State of Awe Digest #9 | Ready Player One, the future of food, art from above and contagion
The Latest Wonders in Experience Design, Festivals and Gatherings
July 19, 2020
Our aphorism to help with the times: The world is made up of two types: those who wait to be entertained, and those who choose to be spectacular.
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).
House of Experimentation 🔮 State of Awe Predictions
Welcome a raft of new readers to the digest.
As we further refine our ability to make this digest more readable and packed with value, a little experimentation. Care to participate with a prediction?
“It’s 2022, and the coronavirus has at long last been defeated.” This feature opinion piece by the New York Times backs up our thinking: “coronavirus reality” is going to extend for much longer than we first anticipated (great trio of insights within).
So, care to predict with us? Click the comment button and drop your specific date in on when you believe a WHO-endorsed vaccine is approved. We will revisit the guesses in the months (years?) ahead. Closest comment will be gifted a neat little reward.
Brief Obsessions 🕹️ Ready Player One Realities
📈 Popular progressive American politician, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals she’s a huge quarantine gamer. Digest #3 covered the staggering size of Travis Scott’s Fornite concert. Monthly video game player counts are massive (and growing).
The insight: the plot of Ready Player One might be coming alive faster than we imagined. With every virtual “how to guide” stressing engagement (73% of producers struggle with this), we are briefly obsessing over video game design as a path forward.
🖱️ Think we are crazy? 65% of US households play video games daily. Adult women represent a greater portion of game-playing (33%) than boys under 18 (17%). Average age of the female gamer: 37 years-old. This is a format adults know and love.
💙 Core motivations for playing video games have been mapped (very interesting). See anything familiar in the list? Dig deeper here.
👀 More signals. Burning Man, one of the grandest social experiences on the planet is hosting 8 different virtual reality universes for this year’s event. Check out BRCvr.
👓 As previously covered in Digest #5, Apple has AR Glasses on the way (updates here). But how about a VR system that integrates smell and replicates temperatures?
The insight: what can you easily apply from video game design for the virtual event space? Questing, exploration, level design, completion rewards and character building are all easy wins. Over the long-term, our belief is that these spaces will collide head on.
Fads and Crazes 📱 Meaningful Virtual Experiences
Reopening day at Disney World didn’t look very busy. IRL is a long way off. As such, here are your quick hits that might help you create meaningful virtual experiences:
💻 10 cents on the dollar, 10 times the reach. Robust read on the rise of virtual.
🎞️ Struggling with live streaming? Don’t forget the benefits of on-demand. 20 great questions on the implications of the on-demand streaming explosion.
🥄 Virtual event metrics. What data should you be measuring?
🎤 What can you learn from a massive virtual K-pop conference? A lot.
🥰 Moodrise recognizes the world’s most nutritious digital content. How can you design your virtual event content around their elemental mood map?
🎭 Can immersive theatre work strictly online? A case study.
👪 Microsoft Teams launches “Together Mode”: a virtual meeting space feature.
🧑🦲 No more boring “floating heads”. Mmhmm brings the personality.
🗺️ Bored of the advice? Need some virtual adventure? Explore this incredible virtual tour of the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses VI in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
The insight: momentum is piling up for virtual experiences. But can this new digital world sustain you economically? We say “early days” but 75% of producers are struggling to float the boat (great feature on the challenges). We are staying the course.
Designer Data Drop 🧮 Chart of the Month
Nick Kokonas, Co-Founder of Chicago’s Alinea (one of the world’s 50 best restaurants) is also the CEO of an upstart reservation system and is regularly releasing insightful stats from his platform on “the future of food”:
The Boutique of Food and Beverage
A few weeks back, we were inspired by Adam Liaw’s prediction for the future of fine dining (fun storytelling). Locally, we witnessed the collapse of the market-leading caterer (similar stories in New York). It got us thinking about food, beverage and the delivery of nutrition within experiences.
🥤 Start here. Framed by the origin story of the classic Dixie Cup (hint: its explosive use happened because of the Spanish Flu in 1918), it is obvious that sanitation desires will change behaviour in ways that might not seem obvious now.
🍽️ Meet them where they are. Eater’s Editors provide a few predictions.
👻 Consolidation of meal delivery continues, and the invasion of “ghost kitchens” will be a fascinating space to watch.
🛵 Can decentralized, delivered food still create community? We think it is tough, and the delivery model also isn’t doing restaurateurs much good.
🎁 From event catering to meal packing, the future of catering at gatherings will likely be more individualized.
The insight: breaking bread is a time-honoured purpose of gatherings. As events become larger IRL, and as virtual continues to require innovative delivery, what sticks? We have no firm conclusions yet, but we are swimming in the seas of change and the waves are growing.
Creators and Builders Coliseum 🛰️ Art From Above
“You can see it from space”.
