State of Awe Digest #29 | Our never ending desire for more of each other
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
April 25, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: To belong you must embody two continuous states: to “be” and to go “long”. Building authentic community requires presence and patience.
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: ancient city designs and its reflection on our urban spaces;
Experience Design Strategy: part two of “always on”, persistent use culture;
Designer Data Drop: the self-fulfilling prophecy of hybrid event desires;
Meaningful Virtual Experiences: a few sunny stops from around the Metaverse;
Arena of Safety and Security: charting our longer-than-expected road back;
Arena of the Environment: the motivation behind regenerative, circular event design;
As always, five beautiful instas, five hot morsels and one request to share this digest with someone who would appreciate it.
House of Focus 🎯 Feature Article Thinking
Commerce and trade have been the underlying design principles for much of modern life. The live events industry, and the spaces that host them is no exception. Yet we have always wondered, what would happen if we instead designed for festivity and celebration? What if space was designed first for pleasure and enjoyment?
Cahokia the social. In an archaeological feature from the BBC, we uncover how this ancient, lost megacity was exactly this. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, this thousand year-old Mississippian settlement surprisingly lacks any central market or commercial interest (very rare). It was instead built specifically for massive cultural gatherings, with a 50-acre Grand Plaza that was flanked by giant earthen pyramids, where tens of thousands would celebrate together en masse.
Archaeologist certainty. The non-commercial design brought out a distinctly cosmopolitan whir of language, art and spiritual ferment. From the mind-altering yaupon caffeine that was transported from distant lands, to the competition arenas, barbecue pits and performance spires, this physical place brought out a distinct social culture. One of grand celebrations.
The insight: As we find ourselves in a vaccinated yet decentralized, work-focused society, one that embraces the exponential automation of our professional tasks and our personal chores, it would benefit us to prioritize placemaking that brings us together. As this recent study proves, our environment has an oversized influence on how we behave. Grand gathering space is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a collective culture of celebration. What are your urban planners prioritizing?
Experience Design Strategy 🏔️ Always On, Persistent Use Culture Pt. II
In the very near future, we will seek out social culture that is “always on”. And it will be a gift.
This second part of a two part series, a continuation of the evidence from the last digest (start with a refresh read), we present how your life will be persistently social.
As the digital revolution of live experiences continues, many things will transpire: friction between reality and the digital Metaverse will drop parabolically, content forms will blend, and social norms will shift quite quickly into the online world. Episodic social events will transform into always on community spheres. Visualize it here.
But what will also happen is what could be described as infinite consumption. You only need to look at what has happened to other content forms to predict a similar future. To do so, we pull a series of essays from the content streaming expert, Matthew Ball, to highlight the key insights:
Past trajectories. The Metaverse will “add to the universe” of live experiences rather than being zero sum. Once we are back to IRL togetherness, this digital revolution won’t subtract from gathering culture. Instead both supply and demand of the experience economy will go up. Dramatically.
Infinite loops. Once the revolution takes hold, the supply of digital live event content and online social experiences will seem infinite. Technology advances will unlock an explosion of virtual and hybrid social environments. Creators will be able to iterate more rapidly, attracting big communities. The average value of each “event” will go down, but there will be bigger winners and an infinite supply of lower value gathering types to fuel consumption. Here is a visualization from the content sphere of television that maps out “exceptionally in-demand shows” versus the bulk of below-average viewing experiences.
Behaviour shift. Much like our preference shift from cable to streaming, we will default from analog to digital, eventually preferring the Metaverse. Ultimately, this may feel doomsday-like, but the transition will ease you in. It will take place gradually at first, then very quickly, allowing the majority to easily adjust.
Demand rages. Frictionless, enjoyable and infinite. Participant consumption climbs the exponential curve (Ball’s data suggest television consumption is up between 40-65% compared to the cable era). Each month we will socialize around live experience content more than we did last month. And next month will see even more experiences to take part in. Ultimately, our lives will be more persistently social.
The insight: television, music and news are different from live experiences in that the benefit stack of live events is much larger. We acquire relationship value and transformation from live events, and we will never ask that of television. Technology still has a ways to go in providing what we desire. But already, supply is WAY up. As this incredible summary of a technology platform confirms, we just have so much more time. How will we spend it? Socializing in an always on way, persistently using infinite worlds of our own creation. The writing is on the wall, the coming dual universe of gathering will leave us with a never ending desire for more of each other.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 The Hybrid Desire
Let’s bring the conversation back to the present moment.
The digital blend. A new report on current desires of event producers shows that an overwhelming majority are planning a digital experience as a companion to in-person events moving forward. As has been the cliché saying, the future of events is hybrid.
Hybrid studios. Across the meeting and convention space, broadcast facilities are being installed as a standard future feature of the event rental model. And it is not just conferences. Live Nation is installing live streaming capabilities in over 60 venues across its network to feature live entertainment revelry.
Live streaming is permanent. The conversation on combining the virtual and IRL is exploding across genres, but one thing is for certain: the model is here to stay.
Mo’ money. The critics argue that the high cost of hybrid is unsustainable. But they aren’t seeing the rapid miniaturization of hardware and staffing models (digest #6 covered it). The emerging hub-and-spoke models are scalable as you optimize a sales funnel, opening up new spaces as you sell out earlier ones.
