Rogers TV Events

So as most of you may or may not have noticed, we have been doing a few events with Rogers TV over the past few weeks. There were some of you who I spoke with at last weeks Mix n Mingle who said that they did not sign up for some of those events with Rogers TV because they did not want to be on TV. And as we have a few more events coming up with them I just wanted to clarify something for you all, just because Rogers TV is going to be there does not mean that you will be filmed. You can still participate in these events and just opt out of the filming portion.
Also the people who have participated in the past events with Rogers have absolutely had a blast, and have told us that having the cameras around aren't as nerve wracking as they thought it would be.
The reason I write this is because Next month we are going to be hosting a mix n mingle that Rogers TV will be filming at, we do not want people to be discouraged when they find out Rogers is going to be there. Our last mix n mingle we had around 61 people show up, if we were filming then there is no way rogers would have been able to get EVERYONE on camera. Rogers is just there to see how our events work, and film a few interactions between people, you can completely 100% opt out of being filmed specifically at these events.

If anyone has any other questions regarding this please feel free to email us at toronto@dinnerworks.ca

I hope to see you all at our next Mix n Mingle with Rogers TV.

Check out this blurb in OK magazine about group dating

Check out the number 1 way to find love in OK magazine, they mention our good friends over at 8at8 whose dinners are like our very own Dinnerworks Signature Dinners.


"#1 Eight is great. Unconventional daters may want to test-drive the Eight at Eight Dinner Club, where singles can mingle without stress. "Members meet in groups of four single men and four single women for an evening of stimulating conversation, good food and a chance to find romance," says company president Sarah Kathryn Smith. "The relaxed group setting relieves the pressure of one-on-one dates." Best of all: Eight at Eight boasts a track record of 100 marriages! Visit www.8at8.com to learn more"

Dinnerworks... the spice of life? Check out this article in the Star

Dinnerworks. For dinnerworks proprietor Susan Kates, food is a fun way to approach matters of the heart. What could be more engaging, figures this food maven, than going out to a funky restaurant on Queen St. West and trying out new dishes while enjoying the company of like-minded singles?

"Our focus is on life enhancement and personal growth," says the ebullient Kates. "We organize four events a week — mostly dinners, but also occasional wine tastings, cooking classes and special trips."

Kates runs dinnerworks in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. She credits her Hungarian father — who had a store on Spadina, selling fabric and ladies' wear — with her entrepreneurial spirit and love of food.

"I was always cooking next to my Dad, he was a marvellous cook — old-style Hungarian soups, beet borscht, bean soup."

A graduate of the University of Waterloo in urban planning, Kates spent 10 years organizing special events for various shopping centre companies. She taught cooking, ran a small catering business and got involved with dinnerworks in 2001. When the owner wanted to sell, Kates bought the business in 2003. It's a great way, she says, to do "practice dating" without "getting stuck" with a stranger you're not interested in.

She cautions her clients: "Don't think that one dinner will be the answer to your dreams. You can arrive with such high expectations that you're unable to live in the moment. Leave your baggage at the door. It's the people who are open and optimistic who attract attention. Those who are jaded and depressed set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ultimately, it's all about how you feel about yourself."

Our very own Tod, from the Relationship challenge, will conduct a wine tasting at a dinnerworks cooking class on March 23. Be forewarned, all the women's spaces are taken; there's only room for men.

To read the full article click here http://www.heartscanada.com/article_choices.htm

Last Nights Autmn Mix n Mingle was a success

Thanks to all who came out last night for our Autumn Mix n Mingle that we Co-hosted with 25dates.com! There were about 61 people who showed up, one of our biggest yet :) It was at Veni Vidi Vici, the venue was amazing big thanks to David and his staff for making everything run smoothly.

The Wall St Journal writes about Group Dating

Even The Wall St Journal Knows that Group Dating is where it's at, Check out this article.

By HANNAH SELIGSON To the untrained eye and ear, the scene of young professionals sipping cocktails with a steady stream of popular music playing in the background seemed like a typical Thursday night at Forum, a trendy Union Square watering hole for those born around, say, 1983. The only clues that there could be something out of the ordinary taking place were a bright orange sign that said "Ignighter" and a large supply of blue drink tickets that were cycling through the crowd. No, this wasn't a corporate morale booster, an alumni gathering or a charity event. It was a group date.

Group-dating -- think of it as double-dating on steroids or as Facebook in the flesh -- is making a noticeable blip on the dating radar, as a younger generation turns away from such courtship rituals as the blind date. Even Web sites like e-Harmony and Match.com have become passé. Instead of just going out alone or in pairs, a bunch of people -- roughly equal numbers of each sex -- engage in a social activity together. One group of three or four friends meets up with another.

Group-dating plays to the tastes of a generation that's become disillusioned with Internet dating sites, particularly the lies that users tell about themselves online; the futile process of trying to meet people at bars; and blind dates that feel like job interviews. Instead, these young men and women want to have their dating lives simulate the way they meet people in real life: through concentric circles of friends. Especially for recent college graduates who suddenly find themselves without the social anchors of a campus, going out on "a random," as Internet dates are referred to, is like jumping into a pool of sharks.

Ignighter.com, a free site geared toward 20-somethings (their median age is 24), was created in 2007 to solve these problems. The site is the brainchild of Daniel Osit, 26, and Adam Sachs, 25, who found themselves bereft of any appealing dating options when they graduated from college. "Our social lives were so routine, and we weren't meeting anyone. We wanted to come up with a way to meet new people and still be with our friends," Mr. Sachs said.

On Ignighter.com, groups are formed through an ambassador -- a kind of social director -- who invites his or her friends to join. The group is given a name, a members' photo is montaged together from the individual ones that have been submitted (creating a sort of artificial group picture), information about the group is filled in, and a link to everyone's Facebook profile is inserted. Then, the dating begins. And this is where it becomes a bit different from your typical singles event. Groups go out with other groups. Any individual in the group can ask another group out on a date, but everyone in the group goes, eliminating some of the awkwardness that plagues singles events.

Group-dating came on the scene in 1998 with 8at8, a service that sets up dinner dates with four men and four women and now has 25,000 members in six major metropolitan areas. Then came the Internet and, with it, sites like TeamDating.com, which has a concept similar to Ignighter's. TeamDating's 40,000 members are concentrated mostly in urban areas and field teams that average three people. Ignighter's 10,000 users also mostly hail from big cities.

IamFreeTonight.com allows its 70,000 users to post double-date and group-date listings. Meet New People, a Facebook dating application, has more than three million users who post when they are free to "hang out" and RSVP to group gatherings.
The groups often try activities a little more adventurous than dinner and a movie, perhaps because there is less one-on-one pressure to impress than on a traditional date. Participants go bowling, take a hiking trip or try a night at the Philharmonic.

The concept, of course, is nothing new. "There's been a long history of group-dating in this country," says Beth Bailey, the author of "From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America." "In the 1920s, people went to 'petting parties,' where young people made out in the presence of their peers. It was a way of saying 'I belong to youth culture.'"

While the sexual license of "petting parties" shocked Jazz Age parents, by the 1940s and 1950s group-dating was encouraged for reasons of propriety. "Parents wanted to keep their daughters from being alone with a man, since having a child out of wedlock would ruin your life back then," says Ms. Bailey.

And, of course, many religious communities have continued to promote group-dating throughout the 20th century. "Group-dating is the only kind of dating we encourage up until about the age of 20," says David Pack, the Pastoral General of the Restored Church of God, in Wadsworth, Ohio. "It's a lot easier to maintain barriers with other people around."

But there are others who worry about what this trend means for young people. Dan Cere, the author of "The Experts' Story of Courtship," a report put out in 2000 by the Institute for American Values, is concerned that this practice is part of a "hanging out and hooking up" culture. If a group date ends in men and women pairing off to engage in some kind of sexual activity, he says, it "may feed into a male tendency toward loose, noncommitted sexual relationships with women."

But talk to women who group date and you find that they are not looking for no-strings-attached relationships. Just as group-dating protected women of the Greatest Generation, many today see it as a shield. "I don't know how willing I would be to go on a date with a stranger," explains Jacqueline Malan, 25, who has been in two groups set up through Ignighter.

Ray Doustdar, the co-founder of TeamDating, says his most positive feedback isn't from men giddy about doubling, tripling or quadrupling their odds on date night; it's from female participants who are relieved to have found a certain amount of security. The guys, meanwhile, see the perks as social lubrication and a fleet of ready wingmen.

In many ways, 21st-century group-dating is a confluence of its past iterations. It's become a way for people to identify with youth culture, the Facebook generation's rebellion against the traditional dating model, and a means for women to dial down the pressure of today's hypersexualized dating scene. All while increasing the odds that these faces in a crowd will find the right someone.

Ms. Seligson is the author of "New Girl on the Job: Advice From the Trenches."

Inside The World of Matchmaking- Check us out in the Toronto Star!

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a matchmaker.

That's what Susan Kates is hoping to hear from people willing to pay $750 to learn the skills and secrets of her trade – and to get a Certified Matchmaker certificate, suitable for framing.

Kates, CMM, is well-known among singles in the city for DinnerWorks, a meet 'n' eat ('n' maybe mate) program, in which she brings groups of singles together to check each other out while eating dinner at local restaurants.

Kates also works one-on-one as a personal matchmaker, bringing together couples with the potential for compatibility and chemistry.

Training other people in Toronto to do that is Kates' latest venture. As an executive board member of the New York-based Matchmaking Institute, she's offering the first local training session sanctioned by the institute on March 8.

"Can you learn to be a matchmaker? That's an interesting question," says Northwestern University psychologist Eli Finkel, who researches dating and relationships. "It's possible if, with enough training, you can learn to see through some of the facades and that what people need is not necessarily what they want."

Matchmaker wannabes will learn interviewing skills, how to really listen to clients, how to look beyond the obvious, how to coach clients through getting to know each other, how to draw up contracts, an understanding of the industry and how to deal with checklists – those shopping lists single people compose.

"Most people have a list," says Kates. And they're pretty predictable.

"A woman who is 33 will say, `He must be two years older, 6 feet tall, good-looking and a doctor or a lawyer.'"

In all her matchmaker wisdom, and with her database in mind, Kates may suggest, "How about a 38-year-old MBA?"

Kates says it's also important to understand how essential it is that "two people are `in the same place' at the same time."

"This couple was dating and having a great time," she says about two who had met online, "but he hadn't actually left his marriage emotionally. On paper, there was a lot of compatibility. On (dating website) eHarmony, they would've got a hit from each other. But he wasn't ready. She was."

The woman signed up for Kates' service.

Clearly, singles willing to spend in the range of $1,000 to $10,000 for the services of a personal, professional matchmaker are more serious than those who sign on to a dozen dating sites. Matchmakers' clients want to cut to the chase.

Sites such as Match.com and Lavalife.com are the eBay of love for anyone with a detailed shopping list.

"We allow for custom searches," explains Kim Hughes, editor-in-chief of Lavalife.com. "If you're looking for a Cantonese-speaking Lutheran who finished university, is non-smoking and is a Virgo, we can let you find that person."

But that person may not turn out to be "the one."

"Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner?" is the question investigated in a paper in the current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Research at speed-dating events led author Finkel and his Northwestern University colleague Paul Eastwick to conclude that "people may lack introspective awareness of what influences their judgments and behaviour."

Speaking by phone from Chicago, Finkel confirms, "Some of the research shows people may not have great insight into what they themselves may desire in a romantic partner."

That disconnect has resulted in some dating sites evolving into matchmaking sites.

They've gone beyond the shopping list approach and adopted the scientific approach, offering "algorithms of love."

That's a fancy social science phrase for working backwards. At eHarmony, research and development vice-president Galen Buckwalter and his team looked at the pattern of profiles of husbands and wives in successful marriages.

"Who knew that love and science would be so compatible?" is the slogan of eHarmony Labs, which has a scientific advisory board, uses "a wide range of new assessment instruments" and boasts "academic-level research."

The result: a patented Compatibility Matching System. Clients answer 258 personality questions and the program picks matches for them.

It's been so successful – eHarmony claims a whopping 100-plus weddings a day – that two other dating sites, Match.com (with Chemistry.com) and Perfectmatch.com have developed their own academic-designed algorithms. (An algorithm is a set of rules used to solve mathematical problems, especially with a computer.)

Finkel says it's plausible that eHarmony has developed a strong algorithm because it has collected so much data. But because the system hasn't been peer reviewed in a scientific journal, "the scientific community doesn't know if it's valid," he says.

No matter the method of putting two people together, once the must-have attributes and deal-breakers have been sorted out, the compatibility and values issues accounted for and the physical and personality preferences filtered, nearly everyone except the hardcore scientists agree that a love match is as unpredictable as, well, cupid's arrow.

Finkel, however, begs to differ.

"There's no reason to believe it's alchemy or metaphysical," he insists. "It follows lawful processes."

---

Know thyself

Make Me A Match suggests listing qualities you consider attributes as well as difficult qualities in yourself and in a potential partner.

Great qualities:

Accomplished

Adventurous

Affectionate

Committed

Communicative

Down to earth

Educated

Faithful

Family oriented

Fun

Independent

Passionate

Responsible

Relaxed

Understanding

Difficult qualities:

Arrogant

Cheap

Chronically late

Critical

Defensive

Dishonest

Disrepectful

Egocentric

Hold a grudge

Irresponsible

Lazy

Obsessive

Negative

Self involved

Weak

Deal breakers could include:

Rude and pretentious

Poor manners

Constantly late

Heavy drinker/drug user

Different religions

Bad breath/ poor hygiene

Multiple divorces

By Judy Gerstel

Toronto Post

http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/307448

Susan Kates’ tips on dating with children

Susan Kates’ tips on dating with children

Susan Kates, National Post Published: Wednesday, January 09, 2008

10 Make time for dating. Single parents are chauffeurs, coaches and ATM machines, especially since they're juggling so many things at one time. Stop. You have to make time for dating, too.

9 Start doing things for you. You won't meet someone by sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring. Get out there and have some fun. Be where other singles are. That will be your best way of meeting someone new.

8 Have a positive attitude. Think of dating as an adventure. It can be fun. Meeting new people is really what dating is all about. Attitude is everything.

7 It's totally OK to talk about your kids on a date. But don't go overboard about how Johnny and Sally are A students and win at everything they do; this can be intimidating. Everyone goes through issues with their kids, so just keep it real. Certainly don't spend the whole date talking about the kids, but talking about your kids can connect you.

6 Don't talk about your ex. Of course your ex will come into the conversation but don't talk about him or her excessively. This is about who you are, who you really are. You want your date to get to know you, the wonderful you, the new enlightened you.

5 If the glove doesn't fit ... So many times people like each other, but because this person doesn't fit the "checklist" they immediately say this is not going to work. Relationships are work. You have to give it a chance.

4 Age is just a number. Finding love again can come in so many different packages that by restricting yourself to a very narrow age range you might be missing out on someone that is totally right for you.

3 Chemistry is important, but chemistry can come later. If you are compatible and you get along, see where things can go. Sparks have a way of burning out while friendships can grow.

2 Don't introduce your date to your kids too soon. Get to know each other first, see if things work out between you, then get everyone together. And when you do get everyone together, don't think it will be perfect the first time. It won't. If the two of you are interested in each other, don't give up.

1 Dating is just dating. You are not looking for a spouse (just yet), you are looking for companionship, making new friends and having some fun. If you connect, you never know where it will lead, but don't go into this looking for "the one."

http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=226421