The crowd is a genuine cross section of Melbourne in your 20s. Uni students in their final years, people a couple of years into their first real job, nurses, teachers, people working in hospitality or the arts, people who moved here from interstate or overseas and are still figuring out their social life in a new city.

Career wise it is a broad room. Some people are still studying, some are established in their field, some are somewhere in between. What they have in common is that they are at a stage of life where meeting someone actually matters and the apps have stopped feeling like a useful way to do that.

Most people at these events have been on the apps for a while. They know what it feels like to have 50 matches and zero real dates. They are there because they would rather spend one Saturday evening meeting people in person than another month sending opening messages that go nowhere.

You show up to a good bar in the Melbourne CBD, grab a drink, and the hosts get you set up before the rounds start. From there you have 12 five minute conversations with real people your age. Each one is a genuine one on one with no distractions, no profiles to hide behind, just an actual conversation.

During the rounds you mark each person as a match or a friend anonymously in the app. Nobody knows who you have selected while the night is still going so every conversation stays relaxed and genuine right through to the last round.

By 8am Sunday morning your results are in your inbox. Anyone who mutually selected you back gets their contact details sent straight to you. Suggest coffee in Fitzroy, drinks in Collingwood, dumplings in Chinatown, or dinner somewhere in the CBD. Melbourne is an easy city to plan a first date in once you actually have someone worth meeting.