
Solving Online Events - tosh
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/6/4/solving-online-events
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the_snooze
>In other words, some conferences are built around creating a network in the
hallways. If you take them online, there are no hallways.

There are no hallways. Also, there are no side conversations, serendipitious
encounters, forming and disbanding groups naturally, after-sessions social
activities, or meaningful ways to gauge attention or intuitively navigate
turn-taking. There's no forcing function of being in the same time and place
among people of similar interests.

Online is fine for content delivery, so presentations and slides easily
transition from in-person to remote. However, the medium doesn't conform to
how people make actual human connections. Online events can be deeply
frustrating because the social instincts we've honed since childhood are
suddenly useless in that context.

~~~
seven4
Well said - and any attempts to "mimic the hallways" feels contrived in the
context of the internet/online. It is difficult to translate the multitude of
social cues/contexts/interactions that real life offers. Nevertheless I'm sure
we will see more and more coherent attempts.

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alain94040
Call for startups: if you are innovating in that space, I want to hear from
you. I'm passionate about that space.

~~~
ishcheklein
I'm co-founder of Iterative.ai /DVC.org (open source tools for ML) and doing
conferences/meetups is an essential part of the business for us (kinda
marketing for dev tools). I would definitely recommend you to connect and talk
to amazing folks from the [https://tulu.la/](https://tulu.la/) team. They are
building (still in stealth) a product to run online events with experience as
engaging as possible. I'm biased, since I know founders personally (and happy
to be their friend!), but they started their company with this vision even
before all this coronavirus stuff, they definitely have a big vision in mind
for a long term and have been passionate about this space for years. An
example would be this online conference they organized a while ago -
[https://divops.org/](https://divops.org/). I would happy to connect you (and
I'll send a link to this conversation to them).

~~~
m0sth8
I'm co-founder of Tulu.la. We're building a community first solution. A mix of
twitch and discord but for professional events. Would be happy to share more
details.

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jmhnilbog
Online social events just don't do it for me. The time delay is a small
factor, but reducing social interactions to what I can take in to only two
senses while everyone sits in a chair is just not what social events are.

Real life interactions involve every possible kind of stimuli -- we're just
usually only conscious of a few of them. I must need to receive subtle scent
cues, micro-gestures, voice interactions with the room tone around us,
whatever else we don't know yet that influences us in order to enjoy video
chat bullshit that is more than transferring work details. Video chat works
worse for me, socially, than talking on phones ever did, though I don't know
if the extra video information is 'blocking' what my imagination filled in
while having a phone chat.

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alexashka
Some things are just not fun online. Not everything is about efficiency,
sometimes people just want to be around other people who are interested in
similar things :)

For example, nobody says hm, I wonder how we solve night clubs, but online.

Although it could be that type of unusual thought that leads to something
interesting :)

~~~
fragmede
It's not safe right now to be inside, with a large crowd of people, doing
strenuous physical activity. So; online, it goes. It's not a question of
efficiency, but the entertainment industry serves a myriad of customer needs,
and for those still stuck sheltering-in-place and meeting up with friends
online, the question of how to have a better online night club experience
comes up every weekend. Zoom's shortcomings become more and more glaring as
time goes on. We all know it's not a substitute for in person interaction, but
what can be done to make it suck less. Ideally, there's even a way to use the
Internet to enhance the experience!

It might be possible to optimize latency for attendees to a digital event to
those within, say, the same 10-mile radius than Zoom currently uses. That's
not a use case that remote video conferencing is typically optimized for.
Better speakers and video would also improve the experience compared to a
laptop.

Then there's the music itself that gets played. The current challenge is that
DJs moved to Twitch as the world moved online. It's pretty much the perfect
platform except for one fatal flaw - Twitch isn't licensed for music online
like a bar/club is. There's no online equivalent of the venue paying the
yearly ASCAP license fee. So mixes come down as takedown notices are issued,
since the music the DJs are playing are unlicensed. Many DJs are thus trying
to find a new platform, possibly Mixcloud or Soundcloud. They have their own
shortcomings, however.

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realbarack
Nice piece. Not the main point, but I deeply resonate with the brief aside on
in-person meeting: "I sometimes suggest it would be helpful if we all wore
banners". There is still low-hanging fruit for software to improve in-person
interactions. Much of the small-talk dance is an attempt to find common ground
between two people in order to catapult into a deeper conversation or more
meaningful relationship. Software could do this.

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takanori
I actually think VR and events could be magic. You put it on and for 2 hours
do a combination of keynotes and chose your own adventure experiences. If it
incorporates interesting enough visuals with content I’d much prefer this to
going somewhere in person for the week or sitting in front of a “online
conference console” with streaming video and a chat window.

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radihuq
This was a great read. I think what's going to be interesting to observe after
the dust settles is events are going to be online by-default.

Not necessarily as insurance against a global pandemic, but rather due to the
expansive reach that many event organizers are realizing.

I don't think offline events are going away, but (as the author alludes to)
the incentives to attend online vs offline events are different; therefore it
won't be a 1:1 experience. I don't think anyone in the event/event technology
space actually figured out the secret formula to provide a great online AND
offline experience for both the event organizer & attendees/vendors, but once
someone does I think there's great opportunity to capture.

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coffeefirst
> A long time ago Twitter took some of that role, and the explosion of online
> dating also shows how changing the way you think about pools and sample sets
> changes outcomes.

I like how his examples are the parts of the internet that the largest number
of people hate with a comically fiery passion.

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hnsexthrowaway
One of the most interesting and efficient “network” (not really networking)
events I went to was a after-hours meetup at a LGBTQ+ leadership conference.
After a brief presentation about sexual liberation, everyone wrote exactly
what they were looking for on a name tag. People put everything from “someone
to have lunch with tomorrow” to “voyeur seeking exhibitionists.”

Amazingly, everyone I talked to the next day to got more or less what they
were looking for, whether that was something sexual or just a new friend.

~~~
mikro2nd
I think your point is very pertinent: People literally advertising what it is
they're looking for. I see only two problems with this:

1\. It _reduces_ serendipity. And that's the "hallways" thing missing in
online interactions.

2\. As soon as I put my wants/interests out on the internet it's almost
certainly going to become chum for spammers, dodgy recruiters, the GRAFT and
so on. i.e. Repurposed to ends antithetical to my original intent.

Still, there's something in the notion... if we can say something about
ourselves (online) in a safe way, then there's at least a chance we can get
some serendipity/discovery happening.

~~~
vertex-four
> As soon as I put my wants/interests out on the internet it's almost
> certainly going to become chum for spammers, dodgy recruiters, the GRAFT and
> so on. i.e. Repurposed to ends antithetical to my original intent.

This is likely true when the conference is open registration, but generally
not true when it's a closed conference that just so happens to be on the
internet - practically nobody who wishes to be part of the conference enough
to invest time/money/energy into getting an invite are going to then sell your
data on to spammers.

It's the same with random irc channels without public logging - while everyone
_could_ be logging everything you say to use against you later, in practice
this just doesn't happen in channels of 100-200 people.