Dedicated readers will know we were massive fans of Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s artistic installation work, the latter who passed back in May before his 85th birthday. One of their most impressive pieces being their feat in 1983, Surrounded Islands, using 6.5 million square feet of pink fabric that created a stunning aerial art stunt.
Their spirit is being channeled and the domain of aerial art is alive. Examples:
🛩️ Pilots have been designing? Some heartfelt, others a symbol of solidarity.
✊ Black Lives Matter. It was impossible not to catch the bright yellow mural painted on a street near the White House in early June. And it kicked off massive emulation. NYC, Boston, Toronto, Palo Alto, Montreal (French), Pensacola and even Tallahassee.
🌃 Empty quarantine city drone photography highlighted the lonely beauty of people-less plazas from the air (like aerial photography? Check out this recent book release)
🤺 Stunning captures of Olympic sports, from above.
✈️ And of course, legions of grounded airplanes marking the times.
The insight: Expect to hear, “seen from space” as it relates to artistic endeavours more frequently. But the bigger question is, once IRL events begin making a comeback, how can you design your gathering so it produces stunning aerial photography? Is there a different way to look at your events, this time from above?
On Persuasion, Hype and Contagious Behaviour
Having a tough day? We promise, look no further than this video. Turn up the volume and watch it until the end. Day made.
But also, this has to get you thinking, what persuaded that second dancer? This video is a perfect visual metaphor for hype, persuasion and collective tipping points, a knowledge base that any experience promoter needs to understand very well.
🦠 “The adoption of new ideas and behaviour spreads like a virus: by contagion. Behaviour is contagious as we catch it from other people. Much of what we do results from unconscious mimicry of others around us. But as in virology, people’s susceptibility varies.” (source here) states Rory Sutherland, one of the globe’s leading behavioural thinkers.
💃 Digest #8 concluded with a short section on the imitation theories of philosopher, René Girard. We desire what others desire. Once that second dancer joined in, it was only a matter of time and consistency before the tipping point to a raging dance party was passed. What else can be learned from this video of contagious behaviour, and applied?
💨 Events are massive coordination games with overlapping Nash equilibria. In other words, events are a game where players get the best possible payoff by all doing the same thing, critical mass builds, and incentives materialize and stack. This builds collective trust and persuades others to join in for the sake of positive consequences.
😈 This works for most, but not for all. Paul Graham highlights how counterculture thinking values internal purpose over outward popularity (long, wildly insightful read). His essay highlights how in school, nerds play a different game, and choose subconsciously through purpose not to be popular. On a whole, counter thinking ignores the stacked incentives of the popularity game.
The insight: experience designers need to use behavioural science to make better gatherings. And while virtual event FOMO might be way less, the most effective gatherers use Robert Caldini’s, 6 principles of persuasion to spark instigators, stack incentives and spread contagious collective behaviours.
Beautiful event instas to inspire your next project (from a diverse group)
💎 House of Kirschner’s mirror tunnel.
🎨 Alex Aliume’s psychedelic glow in the dark paintings.
➿ Stone Kelly’s slinky ceiling.
I ❤️ NY Milton Glaser’s colourful poster campaigns. And his final design. RIP to the iconic designer.
🟡 The Gathery’s Technicolor room.
🙂 Anna Devís and Daniel Rueda’s lighthearted Mask-terpiece.
🌾 Bayou basket chandeliers from Marks’ Garden.
Hot morsels to ace your next event conversation
🎪 High stakes economic COVID drama: Cirque du Soleil files for chapter 11 bankruptcy, creditors submit proposal for takeover, and their Board accepts, kicking out original shareholders. While management is excited to return to revenue over the next 18 months?
💉 Memories can be injected and survive? Legitimate long read.
💍 Are you a big fan of the Lord of the Rings? Want to hypothesize over the story’s genesis? Look no further than this insanely good Twitter thread.
👄 Regular masker? How about a bluetooth connected mask that records and amplifies. Better yet, one that translates (makes us want to travel).
⚽ Virus-safe sports? Human Foosball.
👰 Micro-weddings, the new normal? Maybe, maybe not.
💰 In Australia, art and culture producers get a lifeline economic boost. Something for other Commonwealth countries to consider?
📽️ Imagine Van Gogh, an IRL projection mapped museum, opens in Montreal.
🚤 Cinema on the water is a floating movie theater in Paris.
End note
This was the ninth edition of the State of Awe digest, and we are in a groove. One that very likely, remains overwhelmingly dense. We can’t seem to contain our own curiosities 🤦. At the very least, we deeply enjoy putting these digests together, and we hope you get value out of them.
We would love it if you spread the word. Share with your colleagues and contacts (you can direct them here, or just share this post). It would mean a lot to us.
And remember, drop your prediction date for a WHO-endorsed vaccine into the comments. Closest date wins.
And if you want to get in touch, simply reply to this email. We will always respond.
As Ever,
Jordan + Tyson
Feb 1, 2021
All on black please - June 15, 2021.