State of Awe Digest #31 | Why intimate access to community is trending
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
May 23, 2021
Our aphorism to help with the times: true magic would grant us the power to relive a single past moment in its full grandeur over-and-over again.
State of Awe is a regular trend briefing from experience designer, Jordan Kallman and event brand curator, Tyson Villeneuve at The Social Concierge.
New to the digest? Understand OUR BELIEF and dial in OUR INTENTION.
For curious subscribers, you can find all previous digests here. A catalogue of current and future topic areas can be found here.
Insight Map 🔮 The Digest Summary
The Preface: a summary of changes to our format and readability;
House of Focus: our home is now the smartphone;
Belonging and Longevity Arena: why community building is no cliché;
Experience Design Strategy: be rare, it works;
Arena of Economics: how big tent event models are strained and the alternatives that exist;
Fads and Crazes: digital advances in non-fungible token technology;
Meaningful Virtual Experiences: wow factor 3D virtual social technology;
As is tradition: one aphorism, seven hot morsels, four beautiful instas (now embedded in visual form) and one call to action to share this digest with someone you appreciate.
The Preface 💡 Digest Changes
The digest is undergoing improvements in the name of sharpened focus and ease of absorption.
You will find banners that break up the long, link-heavy read. These fresh segments also better communicate our core focal points. As you have likely already noted, our insights on the experience economy are spread across four main themes: behavioural design, economic methods, digital transformation and imaginative creative devices. This focus will further sharpen in the future, as we are still finding our way.
The trending topics and sub-sections we choose to highlight will still come from a wide-range of current publications. Our goal remains a variety show of insight and application told through the lens of what is happening in current gathering culture.
One big change: our long-standing section of beautiful Instagram images can now be found within each segment banner, linked to the originator by clicking on the banner itself. It just made sense to make the digest more visual in nature, something many of you have asked for in the past.
We hope this unlocks a letter you can read more thoroughly, more enjoyably, or more quickly, whatever your desire. We appreciate your feedback and would love to hear your thoughts.
House of Focus 🎯 Home is Where the Phone is
Our home is now the smartphone. A wide-ranging, cross-cultural study on the smartphone shows, no surprise, how wildly ubiquitous this appendage really is. Across the planet, now used by nearly every human into their ‘90s, we have never had a device so central to our lives. And the conclusions, no matter who you are or where you live, are very interesting:
Our phones are no longer viewed as communication devices, but instead as a place in which we now live. A recent and profound mental shift.
There is a growing fragility of the traditional sense of home, and a growing insecurity of younger generations in being able to afford a house. And the smartphone is filling this void as a temporal home that is constantly with us.
As a larger vessel made up of compartments where we engage with different activities, keep clean, and even decorate, it mirrors our at-home nesting behaviours. The secure feelings of comfort while we scroll, to the sense of loss when we are locked out or lose our device also mirror our emotional connection to “home”.
It augments our physical world, and by doing so, may be reversing the long-standing retreat from extended- to the nuclear family. Examples in the study, across countries and cultures, show that the smartphone is opening up a much more constant presence of distant relatives.
The insight: there has never been a space that could achieve this level of intimacy or continuity with a human being, outside of our chosen living domain. And still, the smartphone’s impact on social norms is usually taken for granted. This augmented appendage has replaced formal dining room gatherings with the informalities of everyday chat and video calls. It balances periods when our physical social lives have been either too intense or not sufficient. And we have come to think of our phones as digital versions of our physical homes, a place we invite others into. The conclusions are significant for the future of togetherness. If you haven’t already, read our two part series on “always on” culture. Start here (digest #28).
Belonging and Longevity Arena 🫂 Community Building
🚪 Community is no cliché. If home (or our smartphone) is the first door of life, work is our second, then community is our third door. And walking through that door is a top design trend for the year. As we shift from things to relationships, gatherings need to be designed for the connection economy.
🌅 No paradise here. Intentional utopian communities fail hard (deep read), at an even higher rate than business startups. The inclusion of free riders, needy and wounded drifters, and the egomaniacal and power-thirsty are the actors who need to be excluded quickly if you are to sustain a community. The key? Fostering a devotion to the group through practical work by a majority of its members. As Margaret Atwood so cleverly summarized, ‘What sort of happiness is on offer, and what is the price we might pay to achieve it?’ There must always be a price.
🔥 The virtual fire pit. We feel like a tipping point was reached in past months with Discord, the online chat service that has quietly been dominating virtual community building. Having moved well beyond a gamer chat service, this is the platform we see the strongest communities being built. And it’s coming for events. We recommend you experiment.
The insight: today, more than ever, the power of a community shapes culture. But more so, the value of a community can be incredible (must read example). When cultivated positively, a community not only supports each other, reduces cost, and defends the collective purpose, but the pure existence of a strong community supports the growth of a brand or commercial effort. According to HBR, community engagement accounted for 83% of web traffic in their trial case study. Stunning numbers. Here’s an essential reading list.
Experience Design Strategy 🏔️ Intimate Scarcity
Deep and vulnerable. Our closest social relationships are being driven by a desire for open intimacy. And it is extending quickly into the digital sphere.
