State of Awe Digest #25 | Why we miss random social moments
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
February 28, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: Gatherings spare us from one very important thing: talking to ourselves.
State of Awe is a regular trend briefing from experience designer, Jordan Kallman and event brand curator, Tyson Villeneuve at The Social Concierge. This periodic letter covers the latest wonders, most influential psychological movements, emerging ideas, tactile designs and hottest patterns keeping attendees, producers, designers, operators, sponsors, organizers and leaders engaged in the experience economy.
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For curious subscribers, you can find all previous digests here (certain ideas are timeless). A catalogue of current and future topic areas can be found here.
Insight Map 🔮 The Digest Summary
Your table of contents:
House of Focus: how weak relationships improve our lives;
Fads and Crazes: The exploding economy of non-fungible tokens and what it means for experiences;
Arena of Sport, eSport and Gaming: why gamification works best when it unlocks familiar social dynamics;
Designer Data Drop: the importance of designing for positive word of mouth;
Meaningful Virtual Experiences: the fresh, revealing science behind video call fatigue, and insights on marrying content and community;
Arena of Safety and Security: an update from around the lands of live events on return to IRL via the holy trinity of testing, cure or vaccine;
As always, five beautiful instas, six hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it.
House of Focus 🎯 Feature Article Thinking
Over the past year we have lost our weak ties, random acquaintances, and those pleasant coincidental conversations. Seems like a small sacrifice to pay to keep pandemic losses in control. Yet the impact has deeper consequences than you first expect.
Your feature piece of this digest explores how social coincidence plays a bigger role in our lives than we think. People on the periphery of our core social bubble are the ones who mix in new ideas, introduce new information, suggest new opportunities, and make bridges to new people. When we lose that variety, how does that translate into lost opportunity?
The insight: weak ties have beneficial consequences (study from 1973, still relevant). More loose social contacts equals better employment. But of course, that is the easy metric to quantify. What about the exchange of word-of-mouth? Or the new contact who turns into a cherished friend? What else are we missing without coincidence in our lives? We need random moments to affirm each other, to feel seen, and to keep community spirit fully inflated (tidbits and gossip are valuable). Being part of more than an inner circle makes us all feel part of something bigger than ourselves. Virtual, online platforms (and the organizers using them) need to fill in this large hole if it has any chance of sticking. Spontaneity please!
Fads and Crazes ⚡ NFTs for Experience
The newest craze that holds promise for experiences in the future? Non-fungible tokens, short-handedly known as NFTs. If you haven't been following the meteoric rise in value with NFT art and collectibles this year, start here with a primer on the topic (deep read). From NBA Top Shot to CryptoPunks, Nifty to SuperRare, the NFT economy expanded more in one day last week than the entire last year (see a live, 24 hour breakdown here). A single CryptoPunk went for over $1.5m USD last week.
It is very exciting, and a complete game changer for creator royalties, portioned ownership, instantaneous transfer of value, transparency and digital persistence. This rapidly expanding technology will affect experiences in the future. A collection of insightful reads:
As Mark Cuban covered in his recent blog on the topic, anything digital can now have stored value (a second must read on the topic). As the “Store of Value Generation” grows, what is valuable, and how value gets traded is going to change. A lot.
This piece summarizes the core characteristics of NFTs, which might help in framing the benefits to any interested designers.
Likely the first argument on the topic (must read, sub required, open web copy found here), Ian Lee of IDEO CoLab writes about NFTs and experience. This technology will give rise to unique “community membership systems” that can more easily share value with each other.
The insight: it might remain a bit fuzzy, but NFT technology will open up a tremendous number of opportunities for both virtual and IRL experiences. A few examples we have dreamed up: VIP event tickets that turn into unique digital art, ownership of virtual space (see booming virtual real estate), digital merchandise, festival crowdfunding, scarce musician track drops at a festival in real-time, secret NFTs that unlock special experience pathways, NFTs that mate to create new combinations, and yes, the coming finality of ticket scalpers inflating secondary event ticket markets. And this is only the beginning of a decentralized technology craze that will help redesign the future of experiences. Need more convincing? Go here.
Arena of Sport, eSport and Gaming 🕹️ To Gamify or not to Gamify
Gaming is just exploding.
But that doesn’t mean that gamification is suitable to integrate into every event.
A published counter take by well-known conference designer, Adrian Segar argues that business objectives can never authentically be integrated with play, fun and joy. Should work be amusing? In a follow-up post he clarifies that game-like activities need to have value in their own standalone right, rather than being “bolted on” to gathering formats. Smart statement.
The lesson plan. Fun, for the sake of it doesn’t work, and the game needs to have goals that make sense (very insightful read). Look for what works with the kids (also insightful): 80% of Roblox’s users play with a friend. Scarce incentives and restricted point systems are also high value designs.
Music performances are having a gaming moment. From Travis Scott in Fortnite to Lil Nas X in Roblox, video games and concerts are weaving together quickly. But drop into this feature on the future of massive live interactive online music events, and you can see similar insight patterns emerging: gamifying virtual concert worlds is more than simply bolting in a performance.
The insight: Even the classics like chess are enjoying the renaissance. But not surprisingly on chess.com you can see that multiplayer formats are skyrocketing in popularity. Online gaming dynamics that allow you to play with friends perform the best. Simply bolting on gamification to your conference just isn’t going to open the emotional spectrum you think it might, even if you argue that business can be mixed with joy, fun and amusement.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 Chart of the Month
The promise of word of mouth is incredible (source). Remember that you didn’t hear about AirBnB from an ad; word of mouth is the single most important growth outcome of good design.
