State of Awe Digest #26 | What will endure when events return
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
March 14, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: The most renowned gatherings in the world make space for expressive flings with the latest forms of our inner spirit.
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
House of Focus: when live events return, what will endure?
Arena of Design Thinking: how live event content is going to be less valuable in the future;
Fads and Crazes: wild developments and steady experience economy insights on the craze of NFTs;
Designer Data Drop: a gathering technology hype cycle curve created to track innovations against expectations;
Meaningful Virtual Experiences: eight generative powers of virtual events;
Why Do We Dance: we need synchronous crowds to become larger than ourselves;
Thinkers and Philosophers: the immortal Friedrich Nietzsche accurately predicted a desire for sacred experiences outside of the church;
As always, five beautiful instas, six hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it. Happy anniversary to us.
House of Focus 🎯 Feature Article Thinking
What will endure?
We couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our anniversary digest. Our new friends at Back of House, a weekly letter covering festival industry news, provided us space to answer a question that we have been pondering for a year. It was nice to be invited to express a few thoughts in our first public essay. Access the feature piece here.
The insight: We all just want to be back in each other’s arms, and we can’t imagine a future where we don’t belong together, in person. Live experiences will become a very urgent need, very soon. But we do believe that future realities have shifted. The digitization of live event formats will expand rapidly, providing us an infinite array of online social options that we will consume with spontaneous delight.
What won’t endure? This annual musical festival of ice in Norway, for one. There is much beauty in the ephemeral.
Arena of Design Thinking 🔎 The Unbundling of Live Event Content
This feature article (must read) might be the first to recognize that live event content is going the same way as music, film, news and television. The content stack is being unbundled; a concept very much inspired by Ben Thompson’s evergreen article on the topic (insight packed). And while the event argument focuses on business conferences, we believe this applies to every large-scale gathering:
In the original outline, television was the most stubborn format to unbundle because it had larger net user benefits than the other content styles. And live events have an even larger user benefit stack. But technology, just like in the case of television, is finding a way to unbundle it, deliver utility, and drive the distribution cost to zero.
You will see this materialize first in content forms rooted in peer-to-peer information. “Clubhouse is where panelists don’t get paid”. The conference fireside chat is now available for free, at any moment from the comfort of your couch thanks to a new aggregator platform.
Next up? The emotional content stack. Performances (i.e. Twitch), explorative spaces (virtual worlds) and interest-based pursuits (AirBnB Online Experiences). Watch for rapid developments as the relationship stack (i.e. online connection clubs) and the transformation bundle come untied by technology in the years ahead.
The insight: We are leaving institutions. Don’t expect live events to escape unscathed. Think through how potent the convening power of your live event content will be in the future. Focus on levels of the user benefit stack that will be more difficult to unbundle. Our pick? Physical experiences where hardship can be challenged together.
Fads and Crazes ⚡ NFTs for Experience
NFTs are five alarm fire hot right now. Why? Our thread from last week is worth a review. Innovation effects for the experience economy, coming in quick. A few links to keep you current:
😲 Wow moments. The artist Beeple’s NFT Christie’s auction closed at 69 million last week, making him one of the top three living artists in the world. Kings of Leon, an aging band, released their album as an NFT (with “golden concert tickets” attached) and did 2m in sales. Jack’s first tweet is worth lots. And someone burnt a Banksy to prove a point.
🎟️ Ticketing. Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks are looking for NFT solutions. The NBA created a Blockchain Advisory Committee.
💰 Community crowdfunding is going to change fast (ownership beats rewards). And charities should be looking at the massive opportunities that exist.
🎨 Event ideation. Who will start the Art Basel of NFT art?
The insight: NFTs make the internet own-able (deep read). But more so, we argue NFTs unlock community-based economies that are ideal for live event builders. The mixed-media possibilities are very exciting.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 The Gathering Technology Hype Cycle
Human experience technology predictions. To highlight the various fads and crazes that we follow for your curatorial delight, we decided to emulate. The Hype Cycle Curve is a tool created by Gartner that tracks the lifecycle of topical technology, measured against consumer expectations. Gathering technology is nascent and the curve is missing, so we created it. Here’s a primer on how it works. Let us know if you disagree with our plot. Click the image for full resolution.
Fresh outlook study for 2021 events from Event Manager Blog. It is insightful. The biggest reveal comes from Joseph Pine’s article, “4 levels of hybrid experience”, which is a must read for hybrid experience designers.
Meaningful Virtual Experiences 📱The Latest and Greatest
You quick hits from a very busy week in the growing Metaverse:
🪄 8 generative powers of virtual gathering design (very on point).
🚧 Engagement+. Every new, successful user-generated content network frees a new class of content creator previously disenfranchised and trapped. As the eclectic genius, Rory Sutherland states, we usually miss opening space for changed behaviours between others, and default to solutions with little psychological value. Instead ask, “who are you going to free?”
💡 New innovators. SXSW unveils virtual recreations of downtown Austin, check out record attendance at Minecraft amusement parks (cool video), and the stunning photos from a Buddhist holy day on Zoom.
