety of different events. They bring diversity into the event, even if they all have something in common. We are each at the boundaries between many crystals — inside ourselves. We orient those facets to match the people we are with at a given time, but we don’t necessarily match them deep down.

If you had some sort of unique identifiers for people at a set of conferences, you could map the overlap to ensure you were bringing enough diversity of ideas into your event.

Another thing to do is hold your event just before or after a bigger, more popular event, so that people who would not normally come to your conference might stumble upon it. And don’t let your door-staff be too vigilant. Sometimes uninvited guests can offer more than you expect.