The Unbeatable Bandwidth of Being There

I gave a talk last night to the Latvian events industry in a little town called Ventspils on the Baltic coast.

Sometimes when I give a talk, it is on a subject I know inside out. Sometimes, I have to get to know the industry first, using my Intersections tool to analyse its pressure points and understand the likely impact of the big vectors of change. If I’m speaking to a new industry in a foreign country? Well, let’s just say it’s reassuring when my hypotheses are confirmed by the audience’s reaction.

I put it to the audience last night that the reason for the continuing — and in fact growing — success of live events (both popular arts and business), is about the bandwidth of communication between human beings. This bandwidth, across the multiple channels of our senses, remains exponentially greater in a live, physical environment when compared to any form of alternative media, however rich.

If anything, the increasing prevalence of digital media, in incredible volumes, has actually enhanced the value of live events. Just as the prevalence of email has made real mail more exciting, and the rise of the MP3 has created a boom in vinyl, a more tactile format.

This isn’t to say that the events industry doesn’t face challenges. Technologies continue to advance and increase the bandwidth of the experience that they deliver, as we saw this week with the delivery of the first Oculus Rift to a consumer.

Technology also underpins the increasing choice of events that consumers can access, reducing the friction of organisation through intermediary platforms like Meetup, Eventbrite and Fatsoma. Combine this with the many ways of reaching consumers and the growing noise across the many channels of communication, and making an event economically successful will be increasingly difficult.

As a counterbalance, there is the opportunity to re-market the content created at live events as many organisers are now doing. Streaming passes for business conferences, or recordings of live DJ sets as enabled by new start-up Evermix.

Overall then, it’s a positive picture. But to realise this ideal, the events industry must like every other, be highly adaptive, capable of latching onto new trends and meeting customer demand while it lasts, before moving on to the next big thing.

You can access my slide deck here. Use your arrow keys to navigate. You may want to zoom in our out depending on the size and format of your screen.

Highlander syndrome

According to Aubrey de Grey, the science already exists for humans to live more than 1,000 years. The question is, would we want to? After all, things weren't always so rosy for the immortals of the Highlander franchise. Might we suffer a 'highlander syndrome', struggling to cope with our extended lives that are so out of sync with our history?

Time to get things done

I, for one, am a fan. Life already seems like a rush, with so many things I want to do getting squeezed in to the limited time available. Assuming I could solve the financial restrictions, it would be much nicer to take my time about things: work two or three days a week and devote more time to all the little pleasures in life.I’d spend longer at the gym, enjoy a proper breakfast every day rather than a bowl of cereal at my desk; take time to read the papers, in fact just to read more of anything.Not only could we devote more time to the little things in our every day lives, we could also try out more things over the course of those lives. Marriage might still be a strong institution but your bachelor years might last until you are 200 or more. Instead of one or two careers we could have 10 or 20.

With age comes wisdom

I’d hope people might also be wiser. There’s no guarantee of course, and the supposed wisdom that comes with age sometimes seems more like narrow-mindedness and prejudice. But we can dream. A government laden with wise old men and women who have had time to appreciate the world and its people, and can make rational, objective judgements on our behalf.That’s the utopian vision, but the potential downsides of such a long life are also numerous. Population for a start: we’d have to start thinking about colonising other worlds pretty quickly. Health too: few people would want to spend 70 years living and 930 years dying.

Cultural adjustment

My rosy assessment of marriage is also likely inaccurate: we’d have to adjust culturally to the idea of a series of long partnerships throughout our lives (already happening to some extent).The gap between rich and poor would become more marked, with the difference in lifespan being marked by centuries rather than decades.Plenty of things to consider.On balance I’d still love to live for a thousand years, for all the experiences I will otherwise miss out on. Although my love of beer and pies will probably limit my chances of being one of the first kilogenerians.