❌ No go flows. Science even says, stop with the Zoom happy hours. A virtual concert must be more than an animated music video. A hot take on why the Grammys will be a yawn again this year.
📈 Roblox went public, but user adoption took ages. 15 years in fact; here’s the chart. Virtual communities can explode, but nothing changes the need for repetition, iteration and time for successful group kinship to form.
The insight: these are incredible times to be experimenting in virtual community building. We will return to an in-person world that is virtually augmented in so many ways. Build your digital dexterity now.
Why Do We Dance? 💃 Rhythm and Collective Joy
Why is rhythmic movement such an intrinsic part of humanity?
Our current book (thanks to reader, Jacques Martiquet), “Dancing in the Streets” by Barbara Ehrenreich inspired insights on achieving collective joy:
🙌 Me or we? Do we dance for selfish enjoyment or for the shared communal connection? There are arguments on both sides.
✨ “Collective effervescence” is the reason, says Émile Durkheim. Dancing is the peak format of interpersonal synchrony; coordinated moves that match up heart rates and scientifically make us happier. It is why being part of a crowd, any crowd, feels so good (insight packed).
📕 “Dancing in the Streets” unpacks great experience design principles:
Historical significance. Dance is an ancient anti-hierarchical ritual spotted in our earliest cave paintings. The activity dots history from carnivals to maypoles, ceremonies of the plains to the face-painted jeers of stadium sports fans.
Patterned observation. The dancing rituals of Indigenous Peoples are mechanisms to achieve community cohesiveness and generate feelings of unity.
More than “letting go”. Festive dance occasions are not simply the suspension of inhibitions. They invoke a universal collective ecstasy that whips up communitas, defined as spontaneous love and solidarity arising from a group of equals. These moments are orchestrated, planned and executed to crescendo with purpose.
The insight: We dance to matter, to love, to evolve in ways bigger than ourselves. It is so powerful, we actually just love watching others dance. And we do it because we are creatures of imitation (digest #8 on mimetic desire). Fire up TikTok, encourage the living room dance party, or get out into the streets (thanks Jacques). The spirit of collective joy is mostly missing from our rigid and individualistic societies. Welcome it back more than ever, starting now.
Thinkers and Philosophers 🕵 Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) was a German philosopher who had a profound impact on many modern intellectual fronts. His thinking and theories have extraordinary span (and diverging interpretations), yet found within his writings are golden nuggets of gathering philosophy:
“Where are the books that teach us to dance?”, he asked. It may have been Nietzsche’s ultimate question (philosopher must read). He danced daily and he was a dedicated disciple of Dionysus. As he put it, “ecstatic ritual released the soul from the horror of individual existence into the mystical Oneness of rhythmic unity”. He was firm that we need to dance more.
Seeking delight. In digest #24, we featured a four spirits of enjoyment model. And while Nietzsche’s inner Dionysus might make you think he preferred pleasure over virtue, he wrote that our most potent form of enjoyment comes in response to hardship. We suffer, we achieve and then we find meaning, together.
Sober beliefs. Nietzsche disliked the societal impacts of alcohol and accurately described how it numbs us to challenge, saps us of will for positive change and falsely reassures us that the status quo is fine. Trends show that consumers are waking up to increasingly clear mornings.
Church 2.0. He was an early adopter to the mass societal shift away from organized religion. What will fill the gap, he asked? He hoped it would be art and culture. What has transpired? Influencers and thought leaders as growing moral authorities and belief builders (must read).
The insight: we are in a period of building new religions, where sacred experiences are non-denominational. As Nietzsche stated, “god is dead”. We are instead turning to supernatural realms to find direction (digest #20), we are gods building worlds (digest #18), and enlightenment is coming from unbundled, ungoverned, mystical experiences.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project
🚎 Turning the red London bus green by Larry Walshe.
🥸 A Daft Punk Black Rock City virtual reality tribute by Peter Chase.
🛸 Artist JR with fresh and impressive overhead conservation art.
👯♀️ Twin napkin girls by Aliana Events.
🏬 Storefront GLAMffolding by Floratorium.
Hot morsels to ace your next conversation that has nothing to do with NFTs
✈️ New mystery flights will take Australians ... somewhere.
📭 Mailbox slot theatre looks like quite the viewing experience.
🛰️ Conferences in space by 2027?
🐾 Very cool digital design optimized for low carbon.
🤳 Instagram launches new Live Rooms feature.
🎥 The 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world.
What did you think?
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Valuable to my thinking | Somewhat interesting | So-so, missed the bullseye
End note 🎉 The anniversary
This was the one year mark for State of Awe. We started with an audience of 1 (which continued for many months) and we are now a large collection of experience-driven intellectuals. We are very grateful for your continued readership, feedback, suggestions and support.
If you have a topic you would like to discuss, please click reply to this in your inbox.
This experience is so much more enjoyable when we can share it with more people. As a gift for the one year celebration, we would love it if you sent this letter to a single friend or colleague. When you do, please ask them to subscribe.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson