🕵️We're searching for a villain to punch (but not the billionaire type)
The latest news from StreamAlive and the world of online, offline, and hybrid live events.
Hi there!
In this newsletter…
Why StreamAlive needs a villain
Magic Maps just got a feature upgrade! (spinning globes!)
Why StreamAlive needs a villain for its mission
We’ve been tying ourselves in knots recently trying to re-think what StreamAlive’s mission should be, why do we exist and do what we do.
(Sure, there’s a whole school of thought that a company should stay in their lane and leave missions to NASA, but we’re big fans of Simon Sinek’s WHY?).
We have our origin story, where Lux felt ignored on the expensive coaching classes he paid for, but it’s not really a mission.
I personally like telling everyone that StreamAlive is about “giving everyone a voice that is heard” because whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, everyone is a ‘textrovert’.
But we wanted something simpler, shorter, more visceral, and yes, more hashtag-friendly.
There were long meetings on Zoom where we shared screen and had endless conversations with ChatGPT.
Towards the end of another long meeting, it suddenly spat out the following:
#UnmuteTheAudience
No one said a word for a few seconds.
We looked at each other.
We had no choice because we were on Zoom with our cameras on, but my point is there was a collective moment of “Oh, that’s powerful”.
While I like saying that “StreamAlive gives everyone a voice”, I love that StreamAlive wants to “Unmute the audience”.
There’s a strong emotional factor to the phrase that suggests that until now, the audience has been put on mute and prevented from speaking up.
Every hero needs a villain
Now that we have a mission, we need to find a villain.
(If I lost you at “companies need to have a mission” your eyes are going to roll out of your head when you hear about companies needing villains 🙄)
As strange as it sounds, yes even SaaS companies need a villain.
Time might be your villain.
Unproductivity might be your villain.
‘Wasteful’ spending in government is definitely a villain that’s getting a lot of attention right now.
(We also have personal villains, with procrastination being my villain when it comes to writing this ‘weekly’ newsletter 😱).
But what about StreamAlive? Now that we have a mission to unmute the audience, who is our villain?
It’s not presenters, because you are our heroes ❤️
ChatGPT to the rescue again 🤖
(Best $20 ever spent, right?)
At first ChatGPT completely misunderstood our requirements for a villain and came up with anthropomorphic personas like:
The Meeting Monster
The Silence Stalker
The Brick Wall Black Hole
But once we explained that villains (or monsters) could be abstract concepts it came up with some more sensible ideas.
The one that stood out to us was:
One-way presentations
That could our ‘villain’ that everyone wants to punch because who wants to sit for an hour in a one-way presentation.
Who even has the attention span to sit for an hour listening to a monologue?
And which presenter wants to speak for an hour without getting any input from the audience? *Ahem, CEOs in townhalls* 🤭
We think that anyone who uses StreamAlive has a desire to get rid of one-way presentations. It’s a villain we can all band together against.
Putting together the villain and mission
StreamAlive is about turning monologues into dialogues.
By marrying the villain with our mission, we get…
StreamAlive wants to put an end to one-way presentations by unmuting the audience
Of course, unmuting 50 people at once is a recipe for chaos. It would be worse than day care at nap time.
That’s why StreamAlive uses the simplicity of the chat to create visual interactions that gives everyone a voice that is heard.
A villain, a mission, and how we achieve the mission and beat the villain in a short, simple sentence.
We’d love to hear whether #UnmuteTheAudience resonates with you!
What does it conjure up in your mind? Are you on a mission to unmute your audience?
New Magic Maps options!
The next time you try Magic Maps in your live session you’ll notice a few extra features! Now you can get local information about each location such as the time, the weather, and an iconic photo for the location.
You’ll also find a new ‘layers’ option in the bottom menu that allows you to radically change the look of your map and even view the locations on a spinning globe!
Catch us on our social pages
If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.
All the best,
Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human written with ❤️
I do agree that the villain could be called One Way Presentations, but . . . What the Chat Cemetery and the Interaction Impostor have going that One-Way misses is the sense of being manipulated into believing that my input is valued or even noticed. What you provide by Unmuting the Audience is enabling the full audience to really see their ideas as a social body, in other words, Democratization. It's going to be harder now for ideas to be rolled up in their flipcharts and wither away in a dusty room; ditto for the solitary confinement of a meeting chat file in some digital file.
Is it possible to have the Caribbean included in your list of regions?