Crossing the chasm. With flat screens between so much of our interaction these days (and likely continuing into the future), we crave emotional returns from intimacy and immediacy. Without touch and physical proximity, our cravings are satisfied by virtual visual cues and conceptual closeness to those we share space with.
Thinking small. As we return back to a new social norm over the coming months and years, experiences that create cozy, close interaction will mirror the mindset we have found ourselves most comfortable with. While paraded as an out-of-touch event, this year’s Oscars Ceremony did embody the “thinking small” space-making principle well.
Designing scarce. The trick to designing small is in being rare. Financial success usually comes through scale. But what most designers fail to realize is scale doesn’t need to be measured only in size and quantity. It can be scaled in outsized demand and rare quality. Drive scarcity.
The insight: our brains are currently tuned into small and intimate affairs. We want digital interactions that avoid the chaos of many, and unlock the conceptual proximity of a few. Event designers need to lean into this desire, and use scarcity models to amplify returns. ROI that is both emotional and financial.
Arena of Economics 💰 Big Tent vs Small Tepee
🎪 Big tent troubles. Both culturally and economically, Tokyo 2020 is in deep. Financially one of the largest experiences in the world, the model is under serious strain. But this is nothing new. Every Olympics since 1960 has run over budget; the average cost overrun is 172%.
(source)
💡 Nothing new, everything new. So big tent experiences go over budget and always have? No big deal then. But hold on. Might our live event preferences be transitioning? After all, the major consequence of the internet is that “value has shifted away from companies that control the distribution of scarce resources to those that control demand for abundant ones” (source). Even the Economist has noted this paradigm shift.
🪤 Upside down. And while live experiences are only partially in the same content game as most online aggregators, it is hard not to watch how technology creates new economic models in the blink of an eye. The rise of “micro economies”, the advance of digital micropayments, and how payment-for-access, everyone-is-now-a-subscription is squeezing experience creators into the middle. And these days, being in the middle is economic disaster.
The insight: one other characteristic of the internet? It is all about access. Economist Jeremy Rifken notes that our lives are now made up of “access relationships” where “communications, communion, and commerce [are] indistinguishable”. Live experience designers are caught with a conundrum. Do you bring to life a big tent, big budget winner or a small tepee, subscription cycle revolution? We wager that consumer preferences will be shaped by technology that reduces friction for the latter. But don’t call the big tent collapse quite yet. There are innovative takes on the former (very interesting).
Fads and Crazes ⚡ NFTs for Experiences
Testing the waters. Last week, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino envisioned the company’s likely marketplace of NFT concert moments, as an extension of their fan engagement mix.
Counter takes. Not everyone is a believer. And the stated issues are legit: added purchase complexity, questionable tangible value, and the current carbon footprint of minting. Yet we feel the critics are missing the intangible value this technology can unlock for community engagement. Gary Vaynerchuck’s VeeFriends is a great example.
User utility. A few positive frames: NFTs unlock incredible pathways of access, NFTs are stories, and the technology unlocks interoperable bundles across traditionally walled gardens.
The insight: the dreamers are most definitely imagining a new future. And in many ways, the space is still the things of wild and surreal fantasy. But theories on bringing these dreams into waking reality have begun to take hold.
Meaningful Virtual Experiences 📱The Latest and Greatest
Mirror world. Google releases a (must watch) video of new three dimensional technology that will put your afternoon Zoom call to shame. Between the desire for virtual and advancing holographic technology, we only see upside for meaningful virtual escapes.
Science says. A large UK-based study shows a big affinity toward livestream music shows, and that a majority of fans are willing to pay. The biggest, most recent event industry surveys still show those same insights.
Happenings. Sundance sets dates for a hybrid 2022 edition, Burning Man goes virtual again, Pinterest to test livestreams with their creators, NBC and Twitch team up to provide 150+ hours of content on Tokyo 2020, and a very cool, augmented reality go-kart track launches in London.
Rabbit holes. Virtual nightclub Eschaton presses Zoom experiences to new limits. A lot to be learned in ecosystem design from this feature.
The insight: event tech is exploding, and the landscape currently includes over 800 providers. Capital inflows into event technology is simply staggering. And the expanding valuations show how confident smart venture funds are in the space. From a future capital perspective alone, the sheer force of funding is going to change everything in live events.
Hot morsels to liven up your next conversation on gatherings
📬 Getting back into the swing of IRL get togethers? Need a reminder on how to decline the invitations you don’t care for? Here are some of history’s boldest.
🍺 Oktoberfest in the desert? Without a German venue, Dubai may play host.
🗣️ The best conversation starters, backed by science.
🏘️ How Sweden wants to create the one-minute city, a microcosm of living needs and human desires on every street.
📚 New event planning guides for the bigger North American cities.
🎨 Large-scale painted mural mind tricks by Frameless Studio.
End note
We continue to chisel away at improving this digest. Our highest ideal is to provide curatorial brain candy for creative decision-making. But rising in our rank of desires is clarity, brevity and readability. We hope this update has helped. But the evolution is a continuum, so please reply with your thoughts.
Finally, if you think the changes might attract new readers from your network, we would love a recommendation. Direct fellow designers here.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson