State of Awe Digest #8 | Hybrid events, return of IRL sport, leading indictors of greatness, history of music festivals and a new thinker

The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings

July 5, 2020

Our aphorism to help with the times: Physical products are the atoms, digital platforms are the electrons and human experience is the magnetic force. The building blocks of commerce require an attractive field that cannot be seen, only felt. 

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. 

OUR BELIEF: Depth of experience ignites culture, culture values beauty, beauty triggers emotion, emotion deepens understanding, and understanding gives us words for things we had felt but had not previously grasped. Belong and repeat. This loop creates a more beautiful life, well-lived, deeply remembered. We must popularize the way to people’s hearts, charging bonds and linking character, lighting up this circle of experience. Encourage others to join the club. Long live the spectacular. 

OUR INTENTION: A long-form digest, this letter is meant as a “Sunday read”, skimming between topics, links and references you find interesting. We summarize insights and lines of inquiry to highlight possible outcomes. Our intention is to serve you trend-driven idea candy that inspires divergent, lateral or combinational creative thinking for your own gatherings. 

For new subscribers, you can find all previous digests here (certain ideas are timeless).

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House of Experimentation 🔮 State of Awe Update

Tinkering is a well-worn path to intelligent pursuits. For the eighth digest, we have put our writing on a diet in an attempt to reduce the density (Digest #7 was thick!) and make this edition more easily readable. It means our commentary and topic selection has changed slightly. If the small tweaks help, let us know. Comments are open. 

Arena of Safety and Security 🦠 COVID Edition

• The battle lines are being drawn. Are you a diligent masker, a psychological mask shamer or a sometimes-masker? The accessible evidence is pretty staggering (plenty more where this came from), but this demonstration says it all. If we collectively increase our empathy and embrace “always on” (and stylish) face covers, the science is pretty clear: we can gather (indoors). 

• Thinking about deploying a waiver of liability to reduce your COVID-19 in-real-life event risk? You may want to read this detailed feature.  

• Contact tracing apps facing delays in Canada, privacy concerns and execution missteps elsewhere. But as explored in Digest #7, South Korea has used it effectively to allow for gatherings of various types.

The insight: a consensus on returning to larger gatherings at the intersection of science, risk management and common sense seems to be forming. Can we create the cultural empathy and engineer a tipping point for the needed behaviour? 

Fads and Crazes 📱 Meaningful Virtual Experiences

We are in that middle place. No man’s land between completely virtual and small pockets of IRL. Welcome to the newest experience design structure: hybrid gatherings. 

• A blend of live, in-person experience with a remote, virtual component. These are not new. Think SpaceX Dragon capsule launch or Apple’s WWDC19. Yet the “how to” principles for a coronavirus era still seem pretty weak. 

• We appreciate a more open-minded, curious approach. 16 questions to ask before planning a hybrid event (question #11 is particularly relevant). 

• This image making the rounds (from an event pre-COVID-19). Everyone wearing the red band is virtual, and we think they need to increase production of that colour. 

• Three good reasons why the virtual component of events aren’t going anywhere (especially when budgets are involved). The insight: get comfortable with the new format, this is not a flashy fad. 

• If you haven’t started diving deep on your own audio visual live stream kit, there are a few good primer guides, and a particularly in-depth DIY tutorial from Teradek that shows how you can do it yourself. 

• A new audio-only explorative platform has launched. Check out Topia, a visually-unique competitive experience to High Fidelity. Look back at Digest #7 for a comprehensive breakdown of virtual platform strategies. 

The insight: the rise of the IRL-virtual blend happening and gaining altitude. Are you seeing real world examples that producers can use to model their events on? 

Designer Data Drop 🧮  Chart of the Month

Would you sign a liability waiver to attend an event? Doesn’t look promising at the moment (source). 

Arena of Sport, eSport and Gaming🏟️ Return of IRL Sport 

The big experiment for the return of IRL sporting events in the COVID-19 era is almost upon us. But challenges are mounting fast, and players are testing positive even before play resumes. 

• “We have an obligation to try,” Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA., told ESPN on their special on return of sport. But can the new rules be followed? The high-five, the huddle, the mob after a goal are so ingrained and part of the culture. 

• A comprehensive sport-by-sport return calendar.

• How sports broadcasting might change. 

• Venue, a companion chat experience for live events launched last month (Facebook sure is trying a LOT of new apps these days). 

• 5 protocol guidelines for the return of sport. What can we apply to other live events? 

• It has been 3 months since the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games. Lots of questions remain. 

• Post-coronavirus, will eSports replace real games in the Olympics? There’s a good argument. 

• A movement is growing to push the IOC to repeal a rule to allow for athlete demonstrations. 

The insight: can sporting leagues be the pioneers we need to chart a path towards large-scale togetherness? Will these leagues find a way to maintain positive revenue streams while balancing player and support staff safety? This will be interesting to watch in the weeks ahead. 

Experience Design Strategy 🏔️ What Makes Greatness?  

• A phenomenal article on the foundational conventions of a user experience by Adobe (must read for designers). A perspective from science. 

• What makes a masterpiece work of art? A lens through the world of visual inspiration and awe, of course. 

• Experience design advocates for the identification of values that a brand represents, as a way of giving the brand meaning.

• Why creatives need to design (hybrid digital) experiences for their art. 

The insight: first principles, defined as fundamental concepts or assumptions on which a theory, system, or method is based, is what is needed in such a grand time of uncertainty. Know your foundations. 

Arena of Architecture and Installations 🌆 Leading Indicators

• 7 experience architecture trends to consider. 

• The power of proximity to build a fandom. Alternatively summarized in a sketch.  

• One of the most respected architectural and fashion trend forecasters in the world, Lidewij Edelkoort, predicting “Stillness”. Insightful summary here. 

• An extensive feature on how the COVID-19 will reshape architecture, broken down by type of space. Changes to the urban environs speak to a change in how we will gather. 

The insight: one of nature’s constants, Gall’s Law, states that any complex system is evolved from a simple system that works. In other words, changes begins in the smallest of ways, in hidden places. Where are you looking for the indicators of the coming build trends? 

A Brief History of Music Festivals 

• A brief, 1000-year history of music festivals. 

• How music festivals became a massive business in 50 years, from Time.

• The evolution of music festivals and the power of an experience. 

• A future look at festivals trends from 2016. Accurate predictions through pre-COVID-19 2020. 

• This socially distanced music venue looks like it might keep the history-building happening in the very near future.

The insight: “history is a great teacher”, as MLK famously stated. How can the storied past of the last 50-years inform the near future of music gatherings? 

Thinkers and Philosophers 🕵  René Noël Théophile Girard 

Ever since Plato, philosophers of human nature have highlighted the great mimetic capacity of human beings; that is, we are the species most apt at imitation. One thinker in particular, who is rising in the ranks of famous French philosophers, René Girard, focused on the connection between our behaviour and culture. 

• His shining theory (that heavily impacts experience design), was coined by Girard as “Mimetic Desire”. Imitation, being the basic mechanism of learning, subconsciously forms our wants, desires and ambitions. It is incredibly explanatory of FOMO, exclusive event attendance and general media influence. This 2-minute primer video explains why. 

• We want things because other people want them. As more and more people want something and that object remains scarce, there is a conflict. And the conflict loop from dispute to peace explains not only violence, but also how we form our mythologies (storytelling), rituals, ceremonies and consumer patterns. 

• Peter Thiel, the infamous investor, author, entrepreneur and technology innovator, underpins his best-selling startup process (outlined in the book, Zero to One) on this theory. 

The insight: “imitation is inevitable” said Girard. The way to value creation — and happiness! — is to escape the violent cycle of mimetic competition, said Thiel. If you care to innovate something new, to understand the power of celebrity culture, or how others form their desires to attend your experience, Girard’s theory is a powerful psychological tool. It also helps to remember: be original.

Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project (from a diverse group of people)

🧊 Refik Anadol’s Melting Memories. 

🛢️ Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The London Mastaba.

🗽 2R Creative’s living statues. 

🧶 Nina Nassar’s hanging heart. 

🏆 Lina Iris Viktor’s gold flaked The Death of James Lee Byars installation. 

🥂 Sofia Crokos’ champagne flute tower. 

🎈 Simone Bramante’s dreams of hot air. 

🚢 Ali Bakhtiar’s ocean barge divorce venue. 

Hot morsels to ace your next event conversation

🍿 The “great postponement” in movie theatre releases. Yet a $0 budget film topped the box office? Strange times, indeed. 

🥘 MoMA’s Cooking with Artists series. 

🚴 RV sales spike, and a bike buying boom is underway. 

🗺️ Facebook launched a prediction app for world events (closed beta). 

🛍️ Dropbox released digital care packages that are quite artistic and experiential. 

🙋 A deep dive feature on Tosca Musk’s romance community shows the power of super fandom feedback loops. 

🍸 The “Best Bars in Canada” list for 2020 was released. Masks and straws required. 

💸 A deeply investigative economic report shows dramatically curtailed spending with the highest income brackets due to COVID-19. 

🎨 Art Basel’s launched online viewing rooms to connect artworks to collectors and art enthusiasts. 

🍾 Prague celebrates end of coronavirus lockdown with mass dinner party at 1,600-foot table.

End note

This was the eight edition of the State of Awe digest, and we are working towards a slightly more readable, less dense format. We think we still have lots of room for improvement. What are your thoughts? Comments on the digest page are open. 

If you liked this edition, and think others would too, share with your colleagues and contacts (you can direct them here, or just share this post). It would mean a lot to us. 

As Ever, 

Jordan + Tyson