The insight: With such a vast majority of experience designers integrating a meaningful virtual component to their events, we can’t see this failing. The momentum is huge and our new habits are sticky. There is going to be a lot of innovation from this space as we bring ourselves back into a regular IRL gathering cadence.
Meaningful Virtual Experiences 📱The Latest and Greatest
It has been a few digests since we rounded up the most relevant quick hits from our virtual spheres:
🍻 Bars out are, Clubhouse is in. These NYU grads put the two together and run a crazy popular “bar simulation”. It is a masterclass in how to use Clubhouse for gatherings.
🔥 The hot list. SXSW nailed their virtual delivery, and as usual, programmed awesome music. The HBO Max Orbit facial technology exhibition also got big ups. Cannes Lions will be exclusively virtual in late June. And churches across America are embracing live stream technology and seeing increased donations.
🕹️ Gaming Metaverse. ‘Fornite’ maker raises a new funding round and is valued at nearly $30 billion. The in-game cosmetic and player skin economy is just booming (deep economic read).
Arena of Safety and Security 🦠 The Long Road Back
We have come a long way since the onset of this pandemic. And we have that sneaky feeling that the road ahead remains longer than expected. It is important to us that we continue to chart the most interesting developments in returning us safely:
Test event surge. In partnership with the Dutch government, Fieldlab Events has been given the authority (and the €1.1 billion dollar budget) to host a series of very large-scale test events over the next 5 months. The first event saw more than 1 million registrations. Initial results are promising, and show that outdoor events at 50% capacity are likely safe. Like most things these days, it is not without controversy.
Behind-the-scenes. The New York Times featured a backstage peek into a 5,000-person test event in Barcelona (with video). The imagery does not look like the rock concert back of house that you are used to seeing.
Slow trickle. IRL events are beginning to make a very slow comeback. Electric Daisy Carnival tried, but inevitably postponed. Cirque du Soleil is committed to the summer. New York launches “Excelsior Pass”, the first event-based vaccine passport.
The insight: This is taking longer than anticipated. A full blown return easily pushes into 2022, maybe longer. And in fact, the holy trinity of mass testing, cure or vaccine may not be enough. Vaccine passports feel inevitable to get the experience economy back on track. It is a spicy topic for many, and we wonder if this will be adopted as a sacrifice to return to the experiences we love. We are very torn. What do you think?
Arena of the Environment 🌍 Regenerative Gatherings
This past week we celebrated the 51st Earth Day. It precedes the month where global carbon in the atmosphere peaks, just before the northern hemisphere plant growing cycle pulls it back down. This May, we will see atmospheric carbon stay above 420+ parts per million (ppm), a new high. We have 3,338 days until we reach 450ppm, an irreversible carbon level.
💫 Circular moves. We need events that are regenerative. A very large consumer climate crisis sentiment report launched last week, and the insights are fascinating:
89% believe organizations have a responsibility to take care of the planet. But brands need to be way more inspiring. Consumers have tired of green washing.
The biggest barrier to living sustainably is perceived to be money, which is an incorrect assumption (hint: it is discipline for less).
Interestingly enough, the report calls out our virtual habits. Streaming makes up 57% of all internet traffic (huge amounts of power). A study from 2021 shows that our promotional emails alone produce 2m+ tonnes of atmospheric carbon every year (just in the UK!).
👑 Taking action. In this strategy brief from IMEX, a global business event organizer, the producer outlines four key principles and an eight-step process to get the circular event transition underway.
🙌 Cool factor. The Terrapy Trend has been around for a while, but we have yet to see climate activism and consumerism intersect with any legitimate carbon neutral cool factor. Although it was good to see the meme king himself, Elon Musk, launch a $100 million dollar prize for carbon capture on Thursday. Incentives help.
The insight: most of us have some level of “eco anxiety” and the numbers are growing. We need to turn that negative energy into a force for good. No, it doesn’t require a master planned “Planet City”. We can do it by making circular, regenerative experiences a must have desire. If you have ideas, now is the time to deploy them (this is neat). Society is ready.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project
🏜️ Desert conversation pits at Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia.
😷 The super gadget #XUPERMASK by Will.I.Am and Ironhead Studio.
🪞 An optical illusion hallway by Vandana Mohan.
🗻 An artificial mound of lavender to host a runway show for Dior by Bureau Betak.
🔭 A kaleidoscope of colour by Morag Myerscough.
Hot morsels to ace your next conversation in the vaccine line up
🖕 The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games had one of the best Games logos out there. And then they got meme’d. We can only imagine how the internet will treat the vote-selected 2026 Winter Games logo.
🎟️ Take a virtual tour of a Maori art exhibition from the Auckland Art Gallery.
💰 The media company behind Billboard, Variety and Rolling Stone purchase a 50% stake in SXSW to expand “new events and business models”.
💊 New study pits psilocybin against a common antidepressant. Guess who comes out on top?
🛰️ We love drone art. And Hyundai broke the Guinness World Record for most drones flown at once. We are impressed. And then we saw this.
What did you think?
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End note
This video made us long to be back at a festival, with big art and exploding creativity. Great watch.
If you feel inspired after reading this digest and are motivated enough to share, we would be very appreciative. Direct fellow designers here.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson