The quiet guest may remember the evening through one considerate exchange.

A large evening is not experienced as one thing by everybody in it. For someone who spoke little, the whole occasion can reduce to five minutes in a corner with the one person who made room for them, and that exchange becomes the evening in memory. The rest is noise they were standing inside. The size of a gathering says almost nothing about what anybody got from it.

At the next thing you go to, give one person five real minutes rather than circulating well. Ask something specific and stay for the answer. For somebody in that room, you may be the entire event.