Politics and technology are certainly strange bedfellows. The gang loves to talk about filibusters and the demise of democracy, but forget it as I try to bring up my fascination with live audio. That is understandable; We never talk about the little things until there’s a struggling billionaire angle. That’s how Jack Dorsey’s argument with Marc Andreessen about the importance of Web3 brought all the Web2 superstars into the thread. Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, Chris Dixon, Catch 22’s Milo Mindbender (ok, Moxie Marlinspike?) and even web1’s Leo Laporte were there.
With Covid blocking physical events we have reluctantly moved to another catchphrase sweepstakes called the Metaverse. I agree with Keith Teare that this dog won’t hunt due to the stylistic reticence of carrying large hardware objects on our foreheads, but there’s a lot more to virtual events than meets the eye. Before the pandemic, meetings were increasingly being held online as we tried to juggle back-to-back appointments in the office. It’s been easier to move from room to room regardless of physical location, travel time or lack thereof, and the inherent competition with messaging systems like Slack and civil texts via iMessage, FB Messenger and whatever Google Chat rebranded this week. With competitive information constantly flowing in real-time, product strategy has turned into analytically capturing this interactive metadata that incorporates network feedback into design, time-to-market, and distribution.
Replacing large conferences with virtual workgroups mostly takes place behind the corporate firewall, but message testing takes place in the clear. The context is the appsphere, and Clubhouse is a living tutorial for gaining scale through the same type of access model that conferences of old employed. A closed tether creates a sort of Green Room gateway where you can reconnect and build trust with keynote speakers and technologists. The opportunity to be asked onto the stage is where the media has moved in. Newsletter players like Josh Constine and Casey Newton are rising from the ranks of tech pubs to serve as midwives for startup churn and casting couches for the venture class. The elixir of media literacy and access to the hallway is what conference makers are asking for.
A few nights ago I sat spellbound as Adam McKay, the director, and two producers narrated the story of Don’t Look Up when the film ended on Netflix. The Clubhouse room reverberated for over 2 hours as the filmmakers delved deep into the production of the hilarious, dark and beautiful tale of a meteor heading for a deadly rendezvous with Earth. Some of the great books about my fascination with the art and technology of filmmaking ran through my head: Truffaut’s Conversations with Hitchcock, Pauline Kael’s treatise on Citizen Kane, the moment in Annie Hall when Woody Allen drags Marshall McLuhan out from behind a confront one sign Know-It-All Professor – “You don’t know about my work. How you came to be a professor of anything…” Every frame of Kubrick’s lexicon. The big comic heads gathered around the Algonquin rountable.
And to hear McKay share his story of what making the film meant for him and his team in real time together, to share the goals and strategies for producing a film that is sure to be consistent with the pandemic that is about to the beginning of the catastrophe NO vaccines were invented yet. The nuances of his approach, combining the screenplay he wrote with the magical improvisations of his actors. It went on and on and you could hear McKay’s delight at being a part of this confluence of technology and the spirit of inspiration. And you will find the link to retake the event for your own exam at the top of the retakes list. Virtually yes, but tangible in its emotion and flawless execution. I actually liked the clubhouse a little more than the movie, but the aftermath was that I liked the movie even more for the experience. Maybe that metaverse is a thing after all.
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The Gillmor Gang – Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live on Friday 7 January 2022.
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang
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