Meaningful Virtual Experiences 📱The Latest and Greatest
After nearly a full year labeling this segment as a fad or craze, it is official: virtual experiences are no longer either. Over the past few months, it has become obvious the Metaverse will only continue to grow. And as such, the hero’s journey for meaningful virtual experiences becomes a classic narrative.
Over the past weeks, the plot has definitely thickened:
👀 A long read on the numbing effects of Zoom’s fatiguing self-reflection, and its inherent structural power dynamics. “Zoom Gaze” identifies two major issues, notably the lack of agency to be authentically you and an inability to play on equal footing.
🪞 A freshly released Zoom study (must read) from Stanford confirms this. The four issues of the mystery fatigue we experience? Too many eyeballs staring at you (feels like public speaking), too much proximity within your personal space, too many intense non-verbal visual cues, the “mirror effect” of always looking at yourself, and a constant need for your perceived attention.
🪐 But alas, the race to fix virtual meetings is well underway. A new feature from the New York Times on the advances the spatial web. This space is hot, and the meaningful impact it can make is legit. Dystopian takes exist, but we disagree. World building will open up more good than bad.
🐖 Speaking of which, a new virtual world called Skittish will launch soon. The novel hook? You take to the spatial world as your favourite animal avatar (dibs on the pig).
🏆 The wins. In the past week we saw BlizzCon reimagined (with a very belonging-base opening ceremony), London’s Tobacco Dock virtual venue launched, Sundance produced a VR exhibition with 14 interactive virtual art experiences, and Pokemon hosted a virtual concert with Post Malone. A BizBash shout out to the homegrown Vancouver Mural Festival for their AR installations made us proud.
📢 Announcements galore. Fortnite will host an animated film festival, New York Fashion Week goes digital for a second time, and LEGO continues to innovate with a virtual life blurring toy for youngsters (very cool).
🧑🏫 Classroom notes. A great summary of vendor complaints regarding virtual trade shows (goes well with a side of this), an insightful thread on remote summits, and a reminder to keep people at the centre of any virtual experience. Inject surprises.
The insight: virtual event design is the act of marrying content and community. As content forms continue to get swallowed by the digital blackhole, always remember that providing your community as much choice and agency as possible will do wonders. As for Zoom? Audio-only should be your default setting, unless your collective video habits can provide freedom, distance, flexibility and brevity. Ask yourselves: if we need video, then why?
Arena of Safety and Security 🦠 COVID Edition
After a number of digests since our last journey covering virus transmission studies and hosting safety, here are your quick hits on the fate of IRL festivals and events:
Study after study finds super-spreader possibility near zero in a well-ventilated venue. Live music studies in Luxembourg have been happening all month, over 60,000 applied to take part in the Netherlands’ test events, and France wants to mix COVID-positive cases into their upcoming studies.
With the UK ahead on vaccine deployment, the controversy on whether to host live festivals is well underway. Many plan to return as early as July. Everyone is sold out. What is the correct moral timing for celebration? More on this below.
Yet there are a lot of problems without a vaccine. As Seattle shows, capacity restrictions don’t work economically. Yet New York is opening venues now with varying capacities and a negative test.
The live events sector needs the vaccine. We may also require specific funding help. Norway and Scotland cancellation funds are great to see.
A few weeks old now, but a very cool, freestanding live vertical venue concept that promises to be socially-distant long-term.
The insight: aside from obvious logistical safety issues, we are tracking the moral questions. Burning Man camps have come out ahead of the decision on whether to host this year. Is celebrating a privilege? And if so, we all may need to restrain ourselves until ethics and fun realign. Looks like a consensus is building for Q4 2021.
Experience Economy Stories 📖 The Invisible Hands of Hospitality
A beautiful feature on infrequently praised captains of hospitality.
The secret lives of ushers is a story that resolves to make sure we don’t forget how the influence of a soft hand, empathetic suggestion or helping influence can be from the most invisible of professionals. When we return to the theatre, remember to thank them.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project
❄️ World’s largest snow maze by Amaze in Corn.
🌷 Flower takeover of the Brooklyn Bridge by AKJOHNSTON.
🌞 Pallet Sun by Spectacle Works.
✨ The Cave of Light by Vincenzo Dascanio.
🥃 The most intimate speakeasy we’ve ever seen, by Sascha, Martin and Michael from breadedEscalope.
Hot morsels to ace your next conversation while hiding from new variants
🪂 NASA knows how to impress with virtual events. The parachute of Perseverance included a secret message.
🚗 Fine dining drive thru expands to Miami.
🎭 Surprise! Live Nation launches a livestream platform.
🤳 Intention is so important. A few decent Zoom party fundamentals.
📸 Heard the buzz about Dispo yet? Here’s the scoop.
🏟️ Toronto unveils plans for a wildly futuristic 7,000 seat eSport stadium.
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End note
This was the twenty-fifth edition of the State of Awe digest. We celebrate our one year edition in two weeks. We started writing these at the beginning of the pandemic to make sense of what was going on, and well, it helped so much we just kept going. Thanks for being here through it all.
The great news? We will continue on, even after the world comes back this summer. We will be present to analyze the inevitable: the revival of 2007-esque party photography.
We’re in for the long haul; referrals are appreciated. Direct them here.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson